It looks like RIM is having trouble coming up with ideas for their own developer conference. They are asking the community to come up with presentations and send speakers down to Santa Clara (at your own expense).
While reading Neil's most recent blog entry at devberry.com he mentions the official Blackberry developer newsletter hasn't been coming out. I just double checked the official site (http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/resources/newsletter.jsp) and they've missed the last two issues. I don't suppose anyone from RIM would like to comment? No, didn't think so.
From VentureBeat: Research In Motion, the RBC and Thomson Reuters have invested in an $150 million venture investment fund, called the BlackBerry Partners Fund, to support developers of applications running primarily on the Blackberry.
I didn't see any official announcement on the subject, but I noticed today that RIM posted a new "Video Library" section on their web site. The videos have a nice range in content from beginner all the up to more advanced topics. The quality is pretty good, though they are only in English. Click here to check it out.
Industry insider BGR has some sneaked pics of the long rumoured clamshell BlackBerry. It sports a SureType keyboard and both internal and external APIs. Click here for details.
With his usual elegance, Neil at devberry.com brings up some interesting points about this phone from a developer perspective.
Kevin over at Crackberry managed to Ebay his way into a BlackBerry 9000. It's almost certainly a pre-production model, but at least confirms what we've been hearing from other industry insiders like BGR. Head over to CrackBerry for the full scoop.
All I can say is, it's about time! I just noticed that BlackBerry is a Gold Sponsor at EclipseCon, and my feeling is that they've finally decided to create a plugin for Eclipse and they'll be launching it at EclipseCon.