Steve Ballmer made an appearance today at BlackBerry World 2011 and announced a partnership between Microsoft and RIM to integrate Bing into BlackBerry products. In addition to making Bing the default search and map provider for all BlackBerry devices moving foward, services will be added at the OS level instead of being bundled as a series of apps. This will bring about features ranging from voice and location-aware search to panorama stitching. It also suggests that we'll likely see another iteration of BlackBerry OS 7 sometime before the Holiday season later this year!

What's your thought? Good or bad for RIM to make bedfellows with Bing? Would a Google integration be better?

• Head to the BBOS Forum and leave us your thoughts!

The BlackBerry Partners Fund has just announced the launch of the BlackBerry Dev Challenge for 2011 and has started accepting submissions for the first Competition! This year, there are three Competitions to take place. Their purpose is to recognize, reward and celebrate innovation within the BlackBerry developer community. Each Competition will recognize winners in their respective regions, which will give developers the opportunity to stand out from one another with local content and language support. For more details on the Dev Challenge and how to enter, head to the BBOS Forum.

Exciting news! An update to the BlackBerry Tablet OS is coming to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet this week. BlackBerry Tablet OS v1.0.3 brings a bunch of new features to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, including a Video Chat application and BBM support via BlackBerry Bridge! User who want to be prepared for this update will want to head to the BBOS forums to read the details on what is to come, and what it means to you.

Thanks to Verizon's new online catalog we may have a peek into the future of what the rocky relationship will be for RIM devices. In the catalog, the PlayBook is featured as 'Coming Soon', which brings surprising news as many were skeptic about Verizon selling the tablet in their stores. The Bold 9650 and the Curve 3G 9330 are labeled as 'While supplies last' - which suggests that Verizon may be getting rid of those hand-held devices. We hope this doesn't happen without adding a few devices to the inventory. Back in February we posted a video in which the upcoming BlackBerry Touch 9850 was depicted with a Verizon brand on the back cover. At least it seems for now that Verizon will have a hand in the new hand-held devices set to release this year, but only time will tell which ones they choose.

• Have any predictions or thoughts? Let us know in the Forums

If you use Twitter then you most likely received the news of Osama Bin Laden's death before the US President was able to broadcast what happened.

Interestingly, our keen eyes here at BlackBerryOS noticed the tweet came from a BlackBerry - as shown in the image above. Keith Urbahn, the Chief of Staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted from his BlackBerry:

Just goes to show, if you want the news first, just keep an eye on your BlackBerry.

• Head to the BBOS Forums and share your thoughts

You may remember during MWC 2011 RIM announced that BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 would be getting some new features. One of these features was the ability for 3rd party developers to integrate BBM into games, media, ect. The first to offer the integration is Telemap, thanks to the developer tools being launched last month. Telemap is a GPS service provider that powers apps from Orange, Telefonica, SFR, and other wireless carriers. The new function simply allows users to request and confirm location sharing through BBM, after which you can see where your contact is in Telmap and get turn-by-turn navigation directions to them. In addition to getting social on BlackBerry, Telmap has also recently added Facebook and Twitter functions to their Android GPS app. It's going to be interesting to see how far BBM integration will go for developers. And as always, we'll keep you updated on the latest.

• Discuss Telemap and BBM with us in the Forums