Let’s start with the very groovy BlackBerry keyboard. By now, you have seen (and may have experienced) the ease of using the keyboard. You have probably grown very fond of the predictive text and the ability to flip words into the text stream. But here are a couple of things about the keyboard you may not know.

Popup Letters. In default mode, when you press a key on the keyboard that key is momentarily highlighted to provide visual feedback of the key pressed. However, if you have large thumbs you may not be able to see that feedback. For some people, that’s not a problem as predictive text is their feedback. For others, they want a little more feedback. No worries, you can use the Settings app to turn on Popup Letters. To change this setting, swipe from the top bezel to drop the Settings menu, then click Settings, then Language and Input. In the middle you will find Text Input. Here, you click On-Screen Keyboard to change the options of the keyboard. Turning on Keypress Pop-up will make the keyboard pop-up the letter with each press.

Dropping Keyboard. The keyboard is one of the great features of BlackBerry 10, or in my opinion any smartphone. Sometimes you need to dismiss the keyboard. There are three easy ways to dismiss a keyboard. First, if you swipe down on the keyboard with two fingers, the keyboard disappears. You can also swipe up from the bottom bezel to close the keyboard. This action is actually a toggle. So if you have a situation where you don’t have a keyboard and need one, swipe up from the bottom bezel to bring the keyboard back. The final way, is to press and hold the space bar. This is my favorite way to dismiss the keyboard since I tend to use my BlackBerry Z10 with one hand. On the space bar you will see a little icon of the keyboard with a little down arrow. This is a reminder that holding the space bar will drop the keyboard.

Quick Setting Actions. By now you are probably pretty familiar with the quick settings menu: a swipe down from the top bezel while on the home screen or the active app screen brings down a quick settings menu. The groovy thing about this menu is it serves two functions. If you want to adjust a setting for say, Bluetooth, you click on the word Bluetooth and you are taken directly to the settings page for that feature. However, if all you want to do is turn Bluetooth off, click the icon to quickly toggle the feature. If the feature is on, clicking the icon turns it off and if the feature is off, a click of the icon turns it on. Really great for putting the BlackBerry Z10 into silent mode: just click the icon next to the Notifications label and all notifications are silenced!

Letting Someone Know Where You Are. So the other day, I was waiting for some friends in a restaurant in Amsterdam. It was a tricky little walk to find the restaurant and my friends got lost. Since I knew how to get there, I simply sent them a BBM and asked them to share their location. With that information, I could help them navigate to the restaurant. Since they were also on BlackBerry 10, they could easily send me their location. They clicked me in their BBM contact list. Then, they clicked the Attach icon at the bottom. This gives them options to attach pictures, voice note, contact, appointment, file, or even location. From there, they attached their current location. Once I got the BBM, I could then give them directions to the restaurant. Incredibly handy feature.

Quick Pane Navigation. As with any smartphone, after a while you learn which pane a specific or favorite application lives. Let’s say your favorite game is on pane number 4. One of the great things about BlackBerry 10 is you can navigate straight to pane number 4 by clicking the fourth dot at the bottom. This click jumps you straight to pane four and your favorite game. You can also quickly scroll by clicking and dragging on the dots at the bottom. A quick way to glance through each pane.

The thing is, I could go on for pages and pages about all the really cool things about BlackBerry 10, but what about you? Leave a comment with your favorite BlackBerry 10 feature, tip, or trick so we can all share in the richness of BlackBerry 10.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now – you ask, we listen. We’ve heard your concerns over the status of the Built for BlackBerry program and I want to address your questions and tell you what we’re going to do to make sure building for BlackBerry is an amazing experience.

The first thing we did when we set out to rebuild the BlackBerry Developer ecosystem for BlackBerry 10 was to ask our dedicated BlackBerry developers what they needed. First, they asked for actual hardware – and we delivered that with the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha program. Next, they asked for support for promotion, marketing and revenue. That was the spark that led us to create the Built for BlackBerry and $10k Developer Commitment programs.

