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In a blog post yesterday, Facebook announced new features and improvements to its mobile application Facebook Messenger. The new update allows users to see who is online, who's on mobile and when the other person is typing.

New support has been added for 22 new languages on Android, and 12 new languages on iOS. Facebook Messenger is already available on iPhone (including iOS5) and Android, and now it's available on BlackBerry. Beluga, the system behind Facebook Messenger, was supposed to be the BlackBerry Messenger for non-BlackBerries. In an ironic twist of fate, that system has made its way to BlackBerry through Facebook.

Lost this week among the unveiling of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the continued hype of the iPhone 4S and the funny things that Siri says, and new Windows Phones coming from Samsung and HTC is the fact that Research In Motion had its developers' conference in San Francisco and showcased its next generation mobile operating system, BBX.

BBX is the product of what Research In Motion has been working on to bring a unified mobile operating system to bear between tablets and smartphones based off its acquisition of QNX in April 2010. The first BBX phones are expected to ship in early 2012. This is a pivotal moment in RIM's history. Will BBX help right the sinking ship? That is the topic of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

When you're watching a remake, your mind cannot help itself for drawing comparisons with the original. You play back the scenes the way they were originally cast, the lines as they were said the first time, the expressions on characters' faces the way you remember them.

It hit me as I was watching the BlackBerry DevCon 2011 keynote yesterday from Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis: I didn't like how this movie ended the first time I saw it.

Assume, if you will, that BlackBerry never existed. That should be easy enough, especially when Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis personally shows you how.

A new tablet-oriented, multitouch operating system called BBX has been introduced to a legion of developers who are already entrenched in Android, iOS, and HTML5. Essentially, a new Research In Motion was launched as well. The old RIM, a provider of enterprise-grade secure messaging and innovative devices, exited the back door of history following last week's massive e-mail failure.

It is Monday morning the week after a terrible cycle of news for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Its developer conference starts this week in San Francisco, and the company desperately needs some good press after the service outage last week. Two stories emerged this morning concerning RIM, one a concession by the company for the recent outage and another oddly tied to traffic accidents.

The fact of the matter is that RIM needs to find a way to pull itself off the mat. Without question, 2011 has been the worst year in the company's history. Its new devices and development cycle has slowed, the PlayBook tablet was a dud in terms of sales and the cycles of its developer platforms have slowed to a crawl. The executive ranks at RIM have also been in turmoil. If the night is darkest before the dawn, will RIM survive to see another day?

There are times in our lives, extraordinary times, that call on us to open our hearts like never before. To embrace those who are suffering, and offer them comfort and support.

This, my friends, is such a time.

If you know a BlackBerry user, reach out to them. (Not with email. That's just mean.) Let them know you care, and that just because they were offline for a few days, you still love and respect them.

With mobile tech, Siemens helps torture a new generation, this time in Bahrain. Siemens was instrumental in bringing the Nazis to power and keeping them there as they murdered millions of Jews, along with Gypsies, trade unionists, leftists, homosexuals and others. Serving as one of its engines of genocide, Siemens provided the German Reich with, among other things, slave labor factories located next to concentration camps. Apparently, Siemens thinks that it has been good enough for long enough and that this Internet thing has made a sense of history a thing of the past.

Bloomberg reports that Siemens AG and its joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, has made it possible for Bahraini secret police to intercept and generate transcripts of text messages and other mobile communications made by protesters in that country's troubled version of the Arab Spring.

Research In Motion has released the newest version of its application marketplace, BlackBerry App World 3.0, with a complete redesign and new functionality. RIM hopes that making App World slicker with more sharing and easier payment options will boost downloads which in turn will lead to more developer support for the platform.

RIM changes to App World feature increased sharing of apps through Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry Messenger, email and text messages. There are also new channel categories in App World to make discovery easier. It should also be easier to download and pay for BlackBerry apps with the introduction of a "My Account" feature tied to users' BlackBerry ID.

BBM Music, a mobile music streaming service exclusive to Blackberry users, has officially gone into closed beta, RIM has announced.

As its name would suggest, the service works over Blackberry's proprietary messaging platform, which can be used to share songs and playlists amongst other BBM Music subscribers. A subscription will cost $5 per month and include access to 50 songs at any given time. Twenty-five of those songs can be swapped out per month and users can gain access to more music via friends who opt to share it with them. Thus, the more socially connected you are via BBM Music, the more music you can listen to.

Mozilla is continuing in its efforts to disrupt proprietary, single-vendor application ecosystems on mobile devices. This time around the Moz is taking up the task of providing a consistent API so developers can write HTML5 applications rather than native apps for iOS, Android, and other mobile devices and operating systems. Called WebAPI, the target is to provide "a basic HTML5 phone experience" within six months and submit the API to the W3C for standardization.