Research In Motion today unveiled a new initiative for those out there who don’t mind being their guinea pigs. The BlackBerry Beta Zone is now open to residents in US, Canada as well as the UK. The offering itself is quite interesting to see come from RIM considering their past history of being very stand offish at the mere mention of the words “open beta”. This time around however, they are offering some cool incentives to those who sign up.

• BlackBerry Messenger 5.0.1 (Available April 1st)
• BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.2
• BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 Maintenance Releases for the 8520/8530 - (Open to members who live in Canada, will be capped at 1000 participants)

For those who do join the program, the requirements are rather to me. Fill out some surveys and offer up some feedback on what you tested. Kind of nice to see RIM inviting this sort of thing for the BlackBerry community. In all reality, if you have ever downloaded a leaked OS or leaked version of BlackBerry Messenger you’re already doing it. Just with this program, RIM will actually be able to track the feedback better and hopefully implement fixes for bugs faster than previously. You can sign up for BlackBerry Beta Zone here.

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