I am very pleased to announce today that we are moving to the next stage in our launch plans for the Native SDK for BlackBerry® Tablet OS (‘Native SDK’) tools targeted at game developers. As of today, developers from around the world can apply to participate in our closed beta program to get access to these new and exciting tools.

The Native SDK provides you with the ability to create rich and compelling games for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet using C/C++, the Standard Template Library (STL) and Open GL ES 1.1/2.0. The Native SDK includes a number of POSIX compliant libraries, as well as support for accelerometer, device orientation, and a variety of other functions to make porting your existing games as easy as possible. When you check out games like Need for Speed: Undercover or the new Dead Space from EA, what you are seeing is the Native SDK in action, providing the framework for EA to build incredible gaming experiences on our platform. We are incredibly excited to see what the broader developer community can do when provided with access to these tools.

The Native SDK includes the industry leading QNX® Momentics® Tool Suite, which is an Eclipse-based integrated development environment. QNX Momentics provides unparalleled memory profiling, application debugging, and memory usage statistics, giving you the tools you need to debug sophisticated programs, including hardware accelerated OpenGL applications. QNX Momentics is designed to provide you with a safe, secure, and powerful environment to quickly and efficiently build applications for the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

During the beta we will be providing periodic updates to QNX Momentics to include additional APIs to further enhance your games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platform.

To apply to participate in the closed beta, please fill out the form, and we will contact you with more information. Space is limited in this preview and space will be granted on a first come first served basis. We will work to expand the program in the coming weeks for anyone interested in C/C++ development for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platform.

UPDATE 9/8/11: Thank you for all the applications to participate in the NDK closed beta. As discussed above, the focus for the beta is game developers who would be leveraging OpenGL ES to create or port games to the platform. We’ve received an overwhelming number of applications and appreciate your patience as we review them.

I’m excited to let you know about the BBM Apps Hackathon Contest (“Contest”) that will give developers the opportunity to participate in an exclusive two-day BBM Apps Hackathon Event (“Event”) in New York City where they will receive help to build an app using the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform.

The Event – taking place on August 11-12, 2011 – will give direct access to people from Research In Motion® (RIM®), including members of the BBM development and product teams who can help attendees understand how to integrate the BBM social platform into their application. Attendees will be able to learn different techniques to integrate viral/social aspects into their application and the experts will be on hand to answer their questions.

Enter the Contest for your chance to win* a trip to New York City, including flight, hotel accommodations, $500US and exclusive attendance at the Event. What could be better than that?

So how can you win entry to the Event? Answer: Use your imagination to think about how to use the BBM social platform to innovate your apps. A total of ten (10) winners will be notified to pack their bags for New York City! Visit www.bbmnyc.com for complete details – be sure to read the terms and conditions of contest entry.

If selected, you’ll need to bring your idea, a laptop with BlackBerry® development software, your coding skills and excitement with you to New York City! After the two-day Event is finished, our goal is for you to have a working prototype or full-fledged application which leverages the BBM social platform. Once completed, you can even enter your app into the 2011 BlackBerry Developers Challenge!

Finally, we have the following webcast series taking place to help you build an app using the BBM social platform:

Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time.
Step 1: Viral Distribution and the BBM Contact List
Date: Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Register now!

Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time.
Step 2: User Profile and Custom Profile Box
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Register now!

Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time.
Step 3: BBM Chat and Embedding Chat within your App
Date: Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Register now!

Good luck!

*No purchase necessary. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Contest open to residents of legal resident of the United States, the District of Columbia (excluding Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Florida) or Canada (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in the province, territory or state in which they reside. Entries must be received by 11:59:59pm ET on July 22, 2011. Ten prizes avail. to be won worth approx. $2,300 USD. The odds of winning depend on the number of entries and how well the Entry conforms to the Judging Criteria. Entrants must be able to travel on the dates required or the prize will be forfeited. See Official Contest Rules for complete details.

The next generation of Adobe® AIR® on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet has arrived! With the availability of a new Adobe® AIR® 2.7 runtime, developers will have full support for Adobe® Flex and Adobe® ActionScript on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The new Adobe AIR runtime is now available for free to BlackBerry PlayBook tablet owners, who can download it over Wi-Fi® using the “Check for Updates” option on the device.

Adobe AIR 2.7 is designed to let you leverage your work across multiple platforms, devices and form factors. According to Adobe (based on April 2011 Evans research data), over 3 million developers currently use Adobe AIR and Adobe® Flash products. The technology has been enthusiastically adopted by BlackBerry PlayBook tablet developers.

For developers using the latest 4.5 version of Adobe® Flash Builder®, several steps previously required for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet compatibility are no longer needed. Plus, Research In Motion® (RIM®) has updated the plug-in for Adobe Flash Builder and designed it to make it even easier to develop for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Also, Adobe has integrated this plug-in into their Adobe Flash Builder 4.5.1 update, meaning that all Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 developers will now see the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as a targetable device. Developers still need to download the BlackBerry® Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR from BlackBerry Developer Zone, and the new SDK requires developers to have Adobe AIR 2.6 or later.

