RIM has announced that the second version of the OS for its much-maligned BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is rolling out today – chances are that it’s too late to do much good for the device’s long-term chances on the market though.

The headline feature of PlayBook OS 2.0 is an integrated email client. RIM received heavy criticism for not including a native email app with the initial launch of the PlayBook – especially as messaging is a supposed strength of the BlackBerry brand.

PlayBook OS 2.0 comes with a unified inbox that supports multiple email accounts, plus social messaging from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. This social integration also extends to the Contacts and Calendar apps.

Additionally, BlackBerry App World has been updated to include a range of new PlayBook apps, including a selection of Android apps which are supported by the tablet for the first time. Support for Android is limited to say the least however.

BlackBerry Bridge, which allows PlayBook users to display apps from their BlackBerry smartphones on the tablet’s screen over a Bluetooth connection, has been updated to allow the smartphone to be used as a remote keyboard and mouse controller.

Updated document editing functions, an improved Web browser, a new Print To Go app and Video Store, and a revised on-screen keyboard are among the other updates launched with the new version of the OS.

To give the PlayBook a chance in the enterprise market, RIM has included BlackBerry Balance to manage corporate data. It’s also pushing out an initial release of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – a Web-based interface for managing BlackBerry smartphones and tablets in a corporate environment. RIM plans to expand this to support control over iOS and Android devices next month.

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is available as a free download today for existing users. While it definitely throws in some much-needed improvements to the tablet’s offering, it may be too late to save the reputation of the hardware itself, and its ailing manufacturer.

Last year, we saw innovative companies like Airbnb and Skillshare take off. We’ve also seen a slew of smaller startups like Eventup and GetAround spring up in this “sharing economy” space.

While the population continues to expand and the Internet weaves itself into our daily lives, our networks are becoming grander, and in many ways the world is becoming “smaller”. The idea behind the movement is that if we can collaborate our resources and coordinate our schedules, we can all live a little bit better. And relying on the Internet’s social layer, we can all trust each other more than we could before. I can learn from you. You can rent my spare sofa (because you know my friend in Paris so you must be trustworthy). Then I can rent your friend’s mom’s house in LA. Your mom can teach my mom a class on Greek cooking. The sharing economy is smarter than a consumption-based economy and it’s filled with win-win situations, “in real life”.

Now, there’s a new startup in this space and it wants to save us from our depressed, Internet addicted lives. Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Uniiverse, “the platform for collaborative living” launched one week ago today with a small group of Alpha users. Since then, its user base has grown 400% with over 65 listings in Toronto, over 50 in Montreal, and over 35 in SF. The startup has also seen listing popping up in other cities (Chicago and NYC) as well as other countries (Japan, France, China, UK and Italy). The startup has even posted revenue in its first week.

Uniiverse’s vision to increase real-life interactions in our increasingly virtual world. For more, check out this manifesto video below:

Here’s how it works: Uniiverse users can post an activity or service that they wish to offer, and others can then discover, book, and pay that user through the website. I found activities like jogging buddies, yoga friends and badminton games. Services include sharing golf clubs, projector rentals and snowboard rentals.

Since Uniiverse is all about offline person-to-person experiences, you won’t see businesses or the buying and selling of products on the site. It allows people to offer and book activities and services that require trust and meeting face-to-face.

Although Uniiverse has launched worldwide and allows anyone, anywhere to post activities and services, its main focus at this point is on Toronto, San Francisco, Montreal and Boston. The team will be moving into every major city in the US in the upcoming weeks.

Benjamin Raffi, the CEO and President at Uniiverse met his co-founder Craig Follett at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “The idea for Uniiverse was born out of the desire to help people reconnect in real-life and share their passions,” says Raffi.

Follett (an avid rock-climber) and Raffi (a spearfisher and underwater-hockey player) found they had difficulties meeting like-minded people. Raffi says they identified a white space in the market: no platform allowed people to build the trust required for offline interactions. The two later met Adam Meghji (Uniiverse’s CTO) who had worked on car sharing and community-building platforms. They all left their jobs to start a company and Uniiverse was born.

While Skillshare, Airbnb, Eventup and GetAround all occupy specific niches within the sharing economy, Universe wants to unify that fragmentation and become the universal platform all activities and services.

“The value in the sharing economy is not fully tapped because there’s no transport of trust across verticals and categories,” says Raffi. “We add trust by showing social proximity (e.g. mutual friends, previous interactions), ratings, reviews, and participation across multiple categories and verticals), e.g. if someone is looking to rent your drill, you can get a sense of who they are by seeing that they’ve hosted cooking classes with great reviews, and that they go running with one of your friends.”

