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PlayBook native email, calendar and contacts finally get peeked, look ready for their close-up
We've been waiting very, very patiently, for RIM to make good on its promise to deliver a native email and calendaring experience to the PlayBook. So far, we've been sorely disappointed. Supposedly the essential productivity and contact management tools will be coming with the update to version 2.0 of the OS in February, but until now we've seen neither hide nor pixelated hair of the apps. At the BlackBerry Innovation Forum RIM finally took the wraps off and demoed the email, contacts and calendar suite for a presumably relieved audience of QNX fans. The photos snagged by BlackBerry Cool aren't the greatest, but you can see the experience has been carefully crafted for a tablet, and the smartphone apps have simply been blown up to fill seven diagonal inches. A particularly interesting feature is, as the number of appointments you have scheduled on a particular day increases, the date grows and becomes bolder to alert you to your hectic schedule (above). For a bunch more pics and few more details check out the source link.
AT&T to enable BlackBerry Bridge support before sundown
Most tablets function just fine on their own, but RIM's BlackBerry Playbook introduced a unique, yet restrictive interface that limits Bluetooth tethering to a similarly-branded handset. This feature, called BlackBerry Bridge, lets your tablet piggyback on a handset's 3G data connection, also enabling access to productivity apps like email and calendar, which are still otherwise unavailable on the PlayBook. Unfortunately, this option hasn't been made available for AT&T users, but that's about to change, as the feature will be added to App World today. While the Bridge suite is totally gratis, enabling the AT&T 3G data connection requires a monthly tethering plan of $45, which means anyone grandfathered into the unlimited data feature will need to decide if it's worth the jump. Bridge not sounding like your cup of tea? Don't worry -- at least you can take comfort in knowing that the days of pining for native email are numbered.
