It was recently announced the update to the operating system would be delayed, and now Cnet are reporting it won’t even be bringing BBM with it either. The company is saying the delay with the update is to ensure the software doesn’t disappoint users.

It posted on its official blog and said “As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users.”

It goes on further to say why BBM is being delayed further to a later update by stating they are committed to offering a seamless BBM offering, and they are still working on it. There are obviously some problems with the software and no timeframe has been revealed about its availability.

RIM are facing issues concerning the name of its new operating system, with Basis International claiming it owns the rights to the BBX name. Basis is claiming they trademarked the BBX name back in 1995, and is currently trying to stop RIM using the name and claiming for damages. Update: RIM have announced the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 update will come in February.

Are you disappointed that BBM is still not available on the PlayBook?

The company has announced it will offer customers in a good will gesture some premium apps, with the value of around $100/£63 as a form of compensation. According to TechRadar the full lineup of applications that will be offered free has yet to be revealed by the company.

They will include such things as SIMS 3, Bejeweled, and other useful things such as iSpeech Translator Pro and Photo Editor Ultimate. The full list of applications will be available on the company’s website, and it will be updated with more goodies in the coming weeks.

Users will be able to get hold of the freebies from October 19th through to December 31st. Also the company is to offer business users free technical support for one month. Whether that will make up the loss of service to these users remains to be seen.

Mike Lazarides CEO of RIM said “We’ve worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we’re committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future”. He continued by thanking users of the service for their patience.

The company stressed it is working hard to prevent similar problems happening again, and returning consumer confidence in the service. RIM is busy trying to turn its fortunes around, and the outage couldn’t have come at a worse time considering it coincided with the launch of the latest iPhone.

Are you happy with the offer of some free applications?

From this interactive command tablet those in charge of America’s armed forces will be able to take control of soldiers, drones and other such assets. However, they will not be able to control the soldiers fully – that’s years away – but they can issue orders of troop placement etc.

The screen is 36 inches by 24 inches, and when those in charge touch a screen to where they want to move assets a message is then sent to those on the ground who will have to issue the orders. To make sure that the message is received an instant message is then sent back to those who are issuing the orders on the AAI built device. Now we just hope that it is not BBM being used, as we do not want an outage in the theater of war?

The US Army has not even agreed to use the system yet, but AII are doing all they can to persuade them to do so. Wired believes that this will be a great system for Uncle Sam, but the one major issue is a dwindling budget, as they have overstretched their resources due to constant conflict in the Middle East. We have no idea how much the technology will cost and what AAI will call it, so give us your best ideas.

The service experienced some downtime yesterday, and now there are reports that it has crashed again, the second time in two days. ZDNet are reporting that even though RIM said things were back to normal, users in Europe, Africa, and The Middle East are reporting more downtime.

BlackBerry owners have taken to Twitter to voice their frustrations and anger following another apparent network failure. Users in Europe are saying that no data is reaching or leaving their handsets, but texts and multimedia messaging actually working.

There are other users in the areas though who are saying that the BlackBerry service is completely down. This comes less than a day after the last outage that will be of some embarrassment to the struggling company. RIM had not given any reason for yesterday’s outage, but sources were claiming a data center near London in the UK had failed.

The data center went down around 11am GMT yesterday, and is responsible for BlackBerry’s online services. It is not known if vandalism was to blame that has caused other networks to lose service in the past. This latest issue won’t have helped the company as it looks to return to some of its former glories in the mobile world.

Is the BlackBerry Messenger service working in your area?

TechRadar have an article that shows alleged first screenshots of BBM for Android, after being leaked by a source who claims to be a RIM employee. The source is also claiming that the application is now into its final stages of testing before being released to the public.

It is thought the application will be ready for the beginning of 2012, and the screenshots show the BBM icon on an Android menu screen. The icon is on the small size but this is not meant to be the final version of the application. Although the contact profile page is not the prettiest it does have all the content you would expect.

Presently there are not much more details about the application, but the source is saying it works well with the platforms push notifications. Also it is not known from the images if RIM’s recent improvements to the BBM service such as in-app chat will find their way onto the Android application.

RIM has been looking to enhance the BBM service in response to the news that Apple will be having its own private messaging app as part of iOS 5. There is a BBM application thought to be in the works for the iOS platform, but whether it makes it through to the App Store remains to be seen.

There are many of the younger generation who choose a BlackBerry handset purposely for its BBM service, so you would have thought the company reluctant to offer the service on other platforms. Do you think it is a good idea for RIM to bring out such applications?

The instant message provider has said it would shut down its service in the country if it was requested too during times of trouble. Reuters are reporting that RIMs executive Stephen Bates said the company would gladly comply with orders given in times of terrorism threats or mass unrest.

