BlackBerry 10 Jam rocked, because of you!

05.07.12

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Last week was a whirlwind for BlackBerry® developers. BlackBerry 10 Jam was the official launch of the BlackBerry 10 platform to the developer community – SDK’s, tools, and of course the BlackBerry 10 Alpha device.

This was a moment we’d been working toward since before DevCon Americas in the fall. I know there was a lot of pressure to show a phone last fall, but until the SDK’s were ready, and developers could actually use them, there would have been little point. Instead we steadily built first the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 1.0 SDK, the PlayBook OS 2.0 SDK, and the PlayBook OS 2.0 software release, knowing full well that these releases, accompanied by the over 20,000 BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets we had seeded into the market, would be a good foundation for the next phase – the actual BlackBerry 10 devices.

The excitement in the air was palpable. Folks started lining up at 7 AM on Wednesday morning to get the first Dev Alpha devices. And by noon, I couldn’t walk the hallways of the show without someone stopping to show me the code they had been working on.

Since then we’ve been bombarded by requests for BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices from developers who didn’t make the show. The good news? We’re going to take the show on the road – so come jam with us in a city near you. Check out the BlackBerry Jam Road Show page for more info.

A couple of thank you’s are in order. Thank you to the developers who came to the BlackBerry 10 Jam last week – you’re investing your energy, time, and money in making not just your own products successful, but ours as well. Also a very public thank you to all the teams at RIM who have worked for months to pull the BlackBerry 10 Jam off – the developers, product managers, marketing, and of course our very own developer relations group. Thank you!

Now go code something! We’ve got a monster of a product to ship together!

Originally published on www.saunderslog.com

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BlackBerry 10 Jam Round Up from APAC

05.07.12

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Some of the APAC BB developers – Image by Louis Tang

Hey everyone! I’m Justin Lee, an Application Development Consultant for Research In Motion® (RIM®) in the APAC region who just recently joined the team, and I had the opportunity to be at the BlackBerry® 10 Jam conference in Orlando, Florida.

I’m sure you’ve heard the hype around the announcements from Thorsten Heins “rock and roll”-ing the stage with the new user experience of BlackBerry 10, and Alec Saunders kicking off the BlackBerry 10 Jam Super Session with an awesome music video, “The Waiting Is The Hardest Part,” which rocked the entire house.

But the biggest jaw-dropping experience was seeing the BlackBerry 10 OS shown live onstage for the first time. The new home screen was greatly simplified, there was a new innovative gesture-based keyboard, and the one feature that got everyone gasping for more was the ability to take a photo and then turn it back a few moments in time to capture the right moment. This had me jumping around like a kid eagerly begging to try a new toy.

Read more impressions from Justin about BlackBerry 10 Jam »

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BlackBerry 10 Jam Road Show: Coming soon to a city near you!

05.05.12

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Image By Albert Bridge (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam Road Show will soon be hitting the road! We want to be sure no developer is left behind, so we have condensed BlackBerry 10 Jam and are taking it on tour to bring the action to you.

The Road Shows are developer events designed to connect mobile application developers with BlackBerry® development experts. Join us in the city closest to you to learn more about the benefits and business opportunities of the BlackBerry platform!

Come Jam with us so you can:

Be one of the first to develop for the BlackBerry® 10 platform.

  • Get a snapshot of the new things you can do with the BlackBerry 10 development platform. Learn about the unique capabilities of BlackBerry 10 to set your application apart.
  • Collaborate with your community. Learn, share and network with your peers. Make valuable connections that will make you even more successful with BlackBerry.
  • One-on-one expert guidance. Jam with BlackBerry platform experts and build a better app.

Check out the schedule after the break »

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Congratulations to the Finalists and Winners of the BlackBerry 10 Jam AppCircus!

05.04.12

Yesterday at BlackBerry® 10 Jam, we held an AppCircus event. Developers registered their apps for the contest last week and three finalists were chosen for each category – BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®, and Native – earlier this week. The nine finalists had three minutes each to pitch their apps to a panel of judges that included our own Alec Saunders, Bob Taniguchi and Peter Valin. Also joining the judging panel was Kevin Michaluk of Crackberry.com fame, as well as Peter Hansen, Michael Brooks and Jeremy Adams, some of our most recognized community members. All of the finalists have their apps working on (or being finalized for) the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, and several had a running version on their BlackBerry Dev Alpha device.

Finalists and winners under the cut »

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For Your Viewing Pleasure – More BlackBerry 10 Jam Super Sessions [VIDEOS]

05.04.12

For those of you who enjoyed our first set of BlackBerry® 10 Jam Super Session videos from BlackBerry World™ 2012, we’ve got even more coming at you today. Check out the set of videos below to see live demos with partners from Magmic, Marmalade and Wikitude, plus our very own Tim Neil (Director, App Platform & Tools Prod Management) expanding further upon BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and bbUI.js. Whether you want to relive the awesomeness of BlackBerry 10 Jam or you couldn’t be with us in person, these videos are must-watch!

Take a look and let us know what you think:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Watch more demo videos under the cut »

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Update for BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse

05.04.12

Calling all Java® developers: There’s an update coming for the BlackBerry® Java Plug-in for Eclipse! I’m happy to announce some great new features coming in our next release.