Have you checked out these BlackBerry PlayBook tablet apps developed using Adobe AIR – Doodle Blast, Poynt™ and Blaq? It’s amazing what developers are doing with these tools, this device and its powerhouse OS. Download the new updates today and start working on your own amazing app!

What are you looking forward to doing with Adobe AIR 2.7? Check out our forum threads on Adobe AIR to help with any questions you might have – and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter® at @BlackBerryDev.

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 here 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 here 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!

On March 24th, we announced some upcoming opportunities for developers to bring their applications to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. With information on application players for BlackBerry® Java®-based and Android® apps, as well as additional details for the upcoming BlackBerry® Tablet OS Native SDK, there was a lot for developers to digest.

We have received quite a few questions and wanted to take the opportunity to share these frequently asked questions, along with their answers, with our community. We will do our best to answer your questions and provide additional details as they become available.

If you have additional questions, please let us know in the comments. We’ll continue to update and share the FAQs with you here on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog:

1. What was announced?
Research In Motion® Limited (RIM®) has announced that it will expand the platforms supported by the BlackBerry Tablet OS by adding two new application players for BlackBerry Java-based and Android apps. This will enable developers to leverage existing assets by allowing supported applications to be easily ported over to the BlackBerry Tablet OS via ‘application players’. RIM has also reinforced its commitment to provide the developer community with a powerful set of tools for native application development on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

2. What is the timing or availability?
The application player for Android apps will be available sometime this summer, followed later in the year by the application player for BlackBerry Java-based apps. The BlackBerry Tablet OS Native SDK will enter into beta this summer. More details will be shared at BlackBerry World™ in May.

3. What are “application players”?
The application players are run-time environments that, once installed on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, allow supported BlackBerry Java-based and Android platform apps to be downloaded and run on the tablet. The players allow end users to run supported apps provided that those supported apps have been submitted and approved through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

4. How will users get the apps?
The application players, as well as the supported BlackBerry Java-based and Android apps, will only be available from BlackBerry App World on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

5. Will the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet support the Android Marketplace?
No. Android applications supported by the BlackBerry Tablet OS can only be downloaded from BlackBerry App World. The application player for Android apps can only run supported Android applications that have been signed and submitted to BlackBerry App World.

6. Does the Android application player support Android apps that use native libraries?
The application player will not support any Android applications that use native libraries.

7. What version(s) of the Android apps does the Android application player support?
The application player for Android apps will support Android 2.3 apps at launch and we intend to update the player based on market needs.

8. What version(s) of BlackBerry Java-based apps does the BlackBerry Java-based application player support?
The application player for BlackBerry Java-based apps will allow developers to take their existing assets from BlackBerry 5.0 and BlackBerry 6 development and leverage them in the new player.

9. What do I have to do to port my BlackBerry Java-based and Android apps?
BlackBerry and Android developers of supported applications will be required to re-package and code sign those apps and can then submit them to BlackBerry App World. In some cases developers will have to recompile their apps.

10. Will the performance of my app suffer because it’s running inside a player?
We do not anticipate any performance issues from applications running on the application players.

11. Should I stop my current BlackBerry PlayBook development and wait until this is ready?
Developers should continue building with the existing BlackBerry PlayBook development options, including BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® AIR® BlackBerry Tablet SDKs to take advantage of the richest set of APIs, background processing capabilities, and extended services via the BlackBerry tools.

12. What is the BlackBerry Tablet OS Native SDK? What does it allow?
The BlackBerry Tablet OS Native SDK will allow developers to build high-performance, multi-threaded, native C/C++ applications with industry standard GNU toolchains. The BlackBerry Tablet OS Native SDK also allows developers to:

• Create advanced 2D and 3D applications and special effects by leveraging programmable shaders available in hardware-accelerated OpenGL ES 2.0
• Take advantage of the QNX POSIX library support and C/C++ compliance for quick and easy porting of applications built in POSIX-based environments
• Integrate device events like gesture swipes and touch screen inputs
• Integrate the BlackBerry Tablet OS environment into existing code management and build systems using industry standard Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tools)
• Leverage work done in standard C/C++ to make it easier to bring applications to the BlackBerry Tablet OS
• Find and fix bugs quickly with provided debug and analysis tools

We are very excited about the opportunities that are opening up for developers on our tablet and smartphone platforms. With millions of smartphone users and a remarkable level of excitement for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, from consumers and enterprise, we know developers are primed to bring innovative and exciting applications to the BlackBerry platform.

Please join RIM at the BlackBerry World conference in Orlando on May 3-5, 2011, where we will share more information on our evolving platform.

With that said, we are pleased to announce the final version of our BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe® AIR®. Included are special APIs for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, plug-ins for Adobe® Flash® Builder (version 4.0.1 or the 4.5 Burrito Preview Release), a BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet simulator, and a Getting Started Guide. For details, please visit the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR website.

And the fun is just beginning – Adobe AIR SDK will have even more robust mobile support in the final version of Flash Builder 4.5, to be launched with Creative Suite 5.5 in May. Also, future enhancements to Adobe AIR will be brought to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet by including new Adobe AIR runtimes in the device updates.

