I just saw a study (coming out shortly) that backs up my assertion that — in the UK at least — women (young in particular) simply can’t get enough of BlackBerry, particularly the BBM functionality.

There’s a slight issue with BBM though — it’s hooked into your device ID on the BlackBerry network — commonly known as your ‘PIN’, an alphanumeric monicker that is a bitch to remember. Hardly a deal breaker I know.

BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 has a solution for it — in the form of a barcode or what we used to call ‘QRcodes’. Modern BlackBerries running BBM5 can use these barcodes to easily determine a user’s BlackBerry PIN without having them type it in. All you need is a facility to make one of those barcodes.

Enter the Facebook BlackBerry Messenger app. Just install it on to your profile in a few clicks and boom, your friends will be able to add you to BBM in a jiffy.

I tried it out this afternoon:

And here’s the output, customised to my specific BlackBerry model:

Get it on your profile from Friday: http://apps.facebook.com/bb_barcodegenerator/

And if you haven’t upgraded to BBM5, here’s the link: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/3729

Continental’s favoured system is a 2D barcode, which is scanned from the passengers’ mobiles and apparently harder to fake than other tokens.

I’m struggling to see a downside here: it saves time, saves paper, it saves the airlines a bit of cash and I’m far less likely to lose my mobile than I am a plane ticket. Please, airlines, hurry up and make mobile boarding passes the standard.