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With 1 Million+ Downloads, This Mobile Developer Says BlackBerry 10 “A Pleasure to Use and Develop On”

FEATURE STORIES / 05.20.16 / lgazzola

Jerome carty blaqBlackBerry 10 developers dedicate their time to providing the millions of BlackBerry users the freedom of choice to use the apps that matter to them. In gratitude, BlackBerry is spotlighting some of our most prolific developers. Meet the people that make the BlackBerry 10 apps that you love.

Last week I wrote about Nemory’s Oliver Martinez, creator of the Face10 app. Today I feature Jerome Carty, president of Kisai Labs and creator of 11 BlackBerry apps, including a trio of popular BlackBerry 10 apps.

For the past three years, Kisai Labs has delivered innovative applications such as Show Me the Images, which downloads images to your emails automatically, Mancala Multiplayer (the first commercial application to utilize BBM) and the popular Blaq app for publishing to Twitter.

This four-star app (according to BlackBerry World reviewers) has a beautiful user interface for easy reading. Blaq offers reliable photo-posting capabilities, an optimized menu of actions and in-app notifications. Seeing too many tweets about a topic you don’t want to read about? Muting helps eliminate the need to read those tweets; it is based on smart parameters such as a specific user, any keyword, a specific Twitter client or a time frame to hold the mute (even for life!). Blaq is also integrated with BBM so you can share tweets quickly with your BBM contacts.

This post was originally published on Inside BlackBerry Blog.

blaq screenshot1Here’s what Jerome shared with us:

Gazzola: How long have you been developing on the BlackBerry platform?

Carty: I’ve been developing on the BlackBerry platform since 2009, and now I’m focusing on BlackBerry 10.

Gazzola: What attracted you to the platform?

Carty: Owning the device was attractive, and bringing fun and new things to it made it a no-brainer.

Gazzola: Are there features that stand out?

Carty: The BlackBerry Hub and the fluidity of BlackBerry 10 makes it a pleasure to use and develop on.

Gazzola: What kind of support have you received from BlackBerry?

Carty: BlackBerry has supported my applications with promotions, developer support and other customer issues where needed.

Gazzola: How did you get into developing apps?

Carty: I’ve been tinkering with software for the better part of 15 years. Developing apps for something very personal (such as a smartphone) has made it intriguing and worthwhile.

Gazzola: Tell us about your app – what was your inspiration and what features do you want to highlight?

blaq screenshot2Carty: Blaq is a full-featured Twitter client that tries to make sure not to get in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish each day. The app has had over 250,000 downloads so far and counting!

Here are some features that make it stand out from the crowd:

  • Scheduled tweets – Tweet even when you’re nowhere near your phone!
  • Powerful muting – Mute tweets from certain users, clients or with certain keywords for a certain amount of time or forever.
  • Real-time updates (timelines and search)
  • FULL hub integration for multiple accounts
  • Gestures
  • Extensive keyboard shortcuts

Gazzola: What’s the greatest moment you’ve had with BlackBerry?

Carty: The greatest moment I’ve had with BlackBerry was the launch of Blaq on BlackBerry 10. The support from BlackBerry, supporters of Blaq (since the PlayBook days) and general excitement around the launch was great.

Jerome Carty is the president and lead developer at Kisai Labs. He’s had over 1 million downloads for 11 apps on BlackBerry World. Connect with Jerome:

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