Yesterday kicked of BlackBerry DevCon and the opening keynote included a number of big announcements.

• BlackBerry PlayBook – RIM announced the BlackBerry PlayBook based off of the QNX OS. Personally I am still not a fan of the form factor, however, the hardware stats are pretty impressive. We really know almost nothing about the software and won’t for another few months so there isn’t really anything to say yet.
• Native Advertising Service – This is something that RIM needed to do, and at first look implementing this code appears to be really easy. However, RIM has yet to get back to us after applying for the service so it is hard to say right now how it will go.
• In-app payments – another feature that will be very useful. Applications like Hockey Scores and Twinkle may be using this in the future as a way to pay a dollar to remove the advertising. However this will require AppWorld 2.1 which probably will not be out all that soon.
• BBM API – This will be very useful, but isn’t going to be rolled out until next spring and will probably require an update to BBM.

Overall the announcements look to be promising but all carry the warning that these are things to be excited about in the future, rather than features that will be in applications very soon.