Sunday, May 8, 2011

BBM and foursquare Demo

One of the highlights for me this week at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was having the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing work from developers starting to leverage the BBM social platform. Social networking application foursquare is one such example, and was demoed during the Tuesday General Session keynote by Senior Director of Developer Relations (and fellow Inside BlackBerry blogger) Mike Kirkup.

foursquare developers Pete and Jeff provide a great demonstration of the upcoming foursquare for BlackBerry smartphones app integration with BBM in the video above. If you want to learn more about developing with the BBM social platform, check out my Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog post, which has an extended interview with both Mike and Pete!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 Smartphones Full Touch Demo (VIDEO)



On Monday, we were excited to share with you our latest addition to the BlackBerry® Bold™ family – the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones, powered by the new BlackBerry 7 OS. Onsite at BlackBerry World 2011, I got the chance to speak with Product Managers Michael and Jason to take a deeper look at the hardware and software capabilities of these powerful new devices.

Post a comment and let us know what you think of the new BlackBerry Bold smartphones! If you’re looking for more info don’t forget to check out yesterday’s announcement post for the full scoop:

BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 Smartphones: BlackBerry 7 with a Bold Touch

Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet App Demo (VIDEO)



Hot on the heels of Monday’s Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook app announcement, I decided to catch up with our friend, fellow blogger and BlackBerry App World™ Project Manager, Alex Kinsella to show us the ins and outs of the new app. If you’ve got your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet in hand, the app is available for download from BlackBerry App World right now!

Let us know what you think and feel free to post a comment if you have questions you’d like us to ask Alex! Don’t forget to check Monday’s post for more information:

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

New Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet App

Attention BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet owners and Facebook® users! It’s my pleasure to show you the Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet app, which offers the most popular features and functionality of Facebook in a tablet-optimized experience.

The Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet app will be showcased at the BlackBerry World™ 2011 conference and will become available for download from BlackBerry App World™ this week.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the key features of Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Super Address Book for BlackBerry

Most people when they see such an app, they think it’s too superficial to buy or even download such an app in your BlackBerry and in some cases, they’re actually right but not in this case which is also the reason of why I picked this app to present you.

As you can see, this is just an Address Book for your BlackBerry but they actually called it the super address book – pro. Well, it’s PRO because it doesn’t have ads in it.

One of the biggest features of this app is that you can use some advanced search methods like searching by first name, last name, e-mail, phone number and so on. You can also search company name and professional titles from social profiles.

Another cool feature which is actually my favorite one is that you can scan all new e-mails, SMS or phone logs and it also creates profiles and adding contact info in real-time as they mentioned in the description. Some other little features like click-to-call can be found in this app too, you should just read the description they provided in the App World for further information.

This app costs $1.99 and you can get it from the App World.

Introducing BlackBerry Balance!

Today, we’re very excited to announce BlackBerry® Balance™ technology!

We’ve built BlackBerry Balance with everyone in your company in mind. Employees will be happy knowing they can carry the BlackBerry® smartphone that best suits their needs and personality; your Chief Risk Officer and IT admins will be relieved knowing that they can now secure business information on personal devices; and everyone will be more connected knowing that one device lets you access both personal and corporate data.

BlackBerry Balance is part of the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server 5.0.3 release and also BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, and we see it as a major step forward for today’s IT managers who are responsible for BlackBerry smartphone deployments.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

BlackBerry Partners Fund Launches the BlackBerry Developer Challenges for 2011

The BlackBerry® Partners Fund has just announced the launch of the BlackBerry® Developer Challenge for 2011 and has started accepting submissions for the first Competition! This year, there are three Competitions in total. Their purpose is to recognize, reward and celebrate innovation within the BlackBerry developer community. Similar to last year, each Competition will recognize winners in their respective regions, which will give developers the opportunity to stand out from one another with local content and language support.

The three Competitions are as follows:

Best Adobe Flash/Adobe AIR app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet – now accepting submissions – click this link for the Official Rules
Most innovative BlackBerry® WebWorks™ app on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry® 6 (same app or companion app) – begins May 9, 2011
Most Addictive social app using the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform – beginning later this summer
New this year, in addition to the Competitions, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will be honouring applications in six categories to receive a Recognition Award. The recipients, which will be recognized regionally, will be selected in the following categories:

Best B2C app developed for a customer by an Agency or ISV
Most useful enterprise application (all technologies)
Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform
Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics
Top Performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service
Academic – Most compelling app created by student or faculty
It’s exciting to note that across the three Competitions, there is approximately $3 million US in prizes available to be won. That’s almost double the value of last year’s prizing. This includes the incentive prizes that will be given out to the first 100 submissions in each Competition. Each incentive prize includes a free BlackBerry smartphone and a feature in the BlackBerry App World™ carousel for 1 week! Please click this link for the full terms and conditions.

To find out more details on the BlackBerry Developer Challenge and to submit your apps, visit the BlackBerry Partners Fund website and BlackBerry Developer Zone. I’m very much looking forward to seeing your apps submitted to the Competitions – happy building and good luck!

BlackBook for BlackBerry

Honestly, I have been looking for such an app for a long time and I’m quite glad I found one either that it doesn’t fit exactly my expectation including the thing that it’s not on the platform I want. Anyway, let’s not talk about that and concentrate a little more on the app itself.

If it happens to have other people using your phone and you’re quite afraid not to violate your privacy, you might want this app or any other app like this one on your phone.

You can hide your contacts and messages with this app so you will no longer have to be afraid of people violating your privacy. This could also help if you have a jealous partner. As they mention in the description, it’s so discreet that there’s no icon to launch it because someone might know how to turn this app off just by launching it but you have to type your custom launch-key on the keypad to make the BlackBook icon appear.

I think this is an awesome app and a must have for most of you but I think it should have had this feature available for photographs too. Anyway, you can buy it for $3.99 from the App World.