Urgent: Absolutely last chance for 12 free BlackBerry apps

Rating: Thank You Gift from BlackBerry finishes today

Back in the Dark Days of October 2011, Research In Motion (RIM) – maker of the eponymous BlackBerry handsets – suffered a catastrophic outage at its NOC (Network Operations Centre) in Slough. In order to compensate its loyal customers for circa three days of chaos, RIM introduced its Thank You Gift from BlackBerry offering. From a consumer perspective, this equated to 12 free apps which for reasons better known to itself, RIM released in dribs and drabs. GoMo News spotted the last two remaining free apps – both games from Gameloft – finally appearing in the BlackBerry App World on December 3rd [2011]. However, today [December 31st 2011], is absolutely the last chance you have to download these apps for free.Originally, GoMo News suspected that these apps were time restricted but RIM later confirmed on its web site that once a BlackBerry owner has download one of these apps, they are there for keeps.

GoMo News doesn’t test games so we can’t vouch for whether all the games are restricted or not.

A reader claimed that Bubble Bash 2 was free until you reached the second level, for example.

But, if you’re downloading these apps over Wi-fi it won’t cost you a penny, so it is well worth doing. If they are naff, you can always delete them later.

The full list of twelve apps includes :- 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; and Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo.

Of course, GoMo News had to chuckle when it saw an ad for a ‘Network Operations Duty Manager’ working for RIM in Slough on LinkedIn. This has got to be the hottest seat in the mobile industry.

Look at what you have to do … “Ensuring that the BlackBerry Infrastructure is running effectively at all times and that in the event of an outage, every reasonable effort is made to restore service as quickly as possible.”

In other words, WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.

Brave souls might want to view the job ad here.