Answering some of your questions
1. Besides BBM there are other applications for IM, like yahoo Messenger, google Talk, Windows live or third party apps that allow multiple services connections.
2. Shazam worsk on blackberry, not sure about USAToday, there are an application called Poynt that give you movie times and also you can look up business around your current location
3. There are a lot of applications for GPS, you can go to this link to check the list
http://www.blackberryforums.com/gps-...ations-bb.html
4. Google app works on the blackberry with full functionality.
Regards