In less than four weeks, many of the BlackBerry faithful will make the yearly pilgrimage to BlackBerry World in Orlando. This year being my first event, you can imagine all the questions & concerns one may have if they've never attended such an event.

The great team over at Inside BlackBerry has created a much needed "Survival Guide" for BlacKBerry World 2012, filled with tips, insight & wisdom.

• Read BlackBerry World 2012 Survival Guide in our Forums

Possibly one of the most overlooked apps in the Beta Zone in recent memory, other than that awful eBay app, in my opinion has been the BlackBerry Podcast app. The latest build, v1.6.0.8, has been released in App World and if now available as an upgrade to everyone that didn't test the beta build. If you did test the beta build, you'll realize this is the beta build and has simply been relabeled "official."

As we eagerly count down the days before BlackBerry World 2012, we cant help but get excited about some of this years hot topics. Whether you are planning on attending this years BlackBerry World or not, knowing the highlights of the conference will help you prioritize the items you want to hear. So to help with that here are some conference highlights RIM gave us that we can expect.

Featured Keynotes:

Attend the conference General Session to hear from Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of Research In Motion® (RIM®), and other RIM executives about their vision for the future of mobile and the Internet, get a glimpse into what’s possible with apps on the upcoming BlackBerry® 10 platform, and leave with an understanding of how the newest BlackBerry innovations for the enterprise are fitting together.

Featured Speaker, Spencer West

Spencer West will be speaking at BlackBerry World! Don’t miss his inspirational talk on Wednesday, May 2 about finding opportunity in every challenge and redefining possible. Spencer was a part of the Go Global
speaking tour for Free The Children.

BlackBerry Party

BlackBerry Party on Tuesday, May 1st. We’ll be at Universal Studios Florida® for an evening of rides, movie sets, attractions and a wicked DJ line up throughout the night.

Session of the Week!

WA19: The Bring Your Device to Work (BYOD) Trend: How BlackBerry Offers a Single Management Solution
Need help managing all your mobile devices with a single environment? Worry no more, and see how Mobile Fusion Studio allows you to have a single view into all your mobile needs. Whether it's a BlackBerry® smartphone or other mobile devices you now have a solution. This session will show you how multiple devices can be supported with confidence and corporate data still be protected. You will also have a look at the security and deployment challenges of supporting multiple devices, from current BlackBerry smartphones and upcoming BlackBerry® 10 smartphones, the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and other devices.

As you can see tons of stuff going on. Make sure to keep it right here for all the latest news for BlackBerry World.

Everyone's favorite Twitter client on the PlayBook has been updated this morning. This is mainly a maintenance release but nevertheless, Jerome Carty has made some significant improvements to the app that make it worth upgrading right now. Check below for the change log.

Here’s what’s new:

• Timeline position is held if new tweets are loaded while scrolled (instead of jumping to top)
• Reduced application size
• Reduced memory footprint
• Big performance improvements
• Improved scrolling
• New splash screen
• E-mail Tweet
• Font appearance preview

And here are some significant bug fixes:

• Real-time streaming fixes (caused by server changes to Twitter’s streaming on Monday)
• Long urls in tweets sometimes overflow into the tweet below them
• Mini browser does not rotate when moving from portrait to landscape and vice versa
• Tweets over 140 characters are still sendable if the virtual keyboard’s return key is used
• When tweeting a photo, a lack of space between the link and surrounding text make it unclickable
• When replying to a retweet, replies should be directed to original tweeter
• Duplicate tweets

For more information, go to Kisai Labs' Blog.

• Download Blaq for the BlackBerry PlayBook in App World
• Discuss this update in the forums

The BlackBerry Developers Blog has posted six new smartphone simulators for download today. These simulators help app developers work their magic as ways of testing previous to release. I know many of the great devs we have on the BlackBerry platform are going to be ecstatic about this news. Most of us wont have a use for this simulators though but rest assured they are extremely helpful.

BlackBerry has made two more games available to OS 7 users for free today in App World. Both the Sims 3 World Adventures and Need for Speed- The Run are now downloadable for free compliments of BlackBerry. Go ahead and fire up App World and get your hands on both of these games as this is only a limited time offer.

BBSAK (BlackBerry Swiss Army Knife) has been updated to v1.9.2 and now supports OS 7 devices! This has been an anticipated updated for users of the program as it brings much needed support among some great enhancements to the overall speed.

Changelog:

Be sure to leave us a comment if you discover any findings/fixes of your own.

Some good news to our fellow BB fans out there in Cambodia, as RIM has just launched the BlackBerry OS 7 Smartphones after a very long wait. Another country will start enjoying a whole new operating system for BlackBerry devices as they will now experience this awesome creation by RIM. The BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 will be available in their local BlackBerry shops and BlackBerry authorized partners.

UPDATE: @BlackBerry_UK just posted the tweet below in response to this evening's unfortunate incident.

The night was going wonderfully in London, during the U.K. BBM party this evening. Unfortunately, it seems the night would not continue this way as reports have been coming in the last 20 min of a very unfortunate incident. Apparently after an altercation ensued on the dance floor, a broken bottle became a weapon as one of the attendees was allegedly stabbed in the neck.

Police are on the scene and are currently not letting many of the guests leave the VIP area. No word on the condition of the victim or of any arrests have been made but you can be sure we'll keep this post updating as we learn more about the incident.

As a side note, it's definitely unfortunate for RIM as it seems even a great night like this can be so easily ruined by bad people. This will also most likely cause another major PR nightmare for them in the short term, something they definitely cannot afford at this time.

Today RIM has released one of the most sophisticated device management solutions to date. CIO's, and IT Admins, rejoice your all-in one solution is finally here. This marks a monumental leap forward in device management as the array of mobile devices flooding the workplace is astronomical. From end users to CEOs, people want to have the device of their choice. This has always proved to be a nightmare for IT Admins as there was no good way to manage the variety of devices that made up their mobile devices in the workplace.

Enter BlackBerry Mobile Fusion the answer to control and stability within device management. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is built from RIM's solid BES foundation so organizations can be assured of its rock solid performance and stability. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible. It also means that businesses and government do not have to move to the lowest common denominator on security for all the devices they need to manage.” said RIM's VP of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing, Alan Panezic.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows for the management of several mobile platforms to include BlackBerry smartphones, iOS (version 4 or later), Android (version 2.1,2.2,2.3), PlayBook Tablets, and future BlackBerry 10 devices. Through a easy to use web-based interface an Administrator can easily activate, audit, and perform other management tasks.

Overview of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion Features include:

• BlackBerry Device Service - provides management features for BlackBerry PlayBook tablets
• Universal Device Service - provides management features for devices that use the iOS and Android operating systems
• BlackBerry Mobile Fusion Studio - a web app that provides a single place for management of mobile devices, users, configurations, policies and more

In addition to the management of BlackBerry devices BlackBerry Mobile Fusion also provides the following capabilities for iOS and Android devices:

• Support for multiple devices per user
• Application and software management
• Connectivity management (Wi-Fi®, VPN, certificates)
• Centralized, easy to use, unified web-based console
• Security and policy definition and management
• Asset management
• Configuration management
• Security and protection for lost or stolen devices (remote lock, wipe)
• User- and group-based administration
• High scalability

For those of you itchy to try the software you can try it free for 60 days. This is a must have for any organization looking to regain control of mobile security, and organisation.

• Discuss this in the forum
• Read RIM's press release.