An app or game certified as Built for BlackBerry means it not just adheres to our BlackBerry 10 UI Guidelines, but it delivers a customer experience that is highly engaging, high caliber and demonstrates the beautiful, social, integrated essence of BlackBerry 10.

I’ve been told that the Built for BlackBerry criteria are pretty strict – and that’s true. They should be. When RIM approves a title as Built for BlackBerry it means we’re putting the full weight of our brand behind that app or game. These are the titles we will be looking at promoting and holding up as examples and we have an expectation about those apps. Apps and games for BlackBerry must:

• Focus on delivering intended content, keeping the screen as uncluttered of controls as possible.
• Implement gesture and flow techniques, such as peek gestures, for fluid user interaction.
• Provide effective processor, memory, and power management.

To be as transparent as possible, there have been many apps submitted that do meet these criteria. We’ve had over 900 Android apps submitted to the Built for BlackBerry program – and Android apps do not qualify for the program in any way. Neither do web launchers, simple apps that mobilize content with RSS feeds, flashlight apps, et cetera. The expectation is that apps certified as Built for BlackBerry have been designed, developed, and polished to provide an amazing experience for our BlackBerry 10 customers. I say “our” because BlackBerry 10 customers are your customers too.

We’ve also heard requests to add more detail to the Built for BlackBerry emails so that you can make changes necessary to achieve the Built for BlackBerry certification. Our team is working now to update what details we provide and you’ll start seeing those changes this week.

You might be wondering in a more literal way what we are looking for in Built for BlackBerry apps. We have now started to notify the first group of approved Built for BlackBerry apps and I can show you what we mean.

Yay! FancyTran just passed the Built for BlackBerry certification! Best apps are coming to you with #BB10—
FancyApps Limited (@FancyApps4BB) January 17, 2013

FancyTran from FancyApps Limited is a good example. FancyTran brings their highly rated app to a new level with FancyTran on BlackBerry 10. The entire app can be navigated with just your thumb – allowing you to quickly dictate and translate from 14 languages to over 60 languages. FancyTran also leverages our BlackBerry Payment Service to easily allow customers to purchase the full version of the app once it’s downloaded from BlackBerry World.

It is simple, easy to use, high-performing, built in a native BlackBerry environment (no Android folks) and integrated. It leverages BlackBerry platform services and syncs to native voice features seamlessly.

The mark of quality is important to us, as it is to you. We know that quality applications will make the difference in a crowded marketplace and we want you to continue to tweak and build your apps to be part of this program with us. Stay tuned for further evolutions of the Built for BlackBerry program and new incentives.

The past twelve months have been an absolute whirlwind for the team behind the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps. While work on this endeavor began long before this year, 2012 marked the year that Android developers were able to bring their offerings over to the BlackBerry platform in a quick and simple fashion.

It’s hard to believe how far the Android story on BlackBerry has come over the last year, which makes me even more excited for what we’ll have to offer our developers in 2013. Below are my top-five 2012 milestones for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps team.

February 21^st – PlayBook 2.0 Release

The BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 OS update not only added native PIM support, but the launch of the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps. Android developers now had the opportunity to target a whole new platform with their pre-existing apps, by simply repackaging and signing them.

May 3^rd – BlackBerry 10 Beta SDK Launch

At our BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, we released BlackBerry 10 into its official developer beta program. This allowed us to keep rolling out updates to our tooling to include additional API support as we added them to the runtime itself. We openly shared our progress throughout the beta program via our flight-arrival board for the Android Runtime roadmap.

October 3^rd – PlayBook 2.1 OS Update

In October we were able to release an update of the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps which coincided with the much anticipated PlayBook 2.1 OS update. This update allowed us to offer our Android developers the opportunity to utilize in-app billing, access to both the front and rear-facing cameras, and an improved end-user experience with each Android app running within its own window.

