First BlackBerry Free App Mea-Culpa Goes Up For Download

RIM has pushed out the first of its free BlackBerry apps, part of the company's apology to frustrated subscribers affected by the outage last week. In total, RIM plans to make twelve titles free to download – collectively priced at over $100 normally – including a mixture of games and utilities. The first app to go up for grabs is iSpeech DriveSafe.ly Pro, which usually retails at $19.99.

"DriveSafe.ly 2.0 reads your text messages and emails out loud so you can concentrate on the road. Eliminate the temptation to reach for your phone by letting DriveSafe.ly read to you and automatically respond for you.

DriveSafe.ly 2.0 Pro allows you to send text responses by voice and use other voice commands such as replaying the message or calling back the sender."

The remainder of the twelve apps will be pushed out over the next four weeks, RIM tells us. However, availability may vary depending on what version of BlackBerry OS your phone is running and whereabouts you live; still, RIM says it may well add more premium apps to the giveaway over the coming weeks to further sweeten the deal.

You can download DriveSafe.ly 2.0 Pro from the BlackBerry App World on your phone; full instructions on how to do that are here. Future titles in the giveaway include SIMS 3, Photo Editor Ultimate and Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant.