The BlackBerry PlayBook has a lot of potential as a gaming platform, but it’s still seen mostly as a business tool, targeted at the professional demographic as a secure and functional device. This isn’t a misleading preconception to hold about the PlayBook at all; App World is packed full of useful utilities and practical programs, more so than it is of games. If you’ve picked up a PlayBook as an aid for your work, you’d probably benefit from picking up our must-have productivity apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

If you haven’t yet picked up a BlackBerry PlayBook, now might be the perfect time. In our review of the tablet, which you can find here, we said the PlayBook was “one of the most powerful and appealing tablets on the market”, with an intuitive touch interface, a stable operating system with a strong emphasis on multitasking and media, and a vivid display. If that appeals to you, you might be interested to hear the tablet’s now available in the UK for as little as £212.99. You can compare prices on Google Shopping here.

BlackBerry News

It seems a little odd to start this list with an application actually developed by Research In Motion, but the BlackBerry News application doesn’t actually come preloaded on the PlayBook, so it’s worth a mention. Basically an RSS reader with a beautiful aesthetic, this application lets you read your favourite feeds arranged in a newspaper-esque fashion, even coming pre-populated with a bunch of great, reliable news publications (although oddly, zConnection is absent). You can even download content to read offline later, and delete or hide specific articles – and you can import your feeds from Google Reader.

There are other RSS readers for the PlayBook too, like Beam Reader, which is also pre-populated and has an interface more like Pulse on iOS, if that’s what you prefer. Beam sells for £2.99 though, so if you’re looking for something both inexpensive, well-supported, and gorgeous, you might want to opt for BlackBerry News instead. [App World]

BlueBox

If you’re not already using Dropbox, you’re missing out. It’s a secure backup and file syncing system that stores all your data on the Internet; install the Dropbox client on your computer and place files in your new Dropbox folder to have them automatically uploaded to the cloud and synced on all your other Dropbox-enabled devices. BlueBox for BlackBerry PlayBook isn’t quite a fully-fledged Dropbox client, since it doesn’t actually sync all of your Dropbox contents to your device. Instead, it lets you browse the contents of your Dropbox, and then upload or download specific files.

Set up Dropbox on your home or office computer for free, and then install BlueBox on your tablet to access the latest versions of all your important work documents and presentations whenever you need them. With Dropbox and BlueBox, you can streamline your workflow, and render all those easily mishandled SD cards and memory sticks redundant. Best of all, BlueBox for BlackBerry PlayBook is available from App World absolutely free of charge. [App World]

Evernote

Evernote is probably the most useful productivity tool on the PlayBook. There are a couple of other apps that attempt to combine brainstorming and note-keeping in creative ways, like IdeaPad, a £0.99 app that lets you draw on templates of mobile device designs, but Evernote takes the cake; it’s free, it lets you take pictures, record audio, and take notes, and then it syncs all of those across the Internet to your smartphone, or Windows or Mac PC. It’s insanely useful for keeping track of all your information across a wide range of platforms, and it’s astonishing that it’s free.

There are a couple of hiccups though, the most significant of which being that you can’t access Evernote on your PlayBook without an Internet connection. That can cause issues when you’re not in a Wi-Fi hotspot and you don’t want to tether, or you’re in an underground train and can’t get any mobile reception. Evernote’s implementations on other platforms allow offline access though, so we can keep our fingers crossed for this to be patched – otherwise, we have a very functional app that’s just mildly inconvenient to use. [App World]

File Explorer

While you can use the Bridge Explorer to browse the contents of both your BlackBerry smartphone and your PlayBook tablet, you won’t necessarily be bridged to your BlackBerry at all times – and you might not even own a BlackBerry at all. If either of those are the case, File Explorer might come in handy. You can use it to browse through your PlayBook’s system files, move them around with ease (something the Bridge Explorer can’t even do), and open them with other PlayBook applications. Even more usefully, perhaps, you can add files to a ZIP archive to prepare them for moving or uploading (see BlueBox) or to simply conserve space on your PlayBook.

It costs only £0.99 and is constantly being updated to create a more user-friendly experience; a recent update added a search facility that makes it a lot easier to find files on your tablet. If you often use your PlayBook to download files from the Internet, or use its mass storage capabilities to transfer files between computers, File Explorer could really come in handy. [App World]

TweetBook

Social media might not fall under the “Productivity” heading for some, but for others it’s a vital part of remaining in touch with colleagues, the latest developments, and other communication. For those people, TweetBook might just be a godsend. There’s no official native Twitter application for the PlayBook, and the tablet layout of Twitter’s mobile website is far from perfect – and in fact, it’s almost non-functional with slower Internet connections, the kind you’re likely to find yourself suffering through in a tethered connection. TweetBook, on the other hand, has an attractive multi-pane interface, and is just as fully featured as the main site is (well, almost).

You can visit websites linked in tweets without even leaving the app, which is one of its neatest functions, and it also supports threaded conversations, multiple account support (which didn’t even come to the native Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones app until very recently), and taking pictures with the camera and immediately tweeting them. It unfortunately costs £4.99, but know that you’re not getting shafted for that price: this is the premier Twitter experience on PlayBook. [App World]

Poynt

If you’ve used Poynt on any other device, you know what to expect. In one remarkably user-friendly application, you can access the weather forecast for your area, find nearby restaurants, cinema showing times, and even contact information for businesses worldwide. Poynt is also one of the few “super-apps” available for the tablet, which means that it provides extra functionality to PlayBook tablets paired with a BlackBerry smartphone (which would be most of them).

Basically, you can use the PlayBook version of the application to find the phone number for a particular restaurant, cinema, or business – and then push it to your smartphone to initiate a call, or store the details in your smartphone’s Contacts. It’s quick, and saves you the trouble of typing the contact information you’ve just located into a device that’s actually capable of making phone calls. With Poynt’s gorgeous user interface to boot, it’s one of the best apps on PlayBook and BlackBerry smartphone full stop. [App World]

aVNC

Right now, aVNC is the best VNC client for the PlayBook, although it’s not the only one – there’s RDM+ too, for a crazy £9.99. If you don’t know what a VNC client does, here’s the deal: it lets you remotely control any device running a VNC server. You can easily download and set up a VNC server on any desktop machine, so if you set up a VNC server on your home computer, you can use aVNC to control that computer from your PlayBook. If you set it up right, it even means you can access your home computer from the office or vice versa. Basically, it’s a useful tool for accessing your computer when your computer isn’t immediately accessible.

Technically, you can also use aVNC as a cheap substitute for a graphics tablet, although you’ll have to have a good Wi-Fi router if you want it to be particularly effective. That dual-use functionality makes aVNC a major convenience in another department, even if it can’t replace a graphics tablet altogether. [App World]