Popular with major musicians, the Animoog app is an evolutionary step and mobile extension of the original electronic analog Moog Synthesizer created by Dr. Robert Moog in the 1960s. Today marks Dr. Robert Moog’s 79th Birthday, and to celebrate both his birthday and his passion for high-tech toolmaking in the service of creativity, we are pleased to announce that the promotional Animoog app price of $0.99 will be extended until the end of the weekend in BlackBerry World before returning back to its original price of $9.99.

We hope that you will join us in celebrating Dr. Robert Moog’s birthday by heading over to BlackBerry World and making some awesome music!

BlackBerry 10 is known to be one of the most open platforms out there right now. The Native SDK is available for all three operating systems, including GNU/Linux. I’m one of the GNU/Linux fans; Linux had introduced me to the world of UNIX and POSIX. Because QNX is POSIX-compliant, the development tools play well with the Linux environment.

Linux installation varies from computer to computer; there will be some differences in experience when installing BlackBerry 10 SDK. I will highlight some of these differences below and guide you through to make your Linux box a full-fledged BlackBerry 10 Native Development Workstation.

The Linux I am using is Ubuntu Linux 12.10 64-bit. I use the 64-bit distro because it’s the distro with a few issues needing to be resolved before the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK can be used. Furthermore, it’s also the system I use as the build server for my personal projects.

Let’s start with the first potential issue:

Issue #1: Cannot connect to device

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha uses TCP/IP over USB to communicate with the host computer (i.e. your computer). However, sometimes it doesn’t work. If you face this problem, you need to set your handset as Windows Connection manually.

To test if the connection is running well, ping the IP address of the device while in development mode.

Issue #2: Cannot run the Native SDK Linux installer

The installer of BlackBerry 10 is built in a Java platform that runs in 32-bit infrastructure; it uses 32-bit GNU Standard C and C++ library, which isn’t installed in 64-bit Linux by default. Therefore, it will say something like “cannot find /path/to/tmp/java”. If you try to find it, it’s there. The error happens because the 32-bit Java runtime can’t be executed; the 32-bit libraries are missing. So we need to install it first. To do that, use apt-get or aptitude command:

$ sudo aptitude install libc6:i386 libstdc++6:i386

After that, execute the installer. Don’t forget to make the installer executable after download:

$ chmod u+x ./ installer-bbndk-bb10_0_09-linux-1673-201212072306-201212091625.bin
$ ./installer-bbndk-bb10_0_09-linux-1673-201212072306-201212091625.bin

Voila! The error is gone.

Issue #3: Cannot run Momentics

Momentics is the name of the IDE to create Native Apps on BlackBerry 10. It’s also built on Eclipse on 32-bit Java Platform. The installer embeds the runtime to the NDK. However, some libraries are missing so it can’t be started. It turns out that it needs 32-bit X11 and GTK+Pango libraries. So we need to install it to be able to run the Momentics IDE.

$ sudo aptitude install libatk1.0-0:i386 libc6:i386 libcairo2:i386 libexpat1:i386 libffi6:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libgcc1:i386 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libpango1.0-0:i386 libpcre3:i386 libpixman-1-0:i386 libpng12-0:i386 libselinux1:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libx11-6:i386 libxau6:i386 libxcb1:i386 libxcb-render0:i386 libxcb-shm0:i386 libxcomposite1:i386 libxcursor1:i386 libxdamage1:i386 libxdmcp6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxfixes3:i386 libxi6:i386 libxinerama1:i386 libxrandr2:i386 libxrender1:i386 libxtst6:i386 zlib1g:i386

And try to run the IDE by executing command line (adapt the paths of your bbndk installation, mine is in ${HOME}/bbndk/)

$ ~/bbndk/bbndk.sh

Now you’ll be able to code and run your Native/Cascades apps on Linux.

Happy coding, folks! Don’t forget to submit your applications before January 21, 2013 and be the first of apps to be discovered and used by BlackBerry 10 users!

Usually, people hate Mondays, but not Indonesian game developers! We proved it this past Monday during our live game port-a-thon in Bandung. The event was attended by more than 50 attendees from various game studios across the country. I kicked off the event by outlining the rewards and benefits of joining a live Port-A-Thon, including the chance to get $100 in apps, devices, and BlackBerry accessories, to name a few. I also spoke to the 10k Developer Commitment. Our gaming experts, Pratik Sapra and Ramprasad Madhavan followed, explaining how to port the games to BlackBerry 10, be it Native, Adobe Flash/Adobe AIR, HTML5, or even Android.

At Maxi’s Resto in Ciumbeuleuit, Bandung attendees began to port their applications with guidance from our gaming experts. It was great to be able to meet up with and assist on Indonesia’s top talent, and it is our hope that the number of mobile game developers in Indonesia continues to grow.

Ram, Pratik, and myself introducing our game development tools and rewards

The porting begins!

Over 100 games were ported during the live Port-A-Thon event, and we awarded BlackBerry PlayBook tablets to the developers with the best games ported on site. This was a very difficult decision, given the number of high-quality apps being ported!

Altermyth porting MajuMaru to BlackBerry 10

Mintsphere porting Trigger Knight

After much deliberation, the PlayBook tablets were won by Mintsphere and Zanuzawa. We also gave out seven BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B devices to studios that had successfully ported their game on site: Agate Games, Altermyth, Own Games, Tempa Labs, Hompimplay, Tinker Games, and Cupcorn.

Media Session with Developer Relations and Business Development

Congrats to the winning team, and lastly I’d like to thank the PR team, @BlackBerryDev, BBDevID, and GameDevID for promoting the event!

BlackBerry® Jam Americas is less than three weeks away! As you may know, Day 3 is Unconference Day and we need your help creating the agenda. Here’s how it works:

We are now accepting submissions for session topics in two categories: sessions to be led by our Research In Motion® (RIM®) experts, and sessions to be led by you, members of the BlackBerry developer community. We have room on the schedule for eight sessions, of which four will be led by RIM experts, and four will be led by BlackBerry developers.

How do you participate? It’s simple. From now through Friday September 14th, you can propose a session topic via Twitter®, Facebook®, or in the comments below. If you want to send us a tweet, be sure to mention @BlackBerryDev, and remember to include the #BBUnconference hashtag.

Once we collect your suggestions, we’ll put it to a vote. The winning entries will become part of Unconference Day at BlackBerry Jam Americas – and four lucky community members will be invited to host their own sessions!

(If you miss the online voting, don’t worry. You can still propose sessions on-site in San Jose using the Unconference Schedule whiteboard.)

We’re committed to you, the BlackBerry developer community. Let’s work together to build an unforgettable Unconference Day that covers the topics you want to hear about the most.

So, what do you think? What sessions do you want to see on September 27th? Let us know on Twitter, on Facebook or in the comments. We’ll be listening.

BlackBerry Jam Americas – Sept 25-27, San Jose CA

BlackBerry® Jam Americas 2012 is a showcase for the bold, new direction BlackBerry is heading with the upcoming BlackBerry® 10 platform. The event attracts developers and industry leaders who understand the power of BlackBerry and want to build their success with the platform. Whether you’re a Native, Web, or Android™ developer, don’t miss this opportunity to explore the powerful, game-changing BlackBerry 10 platform.

Join us, September 25-27 in San Jose, California. Register Now and use promo code DJAA45 to register for only $299.00