Uniiverse also combines activities and services that they believe are complementary. For example, someone might find a snowboard competition (activity) on Uniiverse and decide to join. On Uniiverse, he might also find a rideshare (service) to the competition and a place to stay with a local (service) there. If that person has a dog, he/she might even find a person willing to sit (service) the dog while away at the competition.

“Uniiverse enables anyone to become an entrepreneur,” says Raffi. “We’re an online storefront for people looking to share their time, interests, belongings, space, and skills. It’s also absolutely free for anyone to offer their services and activities. People do not need to pay for a subscription or create an account. You can simply, log in with your Facebook account and you are set.”

Uniiverse is coy on future revenue models, but Raffi says traditional display advertising is not one of them. “Uniiverse is about people (not businesses) and we would like to stay away from displaying business ads on the site,” he says. To date, the company has raised $750K in seed funding.

Like this idea? Read: How to Make Money Doing What You Love on the Internet

➤ Uniiverse

Zurijeta via shutterstock

Social media management dashboard HootSuite has announced its three millionth sign-up, with a man called Alan from Sao Paulo laying claim to the magic milestone.

Launched in 2008, HootSuite is a platform that lets users manage multiple social networks through a single dashboard, and the Vancouver-based company has grown into a global social media brand used by consumers and companies alike.

The latest announcement comes only six months after we reported on its previous big milestone, when it hit two million users back in July 2011.

We’re told that over 700 million messages have been sent through over 6 million social profiles, with users able to manage multiple accounts from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress and Mixi. Indeed, the latter of these is a significant inclusion, given that it’s one of Japan’s biggest social networks – a country that’s now HootSuite’s second biggest market.

HootSuite’s dashboard is available in five languages – English, French, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish – and the company’s top ten ranking countries are: (1) USA, (2) Japan, (3) UK, (4) Canada, (5) Brazil, (6) Indonesia, (7) Netherlands, (8) Spain, (9) Mexico, and (10) Australia. However, with almost 40%, the USA is far-and-away the platform’s biggest single market.

HootSuite also works with Tumblr, Constant Contact, Flickr, Formulists, Get Satisfaction, Summify and YouTube via HootSuite Apps, but its growth over the past six months could perhaps be put down to the addition of new social networks and features including Facebook Groups, Google+ Pages, LinkedIn Company Pages, and LinkedIn Groups.

80% of HootSuite users access the dashboard from the Web-based platform, while the other 20% opt for the mobile apps. The company’s mobile data show that 57% of users access the dashboard via iPhones, 26% through Android smartphones, 14% use iPads and 3% using BlackBerry.

To illustrate key trends and patterns, HootSuite has produced this infographic highlighting signup milestones and revenue and other key metrics.

It’s interesting to note that in terms of ‘Networks Added’, Facebook and Twitter constitute almost 90% of all social profiles on HootSuite. This is, of course, representative of the popularity of these networks in themselves, with Facebook closing in on one billion accounts, whilst Twitter should hit 500m accounts next month. But despite Facebook being around double the size of Twitter in terms of users, they are very closely matched on HootSuite, which is indicative of the way that information constantly flows through Twitter, requiring an external client to mange and make sense of the data stream.

Google+ only launched last June, and it only actively started welcoming brands in November, which helps explain why it factors so lowly, plus it still doesn’t have a solid API for third-party applications to tap into.

The North hallway at CES houses some pretty cool stuff, and most of the great Apple-related products are in the iLounge pavilion. But right beside the front door was a booth that caught my attention for some reason. It was from Canada-based Helium Digital, a company that specializes in Bluetooth and case accessories for your iDevices.

The first thing that grabbed my eye was a great-looking folio keyboard case for the iPad. It’s not the first time that we’ve seen one of these, but I’ve never seen one this thin before. Helium’s Jeff Adams walked me through a quick demonstration of it, and I snapped some shots for you too. Check this thing out:

There is a caveat of having a system be this small – it’s not a full-sized keyboard. But the distance between the keys is still workable, and key travel is comfortable, requiring only a light touch. I obviously wasn’t able to test battery life but Bluetooth devices tend to be pretty decent and I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise about this one.

The case should start shipping around March, and the price is the kicker – $35. That’s at least $15 cheaper than the lower end ones that I’ve seen and it’s at least half the price of some higher-end options.

But Helium wasn’t done. Adams then showed me a $20 iPad sleeve with a trick up its…well…you know -

It’s an interesting way to add some more value to an already dirt-cheap sleeve case, and Helium’s design accomplishes that very well. Once again, expect to see the sleeve in March of this year.