New features in BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse 1.5.2 include:

  • Installer now embedded with Eclipse 3.7.2 (Indigo)
  • BlackBerry® Java SDK 7.1 is now default
  • New BlackBerry process view for optimizing battery life
  • Ability to export XML data from the profile view
  • Automatic downloading of debug files for device debugging

Helping our Java developers create the most efficient, best-in-class, and bug-free applications is very important to us at Research In Motion® (RIM®). To help make that even easier, we have added some new features in the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse that will help you optimize your apps even more. With the new BlackBerry process view, you can optimize your code by observing CPU time for active processes. Additionally, you can export your XML data to view your app profiling usage of memory, CPU and wireless traffic to allow further optimizations.

With a single download and quick installation, developers can start developing with the BlackBerry Java SDK 7.1 right away. To find out more about developing BlackBerry Java 7.1 Super Apps, check out the Getting Started page. Don’t have the right simulator bundle downloaded? Relax – you can still debug your BlackBerry app directly on your devices and the right debug files will be downloaded for you!

For more BlackBerry Java-related information, tool downloads, awesome sample apps and documentation, please visit our Java development page.

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Seeing is Believing – BlackBerry 10 Jam Super Session [VIDEOS]

05.03.12

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam Super Session was a chance for some of our partners to show the world what the new possibilities for building apps with the BlackBerry 10 platform.

Partners from Xtreme Labs Inc, Wikitude, Magmic, Macadamian, Marmalade, Poynt, and SAP joined Christopher Smith, VP, Handheld Application Platform & Tools and Alec Saunders, VP, Developer Relations on stage to showcase what is possible with BlackBerry 10.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

More demo videos under the cut »

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New BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps features and APIs on BlackBerry 10

05.03.12

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Hey everyone! It’s Matt here with some exciting news to share with you regarding support for new BlackBerry® Runtime for Android™ Apps APIs in BlackBerry® 10.

Since the launch of the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps on BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0, we have had thousands of Android apps successfully ported and posted to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. We’ve also heard many requests for additional features and APIs for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps, and today I’m happy to share with you what some of those new features will be in BlackBerry 10.

A feature request we heard from both developer and end user alike was for multi-window support. Applications built for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps will now launch in separate windows, allowing for multitasking and viewing just like regular native BlackBerry 10 apps!

Additionally, we have added API support for Camera and In-App Payments. With these additions, we now support even more potential Android apps and offer an additional way for developers to monetize their applications. In-App Payments will work with user’s existing BlackBerry® ID and be processed through BlackBerry App World.

These new features will be available in the BlackBerry 10 Runtime for Android Apps beta, and will be coming as an update to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet later this summer. More Runtime for Android Apps features will be coming to BlackBerry 10, so stay tuned!

For additional information on the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps, please visit our Runtime for Android Apps site.

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It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this: Cascades Builder

05.03.12

Editor’s Note: Here’s a post from Markus Landin, the Product Manager for Cascades™

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Cascades™ Builder is an extension to the Momentics IDE, providing developers with tooling features for developing Cascades applications for BlackBerry® 10. Our goal with Cascades Builder is to increase developers’ efficiency by offering advanced source editing features like code completion, enabling UI profiling and debugging, and offering features like visual editors to design and implement the UI without writing code.

This is a first public beta release, and while we have not yet reached all these goals, we have come a long way in providing some unique and powerful features!

We realize that what matters most to you as a developer is a solid source editor – an editor that simply allows you to write as many lines of code in an as short time as possible. But we also realize the need for instant feedback – the need to try out ideas, to tweak application UI’s pixel positions and margins, and to see the result instantly. We know that you want to get immediate feedback and not have to wait a full change-compile-deploy cycle.

With that said, let’s go through the features of Cascades Builder to demonstrate how you can achieve that desired instant feedback:

Features and Photoshop integration »

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Native or HTML5? Only the developer knows

05.02.12

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Back in November of last year, we started up a little open source project which has quickly been gaining steam within our web development community. It was born from humble beginnings as a set of UI examples to show how to style your BlackBerry® WebWorks™ + HTML5 content with CSS to look like a native app, allowing users to have a consistent application feel in a web application. After a lot of hard work, I’m happy to announce that bbUI now has BlackBerry® 10 support…but more on that later :)

A little bit of History and Philosophy

While there are existing UI frameworks out there such as Sencha and jQuery Mobile, there was still a need to create a pixel-perfect application on the BlackBerry platform that also incorporated unique BlackBerry input mechanisms. Features such as the optical track-pad to give end users the experience they expected on a BlackBerry smartphone. Typically these other frameworks are touch only, and the trackpad has been the center of attention on existing BlackBerry smartphones as it requires some special treatment.

We took the opportunity to break out the look and feel provided in those examples, and set out on an adventure to transform them into a JavaScript® UI toolkit that would incorporate concepts of Adaptive Web Design to handle the different devices in the BlackBerry portfolio. This meant handling touch/trackpad inputs, multiple screen resolutions, proper memory management, and an evolution of the BlackBerry UI from BlackBerry® 5.0 to today.

More on the latest version of bbUI »

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