October 4^th – Developer Experience Day

Probably our most fun day this year was getting members from each spectrum of our Android team into the same room to do a complete top-to-bottom review of our developer experience. The tooling, runtime, documentation, relations and management teams were all well represented along with developers who were brand new to the offering. We were able to collaborate on how we can make the process even easier and accessible for developers to port their Android offerings to BlackBerry 10. Most of these improvements have already been made today, with certain long-term goals being planned for a 2013 release.

December 11^th – BlackBerry 10 Gold SDK

The culmination of all the hard work our team has put in this past year was evident when the BlackBerry 10 SDKs reached their Gold release. As nice as it was to have reached this particular milestone, work is well underway for our next update to the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps.

Thanks for swinging by our blog this last year and giving us the feedback we value. Your success as a developer is our own success as a platform, so we certainly value your input. Be sure to keep referencing the blog in 2013 for all of your Android-related information for BlackBerry 10, and of course, have a great holiday season!

Update – Brian Scheirer pointed out that there have been some awesome community samples too! -Ed.

For me, 2012 has definitely been a year of helping developers learn about our native and Cascades development tools. If you’re like me, you’re probably spending the holiday nights doing some coding – so I’ve put together this list of “The Best of Native Development for 2012″.

Cascades Webcasts
Thousands of developers from across the globe joined us for four webcasts to learn beginner to advanced Cascades concepts.  We were able to interact with developers directly, answer questions, and get immediate feedback as samples and code were displayed.  The format proved so successful that we’ve hosted many more webcasts on topics such as the BBM social platform, augmented reality apps, and OpenGL integration.

The live web casts were recorded and are available for viewing here.

Porting Guides
If you have existing content for another platform, we are making it easy to bring that content to the BlackBerry 10 platform.  Being able to re-use code across platforms reduces development and maintenance costs.  Distributing your application to multiple platforms opens you up to whole new market segments and increases your potential user base.  There a number of informative porting guides available to help you build for BlackBerry 10.

• iOS to BlackBerry 10 - http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/12/porting-ios-apps-to-blackberry-10/
• Android to BlackBerry 10 - http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/11/porting-android-game-to-blackberry-10/
• Qt to BlackBerry 10 - http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/11/porting-qt-apps-to-blackberry-10/

Samples
The best and easiest way to learn to program is to look at sample code.  For every feature that BlackBerry 10 offers there is a sample project showing you how to put it into action.  Whether it’s integrating with BBM, using the Invocation Framework, getting sensor information, or communicating via Bluetooth, we’ve got you covered.

There are samples built right into the Momentics development environment, on the Cascades and Native microsites, and hosted on our github repo.  And if you find a feature that we missed, or an API without a clear example then let us know on Twitter @BlackBerryDev or in our developer forums and we’ll add what you need to get started!

• Cascades Samples - https://github.com/blackberry/Cascades-Samples
• Native SDK Samples - https://github.com/blackberry/NDK-Samples
• Cascades Microsite - https://developer.blackberry.com/cascades/sampleapps/

Stump the BlackBerry Devs
In August we launched a challenge to the BlackBerry Developer community to come up with a UI that would be difficult to implement in the Cascades UI framework.  The Cascades tools development team would try to implement the submissions in a flexible manner that could handle multiple screen resolutions and form factors.  They implemented three of the challenges and presented the solutions during the Unconference Day at BlackBerry Jam Americas.  We were able to show that Cascades is robust framework that is able to create stunning interfaces even when faced with challenging design requirements.  All the solutions are hosted on ourgithub repo.

If you have any Cascades or native dev questions – check out our forums and connect with me on Twitter.

So without further ado…and pardon the #Movember mustache….

What do you think of this new series?  We want to know!

BlackBerry Jam Asia Registration

Icon Sizes Updated For BlackBerry 10!

