RIM to Offer E-mail Attachment Viewing Features for BlackBerry

Research in Motion said it will offer a secure software application for viewing e-mail attachments with BlackBerry(TM) wireless hand-held devices. The new application will enable users to select attachments from within e-mail and view documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics attachments on their BlackBerry hand-helds. Also, users will be able to retrieve a summary of the document or table of contents and selectively view the part of the document that is relevant. Popular corporate document formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, Adobe PDF, HTML and ASCII text will initially be supported. 

RIM will begin customer trials of its attachment viewing application later this summer. In addition to offering attachment viewing for the BlackBerry, new software tools will enable developers to easily create and deploy other document handling applications.

To facilitate application development, RIM plans to expand its BlackBerry software development tools to provide developers with detailed APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for integrating applications with BlackBerry Enterprise Server. RIM is currently working with leading developers including HP, Onset and Xerox to provide additional document handling applications for BlackBerry hand-helds such as printing, faxing and corporate file access. HP and RIM are jointly developing mobile printing applications for the BlackBerry, which will provide customers with the ability to print e-mail and e-mail attachments on network printers located within their corporate intranet while away from their desks or offices. Onset's currently available METAmessage adds functionality by letting users print attachments and Web pages, get corporate contact information, access network files, and interact with corporate databases. Xerox's mDoc(TM) offering provides printing and faxing of e-mail attachments. In addition, mDoc provides BlackBerry users access to documents residing on business servers and the ability to print, view, fax or e-mail these documents while mobile.

(Source: allNetDevices) 

For more information: www.rim.net