RIM has just announced a beta program for Office 365 on BlackBerry, which will offer business organizations Exchange synchronization and security options, without all of the hosting hassle. A browser-based console allows managers and end-users to keep tabs on their BlackBerry deployment, including remote wiping if needed, and the usual sync between e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, and memopad applications on mobile, web, and desktop. BlackBerry Balance is also supported, so employees can keep their business and personal data separate.

The open beta for Office 365 on BlackBerry is available across 30 countries for BETA testing.

Porsche Design themselves are no stranger to mobile phone designs and their whole range of products have a crisp, clean, heavily engineered feel to them, but never before have we seen them flex their creative muscles on a smartphone, especially with a high-profile company like RIM as their partner.

The two known mobile creations to have come out of the Porsche Design house previously, were theSagem P9521 Porsche and Sagem P9522 Porsche, the former being a clamshell block of brushed metal and the latter being a sophisticated looking bar phone. There was another hint of Porsche Design that stepped into the smartphone world, however this concept came courtesy of industrial designer, André Silva. Still, the concept, dubbed P9530 Smartphone, got people attention and demonstrated the potential of what a design house such as Porsche Design could achieve if they ever decided to take on an all-screen smartphone brief, such as the one from Silva designs.

Back to the real deal however, the 'Porsche-Berry'/Knight/9980, depending on which you prefer, is set to launch at a special event on October 27th in Dubai.

Facebook new Messenger application has been chilling out on Android and iOS for a while, and now BlackBerry gets join the party. Android and iOS versions are also getting a bit of an update, so you can now see when someone else is typing, and you've got quicker access to your favourite friends. They also include wider language support, which is good news for our international friends.

Facebook Messenger was launched as a dedicated chat application entirely separate from the core social networking application. On iOS and Android, it pulled in SMS and e-mail too, so you could really handle all of your incoming messages from one spot. Location-sharing, picture-sending, and group chat made Facebook Messenger a full-bodied instant messaging client, and considering the ubiquity of the social network, it made other IM apps like BBM and GTalk seem almost extraneous.

RIM has announced its compensation package for BlackBerry users affected by last week outage, and if you were hoping for a refund then you are going to be disappointed. Instead, RIM is offering a bundle of twelve apps usually collectively priced at over $100 from the BlackBerry App World free, including titles such as SIMS 3 and Vlingo Plus, while enterprise customers will also get a month free Technical Support.

If enterprise users already have a Technical Support contract, they will find an extra month service tacked onto the end of it. Those without will be offered a standalone free month of the enhanced services, with no obligation to continue.

Everyone else will have to wait for RIM to begin to roll out the free apps, which the company says will happen "over the coming weeks" and run until the end of the year. "We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience" RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a statement. "We have apologized to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again."

Whether that will satisfy angry users or indeed prevent them from jumping ship to Android or iOS remains to be seen.

Free Apps:

• SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts
• Bejeweled – Electronic Arts
• N.O.V.A. – Gameloft
• Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft
• Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft
• Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps
• DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org
• iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org
• Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org
• Nobex Radio™ Premium – Nobex
• Shazam Encore – Shazam
• Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo

A few days ago, we caught a glimpse at the first spy shots of the BlackBerry Messenger or BBM app for Android users running on a device. Some more screens of the app running what appears to be a different device have surfaced as well. The other screens show some of the same views that we saw previously, but it also includes a couple new views.

TechnoBuffalo was sent some screen shots from a source and the source added a bit of background to go with the screen shots that add a little credibility to things. The source claims to work for RIM. The phone the screenshots show looks very rough, and there is apparently a reason for it. The phone is a dev unit that RIM whipped up and the buttons on the front are just stuck on according to the source.