RIM offers free apps and games as consolation for service outages (Digital Trends)

Angry at RIM for your lack of BlackBerry service for several days, to a week? There?s an app for that. Or, a bunch of apps, actually. Today, RIM announced that a ?selection of premium apps worth a total value of more than $100? will be free to download for its customers over the coming weeks in its BlackBerry App World store. If you?re a BB user, the apps will become available on Oct. 19. We?re not quite sure when the apps will no longer be free, as the press release states both ?four weeks? after Oct. 19 and Dec. 31 as the end dates. RIM has not responded to our request for clarification.

?We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience,? added Lazaridis. ?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.?

Here are the apps available:

• 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

RIM states that more apps will also be available and enterprise customers will get a month of free support for all of their troubles. Regular customers will get a free 1 month extension on their Technical Support contract or a free one-month trial of the the support program, if they aren?t currently onboard.?

All of this, is due to cascading outages around the world that left users in Europe, India, Africa, the Middle East, and North America without BlackBerry services like BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), App World, and email for several days. Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis apologized to users in a YouTube video last week.?

If you?re a BB user, does a copy of the Sims 3 make you feel better?

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20111017/tc_digitaltrends/rimoffersfreeappsandgamesasconsolationforserviceoutages

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