You gotta hand it to the guys at RIM. After a terrible 2011, culminating in the removal of its chief executives, the company is still kicking. Like the Duracell bunny, the company keeps going and going and going.

Service outages, eroding market share, layoffs, plunging stock prices...the news has been nothing but bad for RIM. But the Canadian company, under the leadership of new president and CEO Thorsten Heins, isn't giving up.

RIM's latest strategy is to encourage the development of new apps for the BlackBerry platform. And just how will RIM woo developers? By bribing them.

Until February 13, every Android developer who ports an app to the BlackBerry's virtual Android environment, the Android App Player, will receive a 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

The arrangement was announced in a tweet by RIM vice-president of developer relations Alec Saunders. To qualify, developers must submit their Android apps to RIM's App World before Valentine's Day.

Introduced in April 2011, the PlayBook has been one of RIM's disappointments, selling a few hundred thousand units compared to Apple's tens of millions. One barrier to the tablet's adoption has been the relative scarcity of applications – hence RIM's announcement.

The 16GB PlayBook is widely available online for $299 or less.

Web recommendation: Well. This is horrifying, cool, and I suppose promising. What a crazy future we appear to be headed toward. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. It snowed so hard in Serbia yesterday that someone has posted a YouTube video of himself snowboarding the streets of Belgrade, towed by a car. Darwinism in action or just another day in the Balkans? You be the judge.

Could 2011 possibly have been a worse year for Research in Motion Ltd. and its BlackBerry platform? Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong for the Canadian maker of the BlackBerry and PlayBook devices.

Here are some of the moments RIM would surely prefer not to press into its scrapbook.

First, of course, there were the BlackBerry service outages that outraged users and sent many customers to their nearest Apple stores. For a period of several days in October, RIM seemed unable to keep its BlackBerry network running.

Then there's the issue of stock price. RIM's share of the smart-phone market has dropped precipitously this year, from 24 percent of the U.S. smart-phone market last year to just 9 percent this year. The stock price has seen a similar drop. RIM stock traded for as much as $70.54 per share during 2011 before dropping to the low teens. The current price is hovering around $13.

RIM hoped to call the upcoming v. 10 of its BlackBerry operating system BBX – to emphasize its ties to the PlayBook tablet's QNX OS – but was thwarted by a U.S. federal court that concluded the BBX trademark was already taken. So the new release will go by the unexciting name BlackBerry 10.

In Julne the company responded to falling revenues by laying off 2,000 employees, about 10.5 percent of its workforce.

RIM's performance has been so bad that last week the company slashed the salaries of co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to $1 a year. This announcement was made at an analysts' briefing in which the company announced disappointing quarterly financial figures (a 71 percent drop in net income), predicted that no relief from poor financials was forthcoming, and admitted that its next-generation BlackBerry smart-phones would not ship until the second half of 2012. The company also revealed disappointing sales of its PlayBook tablet computer.

In November, two RIM vice-presidents traveling from Toronto to Beijing on business boarded the plane drunk and got so rowdy the flight was diverted to Vancouver so they could be booted off the plane – this after “chewing through” restraints airline personnel employed to keep them in their seats. The VPs don't work for RIM anymore, but the bad publicity won't go away.

As if all this weren't enough, a truckload of PlayBook tablets – about $2 million worth – was stolen while en route from Indiana to RIM headquarters in Waterloo, Ont., Canada.

RIM stock has rallied this week based on reports that Amazon, Microsoft, and Nokia have all considered purchasing the beleaguered company. There's no indication that any of these firms are still thinking about making an offer, however. But investors looking to cut their losses are selling and driving the stock price a bit higher.

RIM's BlackBerry products offer unique advantages to corporate customers. The company is still selling millions of phones per quarter. But it's going to take some kind of miracle to halt the plummeting fortunes that have plagued it in 2011.

Web recommendation: Want to see a simple IFRAME tag crash the 64-bit version of Windows 7? You can see the BSOD pop up here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He works from home, generally without shoes.