We’ll be doing in-depth reviews of both the folio an the sleeve when we can get our hands onto them. For now, make sure to browse the rest of our CES 2012 coverage.

➤ Helium Digital

With shareholders pressing the company to overhaul its board, Canadian smartphone maker RIM could be about to undergo a corporate shakeup that would result in co-founders Mike Lazardis and Jim Balsillie losing their position as chairman on the board, the Financial Post reports.

According to the Post, sources have indicated that RIM may have already lined up its replacement for the duo. Barbara Stymiest, a board member since 2007, is apparently the leading candidate for the position.

It is believed that the company has been performing an internal examination on its board structure and whether both Lazaridis and Balsillie need to hold significant board titles. The report is due to be delivered at the end of January and will require the board’s nine members to issue a response within 30 days.

The Post continues:

Sources say that the evaluation process currently under way at the company could result in a number of different options and that a final decision has not yet been made. However, sources say that Ms. Stymiest, 55, the former head of TSX Group Inc. and former chief operating officer at Royal Bank of Canada, is said to be in line to become the company’s first ever independent chair by the time the process ends in the weeks ahead.

When reached for comment Monday, a RIM spokesperson reiterated by e-mail that the committee is on track to give its recommendations by the end of the month, but did not comment on the possibility of a change in board leadership.

In June, RIM’s stock fell below $37 – the lowest level since 2007 – and continued to plummet over the course of 2011 as RIM struggled to turn around its smartphone and tablet sales. In December, when its share price reached $13.44, it was estimated that the company was actually worth less than Apple’s App Store alone.

With the company’s new QNX-powered BlackBerry 10 smartphones not due to launch until late 2012, the company needs to reverse its decline, and quickly. Many see that ousting RIM’s chairmen as a necessary evil on the road to fulfilling its goal.

Claiming that he was Chris Parker, sent from the future to tell his father about the next major development in social media, he repeatedly pressed Sean to agree to a meeting. Parker dodged answering the question amid much joking over the mother of this child from the future being a Russian model. “Schweet!,” Sean remarked.

So, who was this ballsy guy with a unique pitch? It turns out he is Toronto-based Christopher Carmichael, whose startup Atendy is currently in stealth mode. We caught up with him to find out more.

I am not trying to come across as a sanctimonious, virgin-pure blogger here. I make mistakes all the time. Thankfully, some of our readers have a lot of time on their hands and are nice enough to correct me. But the humor in The Guardian’s recent photo mishap is too good not to share with you.

As first picked up by the blog Regret the Error, The Guardian ran a story about how Canada’s multicultural policy should not be emulated by European nations. To go with the caption ‘The argument that all is rosy in Canada’s multicultural garden is unconvincing,’ The Guardian accidentally posted the unofficial Canadian Cannabis Flag instead of the official Canadian Flag with a Maple Leaf emblem. As Regret the Error points out, the caption really makes the error all the more wonderful.

Whoever posted the photo was either really stoned or has never smoked pot before, ever. The former would account for the person’s lack of perception. The latter would account for the person’s lack of realization.

Here’s the official comment about the correction from a Guardian employee:

Considering the copious amount of marijuana that Canadians are known to smoke, the error wasn’t too bad. Maybe if Europe adopted a more liberal approach to marijuana its multicultural issues would subside. Nothing like a ‘more the merrier approach’ to immigration after a few joints have been rolled. The story has since been fixed with a proper Canadian Maple Leaf flag.

BBC Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial arm, has announced that the global BBC iPlayer app will be available in Canada from today, making it the sixteenth territory added to its pilot launch.

The global iPlayer app was launched in 11 Western European countries initially back in July, and the service has been gradually rolled out further afield since then, including Australia in September and across Scandinavia a month later. It’s now available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland

The global BBC iPlayer App is a Video-on-Demand (VoD) pilot subscription service available via an iPad app only at present, and it differs from the UK version of iPlayer in that it gives international users access to an extensive archive of classic and contemporary British TV programmes. The UK iPlayer service is more geared towards catch-up TV, with a 30-day window to watch following the initial broadcast.

The global iPlayer app is a subscription-only service, costing CAD$8.99 a month, or $84.99 for an annual subscription, in Canada. This compares with €6.99 a month (€64.99 a year) in Europe, and AUD$9.49 a month ($89.99 a year) in Australia. Viewers will be able to sample a small amount of content for free before committing to a subscription.

“We’re proud to be building on the successful launch of this App by introducing it to Canada”, says Jana Bennett, BBC Worldwide President of Worldwide Networks and Global iPlayer. “It will open up the opportunity for a whole new audience to enjoy the best moments from seventy years of brilliant BBC programmes, wherever and whenever they want.”

