LocalBar

Install BAR files directly from your BlackBerry PlayBook.

Note: For OS 2.0 or later, use localbar2.

checkout my shareware TinyController. Control your BlackBerry smartphone from Windows/OS X Desktop using USB, Bluetooth or WIFI (free 14 days trial). You can use BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) From Desktop PC or Mac OS X.

and my small (0.99 USD) games for PlayBook:

Four Colors. Paint colors so that neighboring areas have different colors. Based on Four Color Theorem. You can try the free Four Colors Lite.

Baby Coloring Book. Simple coloring book for babies/toddlers. You can try the free Baby Coloring Book Lite.

Info

I don't have time to develop nice GUI for this, so I just use the basic GUI API that is accessible using NDK. For example: in the NDK there is a "login dialog" but no "password dialog", so for the password dialog I use the "login dialog" that shows the "user" field (which is not needed).
This works on OS 1.0.7 and on 2.0 (developer beta)
With this you can sort of OTA install through the playbook. From your PlayBook Just go to a website that has some bar files, download it using the built in playbook browser, then run LocalBar to install the downloaded bar files.

Update doesn't work on 2.0.0.4869 beta or later. You need to root the device to be able to use localbar

if you have rooted your playbook, reenable localbar by:

  cat /etc/pf.conf | grep -v '443'| pfctl -f -

If you have startup.sh in /accounts/devuser, you can add this command to it.

Download

localbar-1_0_0_2.bar

If somehow you don't get a bar file from the link above, it may got autoextracted or autorenamed by your browser or utility apps that you have. Download this zip version instead, and unzip it, the password is localbar. The password is to prevent auto extraction.

localbar-1_0_0_2.bar.zip

First Install

You need to sideload LocalBar using your PC/Mac. There are many guides on the Internet. Here is one fof them:

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-playbook-f222/side-load-playbook-apps-windows-619796/

Next time when the upgrade of this app is available, you can install the upgrade directly from PlayBook using this app.

Guide

You MUST enable development mode before installing the apps (you should have done this step when you sideload LocalBar.