Poor RIM. The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has seen its market share steadily decline, and its attempt to engage in the tablet wars have been largely underwhelming to this point. Now, on top of

that -- which more significantly has pushed RIM's stock price down into the range of its five-year low as of today -- the company has had to abandon the BBX name it gave it new operating system in October due to a trademark suit. It seems some small software company in New Mexico had already trademarked BBX, and a temporary restraining order was issued to prevent RIM from using BBX.

So now its next-generation operating system will henceforth be known as BlackBerry10, which the company says “reflects the significance of the new platform and will leverage the global strength of the BlackBerry brand while also aligning perfectly with RIM’s device branding.” BBX, of course, was the company's attempt to tie BlackBerry to the underlying QNX operating system on which it is based.

Blackberry's 52-week high was over $70; it was trading today at about $16.81. It has bigger fish to fry, frankly, than the name of its operating system.

Technology has defined my entire existence -- I have been using a computer since the rip old age of 3 and had Internet in my house from birth. My mother worked from home via an "Internet" connection that required her to turn it on, take a shower, feed me, feed herself and then, finally, be able to upload her documents. 

This immersion in the world of technology has taught me many things, some positive and some negative. I am endlessly fascinated by technology and reporting on it from a developer point-of-view helps me see the other side of the coin -- I get to get in your head, see what you think about when you create these magical devices that have guided me through childhood, adolescence and now literally run my life in adulthood. 

I owned a BlackBerry…in 2008. I wanted it to be an iPhone as I had fallen in love with Jobs' creation while living abroad -- everything was so seamless on my Mac and iPod Touch, and I wanted that in a phone too. But, unfortunately, Verizon only supported BlackBerry, so that's what I bought. 

It was an amazing device. It taught me that sleep is overrated, notifications need to be answered immediately and communicating/working on-the-go is the ONLY way to work. It taught me that Journalism was a career worth fighting for and readers on mobile devices were ten times more picky than those who sat at home with your paper/magazine after a day of work.  It taught me how to be a mobile journalist. It also taught me that I love a seamless experience, and how difficult it can be when a seemingly "awesome" device doesn't provide one. 

As I played with the RIM PlayBook today I realized once again why iAm an iPhone and iPad -- iDevices are sharp, beautiful and make you feel like you're part of something truly revolutionary. 

The iPad offers an amazing experience, and perhaps I have been drinking the iKoolAid for too long, but the PlayBook felt clunky to me as an end-user. Sure, it is a sharp, "sweet" device, but it seems too…computer-y (for lack of a better word). I am a Gen-Y millennial who wants to have a mobile, app-centric experience -- I don't want my cool, trendy devices to feel like the computer I use at home and work. I don't want it to feel like the 17-inch Toshiba I was using in 2002 as part of my high school curriculum. 

PlayBook may survive, however, I think RIM's time is done -- unless they can understand us, they won't ever be able to sell to us. We're either part of the "crazy ones," or we're hobbyists that love the fact that a search engine we started using in the sixth grade now creates a phone and operating system. 

So sorry RIM, but I'm not sorry that BlackBerry no longer fits my mobile needs. We had a good run and I'll always remember you as the one who turned me on to living, working, and playing on the go. 

On the heels of Steve Jobs' resignation, I received this interesting piece of news in my inbox this morning -- RIM has introduced BBM music, currently available in beta. 

Well, well, well -- Seems RIM has decided to hop into the ring once again with another "Apple-like" feature. 

BBM Music will include the ability to build a music profile of up to 50 songs, invite BBM friends to be on your BBM Music list, share playlists, create multiple playlists using friends' songs and see what songs your friends are listening to. You will also be able to create a cache for off-line listening. 

Do you think this will make RIM and the BlackBerry platform the music player of choice in the future? Or perhaps more of a contender in the mobile space? Share your ideas with us.