Adobe makes the AIR technology available through other tools as well, including the open source Flex Hero SDK, giving developers a wide choice of development environments.

More information about the wide range of application development opportunities made possible by Adobe AIR technology supported by RIM’s BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR can be found at the Adobe Flash Platform Blog.

Looking forward to seeing some creative Adobe AIR apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet!

At BlackBerry® DEVCON 2010, we were honored to have the CEO of Sencha, Abe Elias, join us on stage during the keynote to showcase their new CSS3 tool: Sencha Animator. As part of our work with the great folks at Sencha, they pledged to bring the Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework to the BlackBerry platform.

I am very pleased to announce today that Sencha has released an update to their Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework that brings support for the BlackBerry® 6 operating system. For those unfamiliar with Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework, it is an impressive web framework based entirely on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript® that is designed to bring an incredibly powerful set of components to help create web apps that look and feel like native applications. The Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework 1.1 release today not only brings support for BlackBerry 6-enabled touch devices such as the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone, but it also supports the upcoming BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.

To get started, developers should download the framework, and then check out the Sencha Touch Learning Center, where they will find code samples, videos and tutorials. To get an idea of what is possible using the framework, there are a variety of demo applications showcasing the breadth and power of the platform.

To help encourage our developer community to adopt the Sencha Touch web framework, I am pleased to offer a free BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone to the first ten developers that submit an application to BlackBerry App World™ storefront using the new framework for either the BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone or the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Restrictions apply. See the Terms and Conditions for complete offer details.

With a successful BlackBerry® DevCon Asia just completed, we are already working on creating the best possible BlackBerryDevCon 2011 on October 18-20 in San Francisco, USA. With little surprise, one of the biggest drivers for both new and past attendees continues to be the speakers and sessions. To ensure that we are providing one of the best programs anywhere in the mobile industry, we are going to open our call for papers earlier than we ever have in the past.

The Call for Speakers submission is now open for developers to submit their ideas for great sessions at the conference. We are now accepting descriptions for sessions that you would love to deliver at the conference. In a simple twist on last year, we are also accepting submissions for sessions you would love to see at the conference but may not be able to deliver yourself. We are actively recruiting great speakers in the field and would like your ideas on key topics for the conference.

The deadline for submissions is April 1st, but we encourage you to submit your BlackBerry DevCon 2011 session ideas ahead of the deadline. We will be providing feedback on submissions and working with potential speakers through the submission process. I am looking forward to seeing your great ideas and session submissions!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

BlackBerry® DEVCON Asia 2011 received huge positive responses from all participants and BlackBerry developers in Asia. To close off this amazing event, I tried to sum up DEVCON Asia in a few words – check out the video above.

One of the great parts of BlackBerry DEVCON Asia 2011 was getting to chat with various developers, and learning what they’re excited about and what they thought about the event. We did a series of brief one-on-ones with developers and representatives from the community and compiled them in this video:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

For our registered developers, we have posted presentations and source code samples, as well as access to the latest developer news and resources on BlackBerry Developer Zone. Become a registered developer by clicking on the link – you’ll get access to further info about our development platforms, and there’s no cost.

Post a comment and let us know about your own BlackBerry DEVCON Asia 2011 experience, and what you thought of all the announcements.

Here at Research In Motion®, we are very proud of the BlackBerry® Browser and its performance, especially on the upcoming BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. We are building one of the best uncompromised browsing experiences on a tablet with support for the latest industry standards and technologies, including HTML5 and Adobe® Flash® 10.1.

Today, we are proud to announce that we have launched an updated version of the BlackBerry® Tablet OS simulator, which embeds the full BlackBerry Browser. With this updated simulator, our web development community can now start testing their web applications and Adobe Flash applications to ensure that they fully support the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet at launch.

As a web developer, there are a couple of items you should know about the BlackBerry Browser running on the BlackBerry Tablet OS:

1) The User Agent will continue to match the current User Agent pattern that we use with our smartphone products. For example, here is the User Agent for the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone and the User Agent for the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

BlackBerry Torch 9800 Smartphone User Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9800; en) AppleWebKit/534.1+
(KHTML, Like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.141 Mobile Safari/534.1+

BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet User Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (PlayBook; U; RIM Tablet OS 1.0.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+
(KHTML, like Gecko) Version/0.0.1 Safari/534.8+

2) The browser builds on the existing support for web standards such as HTML5 for BlackBerry by adding support for HTML5 Video and Audio, based on the power and flexibility of the underlying BlackBerry Tablet OS. The simulator does not support all codecs and some audio/video testing will require hardware to fully test. The browser supports Adobe Flash 10.1, and Adobe Flash developers will be able to test the Adobe Flash player in the simulator. We will continue to work closely with Adobe to enhance Adobe Flash implementation as we lead up to launch, and we appreciate feedback from the community on your experiences with the Adobe Flash player and browsing experience overall.

We are really excited to enable developers with the ability to start testing their web applications on the BlackBerry Tablet OS simulator. You can download the simulator here. To bring your web-based applications to BlackBerry App World™ or to participate in our free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offer, check out the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ platform.