BlackBerry Got Game Port-A-Thon

I was recently in Raleigh, North Carolina at the NCDevCon Conference. I was presenting things to think about when developing a mobile application. Sometimes, it seems that in the rush to get an application built and out the door, designers and developers forget that a mobile device is not the same as a desktop device.

In this session, I cover everything from Platform choices and development options to physical differences between desktop and mobile computing. I also discuss the mobile user experience and how mobile devices are used differently than desktops.

Fortunately, the nice people at NC State are graciously hosting the recording of this session. I invite you to watch the session and maybe pick up a nugget or two.

(Tom also did an interview with DZone – here’s the video. – Ed.)

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

So ends King Harry’s speech before the battle of Agincourt in Henry the 5^th. It is one of my favorite speeches in all of Shakespeare.  I have been thinking of it a lot recently, because that lofty inspirational speech also is a wonderful metaphor for the challenge ahead of RIM and my team, and beautifully articulates the kind of passion I have for what we do every day.

Since I started with RIM last summer, my mantra has been “not business as usual”.  We have set out to be the best company in mobile for developers. We have built an amazing team of people who work with developers because developers are smart, passionate, opinionated, outspoken, funny and genuinely interesting people.  We know that developers are the ones who understand that it’s OK if you don’t get a UDP joke.  For us, it’s not just a job.  It’s a calling.  Developers are our people.

This week was one of stark contrasts.  Stark.

We kicked off our annual developer conference, BlackBerry® Jam Americas yesterday at the San Jose Convention Center.  The energy in the San Jose conference center was a palpable reflection of the enthusiasm we have for what we do – I shook hands, met people, participated in a meet up with a bunch of Argentinean developers via video link, took photographs, was photographed – I even autographed phones.  It was a huge blast.

We had some gifts for our developer community too.

• The news that BlackBerry 10 is API feature complete – devs can get to work in earnest on BlackBerry 10 apps.
• A preview of BlackBerry App World™ for BlackBerry 10, and how it will drive more sales and downloads for them.
• The news that some amazing big names, like foursquare and Cisco, are building for BlackBerry 10.
• Hard dates that they could build their own schedules for software delivery around.
• The launch of the 10k Reasons to Believe campaign.
• The launch of our BlackBerry Elite developers program.
• The launch of our new BlackBerryDev YouTube channel
• The upcoming BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour for enterprise

And more.

As I said, yesterday was a day of stark contrasts.

One of the gifts we made for our developer community was a music video.  Marty, Chris, and I made a rework of REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You with some tongue in cheek lyrics (how many singers do you know that can croon the phrase “mobile endeavours” with a straight face?).  We did it because we hate those corporate “energy” videos that are such a staple of conference introductions everywhere, and because we knew that our community would love the humour.  It was risky, but we had previously covered another song for BlackBerry 10 Jam Orlando, and the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour and our developer community loved that one.

This time we put it up on YouTube, on our new developer channel.   And for the last 24 hours, our developer community has told us over and over again how much they loved that gift, and how much they appreciated the humor in it.

However, the mainstream media didn’t get it.   Some called it weird.  One outlet said that it would be the reason for RIM’s eventual demise – I had hoped for impact, but perhaps not at that scale.  One commenter criticized my waistline.  I know… I’m 48, and it is time to hit the gym more often.

I don’t expect the mainstream media to get it.   They’re not developers.  They don’t have the context.   And frankly, what most want to write about is the drama around RIM.

My team and I, we wear our hearts on our sleeves for this community. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters, we’re making a difference.  We have more than doubled the applications available on BlackBerry in 12 months.  We announced 105,000 applications approved for sale on BlackBerry App World, yesterday, of which over 25,000 are PlayBook.  We have more than doubled the size of RIM’s developer community in the last 12 months.   And I know that if you ask any developer who builds for BlackBerry today, that our openness, and interaction with this community is dramatically different from what it was a year ago and that they love what we have done for them.   This conference, BlackBerry Jam Americas, is a learning event, but it’s also a celebration of our community and we were there to celebrate their successes and ours.