So what kind of TV shows can Canadians access from today? Fawlty Towers, Absolutely Fabulous and Only Fools & Horses for starters, as well as more modern sitcoms and sketch-shows such as Gavin and Stacey and Little Britain. In addition, you’ll also get the likes of Whitechapel, Spooks, Pride and Prejudice, Top Gear, Doctor Who, Blue Planet and Horizon.

BBC Worldwide has also announced that from today, anyone who downloads the global iPlayer app will be able to access an episode every day until Christmas Day, for free, and without having to sign up to a subscription.

The free content includes Christmas specials from shows such as Only Fools and Horses and Absolutely Fabulous, plus 12 Days of Gavin and Stacey, Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef – The Christmas Party, and Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. This will depend on the availability of each programme in your country. To access this free content on your iPad, you have to download the app and visit the BBC App Store.

The move into North America is a big step for BBC Worldwide, but there’s still no word on when it will hit the US market. Though it’s probably safe to say it’s testing the water around the world before hitting the States, which could prove to be a very lucrative market for the VoD service.

There’s something sort of creepy about the fact that Dany Lacerte, a father living in Quebec City, is posing as a 13-year-old girl on the Internet. I suppose his behavior can be excused when we look at the bigger picture, however, and see that he’s actually been using this false persona to try and expose cyber predators online through Internet social sites.

Perhaps unfortunately, Lacerte’s underage masquerade might soon be coming to an end. Although he’s reportedly been able to catch around 5 predators a day — some of which he’s managed to film over an Internet video chat site — the predators themselves aren’t very happy with the surprise intrusions. A few of the videos Lacerte has captured have made their way onto YouTube, thereby incurring the insulted wrath of his unsuspecting “victims”.

One of the men accused by Lacerte is demanding a public apology, threatening to launch a defamation suit if Lacerte does not deliver. On this topic, Lacerte states:

“[The lawyer’s letter] says that it’s illegal to create a fake account and the man thought he was trying to meet an 18-year-old girl.”

Some backstory

Over 15,000 users have already rallied behind Lacerte’s Facebook page where he today revealed his agreement to receive pro-bono legal assistance in the matter. The provincial police also seem to be getting something out of these vigilante endeavors and have already asked to view Lacerte’s recorded footage, including requesting copies of the chat logs between him and the supposed Internet predators.

A few of the stories Lacerte shares are rather shocking, though perhaps not unheard of on the Internet. In a few statements to QMI, Quebec’s new national news agency, he says:

“One time, it took two minutes before someone offered me [sexual] favors. I have two younger daughters. The police need to have a squad dedicated [to online predators]. I’m doing this to raise awareness about the people who are around us.

Interestingly enough, Lacerte created the false persona a few years ago after being inspired by QMI’s French investigative unit when it successfully did the same. QMI was able to curate over 50 predators within its first 2 minutes of using an Internet meeting site while posing as a 13-year-old girl named “Helodie”. Lacerte, who soon forgot about the creation of his own vigilante profile, returned to it years later only to find that over 150 people had contacted his own fictitious 13-year-old girl.

Out of these messages, Lacerte estimates that most of the men reaching out are around the age of 25. On this, he adds, ”It’s like they don’t realize that it’s illegal. They think that at 25, they still have the right to do that.” I’ll be keeping up with this story, and will keep you posted, as usual.

In the meanwhile, what do you think? Is there something wrong about the way Lacerte is exposing these men online, or is he completely in the right? Could this be considered an invasion of privacy? Weigh in below.

This just in from Canadian advertising agency John St: “We’re seeing a major shift in consumer habits. Everything is moving towards cat videos. And the agencies that don’t know that? They’ll get left behind.”

John St. says that by 2015, cat videos will represent 90% of the content on the World Wide Web. Why? “Because no one wants to see ads anymore. They want to see cat videos.” To stay ahead of the curve, John St. is beginning its foray into “Catvertising.” To facilitate this change, the agency will launch its Cat Video Production studio to film, write and seed cat videos.

“You think sometimes you’re gonna run outta material, but then you come in in the morning and are like omg Trombone cat!”

Watch it here:

This behind-the-scenes interview is a spoof (of course) but the irony isn’t lost on us. A Catvertising Agency could probably make quite a bit of cash and would definitely be a very funny place to go to work. And at the very least, this is a great promotional video for the John St. Agency.

Also don’t miss Kittywood Studios and our recent interview with The Fluffington Post.

via @kissandtype