Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) started generating some good headlines this week--a welcome departure, no doubt, from the recent buzz about its corporate leadership structure--when it previewed the BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 and a host of updates to the BlackBerry 7 at the Consumer Electronics Show. 

The PlayBook OS 2.0 will come with a unified inbox for easier email management, rich-text composing and editing features, inbox search tools and other messaging capabilities to simplify messaging, the company announced this week in Las Vegas. It will include a beefed-up Calendar app that consolidates data from social media sites about contacts and a built-in Contacts app that merges data from email, social media sites and other sources into a contact file for each individual in the address book. 

The new operating system for the PlayBook, which is slated for availability in February, also includes capabilities for improved productivity, including a Print To Go app, which lets you copy data from a laptop or PC directly to the PlayBook over Wi-Fi. As Matt Burns at TechCrunch notes, the new OS "plays to RIM's strengths: Email, Calendar, Productivity."

"Available for download next month, PlayBook 2.0, as RIM is calling it, seems to right many of the PlayBook's wrongs. This is the feature set the tablet so badly needed at launch," Burns writes. "It's everything and more that the PlayBook was previously missing. Had the so-called BlackBerry tablet launched with the proper email support, it might not be on a fire sale right now.

RIM also touted a host of improvements for the BlackBerry 7, including a new BlackBerry 7.1 OS, and updates to the Messenger, Traffic and Travel apps. The 7.1 OS includes BlackBerry Tag, which is slated to make it easier for users to share content, such as contact data, documents, photos or URLs.

The updated OS also allows users to transform their smartphone into a mobile hotspot, which can be used by as many as five WiFi-enabled devices. The updated Travel app can track schedules and arrangements, alert users if flights are delayed or cancelled and help schedule new flights.

For more:
- see PlayBook OS 2.0 release
- see BlackBerry 7 release
- Matt Burns's post at TechCrunch

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