This morning, reflecting on the situation, I realized that when we launch BlackBerry 10 early next year, the support and success of our developer community is all that will matter to me.

And those critics shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here.

Is it all about the choice of development languages and runtimes? New tools that help you develop apps more quickly and easily? Clever integration with HTML5 systems? Or is it something else entirely? Your reason can be anything you want it to be.

What’s my reason? It’s the 55,000+ followers of @BlackBerryDev who inspire me.

Share your reason with like-minded developers all over the world and be part of something great.

In an effort to standardize the screen screen resolutions of future BlackBerry smartphones, RIM has stated that pure touchscreen BlackBerry 10 smartphones will use the 1280 x 720 standard screen resolution.  This makes sense for a few reasons.  First, it’s the same aspect ratio of your HDTV, 16:9.  Second, most of the high-definition content available comes in at 720p, which matches the 1280 x 720 screen resolution that RIM is aiming for.  As for the N-Series, its pretty much matching the horizontal dimensions of the L-Series so that most apps will only have to adjust vertical proportions of the user interface.

Read more over on N4BB.com.

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

Fight the bad guys in Rune Raiders, an exciting, easy-to-learn adventure game.

Developers like Retro64 Inc, Artificial Games and Innivo have brought their titles to BlackBerry® in record time. For Ido Yehieli, this meant an increase in performance of “more than 10 times compared to using Adobe AIR” with only a few small changes to his code. How was this possible?

NME is a fast, cross-platform framework for rapid game and application development. Unlike other libraries, NME does not require that you write native code. It does not use a virtual machine or a scripting language. NME uses a language called Haxe to convert your code to C++ and OpenGL, with amazing results.

BunnyMark is a popular benchmark for Flash Player. Testing on a BlackBerry® PlayBook™, Adobe AIR rendered 500 bunnies @ 11 FPS. Using NME, the same device rendered an astonishing 5250 bunnies @ 30 FPS. NME applications are significantly faster than AIR (with or without Stage3D) and are comparable to applications built with other native frameworks.

Help Mr Nibbles solve devious puzzles and become the first hamster to enter orbit!

In addition to native, NME also supports publishing for Flash and beta support for HTML5. This offers a unique opportunity to create games that are optimized for the web, desktop and mobile, using a single codebase.

“I just tried [NME] today – super impressive. One codebase, compiled straight away … 60FPS!” - James Frost

This flexibility also enables support for BlackBerry OS 6 and 7 devices. Since they are unable to run native C/C++ applications, they can be supported using HTML5, Apache Cordova and BlackBerry® WebWorks™.

Pakkuman’s Defense is a fun and satisfying mix of Pac-Man and tower defense.

It is simple to build a game using NME. For anyone who already knows Flash, NME is an instant transition. Other developers will find that the API and language are still easy to learn.

Haxe shares roots with ECMAScript languages like Actionscript and Javascript, but supports more features such as conditional compilation, type inference, typedefs, enums, generics, iterators and compiler macros. Haxe also has a vibrant and helpful developer community.

“I think making this game in Haxe/NME is about as inspired as I’ve been as a developer for a long time. Really exciting.” - Andreas Rønning

Many popular libraries are available for NME, like Flixel, HaxePunk, awe6, Nape and Box2D. NME also supports native C/C++ extensions.

Children love to create with Make A Scene: Farmyard, Make A Scene: Under The Sea, Make A Scene: Safari, Make A Scene: Outer Space, Make A Scene: Polar Adventure, Make A Scene: Jungle and Make A Scene: Princess Fairy Tales.

NME is available free for Windows, Mac and Linux: http://www.haxenme.org/download.

If you have more questions about Haxe or NME, or would like to learn more about how to build your own native BlackBerry games using the framework, let us know with your comments!

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