Bates said “From our perspective we comply with the law and if the instruction would be to close down the mobile networks, we would then comply”. It was widely reported at the time that such services were used by the trouble makers to organize and incite the violence.

It looks like the majority of rioters preferred BBM over the likes of Twitter because it is more private and messages are encrypted. Since the government first said it may disrupt such services in the future, it has since backed down and said it wouldn’t go that far. The home secretary, Theresa may, has been meeting with Police and representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and RIM.

Any such move to restrict such services were quickly condemned and likened to the actions of more repressive countries. Bates added that social media was a good thing and didn’t think suspending these was “a good way forward”.

Meanwhile Alexander Macgillivray from Twitter said the police even used its service for good during periods of crisis, and Facebook’s Richard Allan said social media allowed users to know families and friends were safe. RIM has not said whether it would hand over any chat logs or user details to police during the troubles.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said today the Government is considering disrupting online social networking during civil unrest. According to Reuters similar moves are often condemned when done by other countries.

During the four days of civil unrest police and politicians said those involved in the troubles, often used such networks to organize where and when to start. Cameron told the British parliament today that they “are working with police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”.

Most of the trouble makers used BBM over Facebook and Twitter because its messages are encrypted and private. Militant attacks in India are thought to have been organized by people using BBM in the past. A couple of days ago RIM said it cooperates with law enforcement and regulatory authorities, but stopped short of saying whether it would hand over chat logs or user details to the police investigating the riots.

There have already been some arrests in the country from people using the likes of Facebook to incite violence. As people watched the events unfold on TV, they would have noticed how well organized the people responsible were. But social networking did have some good to play in the recent troubles, with many people taking to Twitter to organize cleanups of the affected areas of the looting.

What do you think should the British Government block social networking sites if there is any more trouble?

A recent Guardian.co.uk article suggests that during these riots people used BBM to broadcast messages to all of their contacts, this combined with Twitter and Facebook resulted in the word spreading very quickly, however as most BBM messages are untraceable by the authorities the rioters probably preferred this means of communication.

Below we have one of the broadcasted messages which probably hit hundreds, if not thousands of BlackBerry users in and around London:

“Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother… SALUT! if you see a fed… SHOOT!”

Another message which was broadcasted read:

“Everyone in edmonton enfield wood green everywhere in north link up at enfield town station at 4 o clock sharp!”.

The former mayor of London, Jenny Jones, suggested that the police force could have picked up on the upcoming riots if they weren’t under resourced, that said we think that it is hard to distinguish whether tweets and status updates are simply designed to throw the police of the scent or in fact an accurate lead, if the police took every tweet and Facebook status update seriously police would have their work cut out to investigate each threat etc.

We wonder if similar things will happen in the future, if so what do you think RIM can do to help authorities, should social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook be able to do more to stop such things happening, or should freedom of speech be allowed? We would love to hear your thoughts on this matter.

One of the reasons why iMessage is so much like BlackBerry Messenger is because it will have send and read indicators. However, only those with an iOS device will be able to get a seamless experience; those receiving a message from an iPhone on a non-iOS device will not receive an iMessage just a standard SMS.

Watching the video was pretty funny, with the guy holding the BlackBerry unsure how he feels, and the other holding the iPhone shouting out “we stole it.” He then said, “we ripped off your messaging, we wanted it, we took it.” Like everything it has its good points and bad points, but being right into the messages app instead of being separate on BBM is a plus for iOS 5.

They ran a series of tests to determine which of the two were faster and sending and receiving SMS and MMS, and they seem to be pretty equal. Not to spoil anything the overall verdict is that they both tie. Having said that, iOS 5 is only in beta at the moment, so expect vast improvements to be made. That is not the only feature that Apple has borrowed, there is a host of others that have been assimilated on iOS 5.

One of the main announcements which took most of the limelight was Apple’s iCloud, revealing new details and confirming many more. However the announcement of their other new software, iOS 5 will revolutionize the social aspect of the iPhone 4 by allowing users of the device to send messages to other iPhone 4 users for free using the new iMessage, a blow RIM’s BBM.

The iMessage feature will be integrated into a new Game Center which was also revealed at the keynote, a feature that is said to be more socialized. Using iMessage users will be able to create groups to chat in or just chat with individuals.

It will also incorporate video messaging, photos and text that can be viewed by friends or friends of friends. Other features that will be included are game and friend recommendations, the messages will show up in your Notification Center and you will even be able to tell when someone is typing.

What do you think of the new feature? Were you pleased with the WWDC 2011 keynote?