To wrap up the 2011 BlackBerry® Developer Challenge, Research In Motion® (RIM®) and the BlackBerry Partners Fund have announced the final round of Recognition Award winners at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Overall, we were very excited to see all the apps that were submitted to the developer challenge from around the world – they showcase the creativity of the BlackBerry developer community and your amazing talents. Keep these great apps coming in 2012 and remember to #BeBold!

Congratulations to these Recognition Award recipients! They receive a package with prizes consisting of tickets to the now sold-out BlackBerry DevCon Europe, a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, BlackBerry® smartphones and more.

• Best B2C app developed for a customer by an agency or ISV – Yemeksepeti by tmob
• Most useful enterprise application – MDC Mobile Data Collection by Gulliver
• Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform – Salzburger Nachrichten Mobil by Salzburger Nachrichten
• Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics – InStyle.de by ISEC7
• Top performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service – Bellshare
• Academic – Most compelling app created by a student or faculty member – Polar Slide by Dustyroom

For more information on the BlackBerry developer challenge and to read the press release visit: http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/challenge.

Have you already written a BlackBerry® WebWorks™ application for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet or BlackBerry® smartphone platform, and now you’re wondering how to port it from one to the other? We’ve got some tips for you right here!

There is a great opportunity for vendors to provide versions of their applications that run on both the BlackBerry® 6 smartphones and the BlackBerry Tablet OS. In fact, due to the nature of Web technologies such as HTML and CSS – as well as how the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK is designed – vendors can easily port their applications from one platform to the other. There’s never been a better time to port with big prizes up for grabs in the Most Innovative BlackBerry WebWorks app on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry 6 challenge*!

Additionally, the latest in-market and BlackBerry App World™ storefront device breakdown stats show that an increasing number of users who download applications (both free and paid) have a smartphone running BlackBerry® 6. The upcoming BlackBerry® 7 devices will also expand the market opportunity for developers who ensure BlackBerry 7 compatibility. To get a head start on testing your application on these new devices, learn about the new screen resolutions and download the latest simulators. Also, if your app supports BlackBerry 5.0 and BlackBerry 6 smartphones, you will be able to address the largest market of potential users as possible. Vendors can easily port their applications to BlackBerry 5.0 by checking out which APIs are supported in this version in the BlackBerry WebWorks API guide discussed below, as well as testing with the simulators on BlackBerry Developer Zone.

Here are a few tips and tricks to consider before starting your porting efforts:

BlackBerry WebWorks APIs: There are differences between the BlackBerry WebWorks API sets for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and the BlackBerry smartphone, which are documented in the BlackBerry WebWorks API Reference Guide. Some APIs are available only in the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS, while others are only available in the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for smartphones. This gap in functional parity is due to the availability of the given feature in the underlying OS. We’ve also recently updated the BlackBerry WebWorks API reference guide to make it more developer-friendly by bringing together both sets of APIs into a single view that makes it easy to see which APIs are supported on each platform. Note that custom JavaScript® extensions are only available on the smartphone version, so if you’ve implemented any of these extensions, they will not be supported on the BlackBerry Tablet OS. Check out the latest BlackBerry WebWorks API Reference Guide.

Optimization: Your BlackBerry WebWorks application may render faster or perform better while running on the tablet, since its hardware specifications are more advanced as compared to the smartphone. However, the BlackBerry 7 OS introduces a “Just In Time” loader for JavaScript which, coupled with the new smartphone hardware, should vastly improve performance. If you are using JavaScript to perform animations, transitions or to conduct intensive computations in your BlackBerry smartphone application, you should look at ways to optimize your code to improve performance. Download the device and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet simulators to validate performance.

Adobe® Flash® Content: If your application contains Adobe Flash content, note that it will be supported on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet only.

Icon Sizes: Icon sizes are different on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as compared to the BlackBerry smartphone. Take a look at the UI Guidelines document for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and UI guidelines for smartphones to understand best practices for creating application icons.

Ripple Development Tools: Our friends at tinyHippos have created a tool called Ripple that allows you to easily develop, test, and debug your application for both the BlackBerry smartphone and tablet platforms. Check out the blog post on the Ripple Emulator beta program here. We highly recommend using this tool to develop your BlackBerry WebWorks applications as it provides an easy way to develop for both platforms.

Code Signing: There are separate code signing processes for signing BlackBerry PlayBook tablet versus BlackBerry smartphone apps. Take a look at the guide here on how to sign tablet applications and this knowledge base article on signing your BlackBerry WebWorks application for a smartphone.

We hope these tips help you with your porting efforts and we look forward to seeing your apps in the challenge!

* No purchase necessary. Entry deadline 11:59PM ET on August 26, 2011. Available to be won: four (4) Grand Prizes (ARV: $32,497USD), four (4) First runner-up prizes (ARV: $17,497USD), four (4) Second runner-up prizes (ARV: $9,097USD), one (1) of each per Region; and one hundred Incentive Prizes; ARV: $550USD. The odds of winning a Grand, First Runner-Up or Second Runner-Up Prize depends on the total number of applications received and how the application satisfies the selection criteria as outlined in the Official Contest Rules. The odds of winning an Incentive Prize depend on the time at which an application is submitted and the number of applications received. See Official Contest Rules for complete challenge details at http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/webworksrules.

The time has come to crown the Regional Winners of the 2010 Super Apps Developer Challenge!

Here’s a quick recap of some of my highlights along the way…

The challenge launched in April, with an open call to the developer community to tell us why they thought they had built a Super App by explaining how they used the Super App characteristics to deliver an exceptional user experience. During the challenge, we shared insights through our blog posts and webcast series, and even dropped a few special Super Apps tips. And the community responded – at BlackBerry® DEVCON we accepted almost 400 participants into the challenge. Some of those entries were highlighted at the Community Connection event on Monday night.

And now, after many hours of reviewing the application forms and applications, we are happy to shine a light on the Winners! We selected one winner for each region – North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Each winner is a great example of how to leverage the power of the BlackBerry platform to build compelling applications that customers want to use every day!

• North American Winner: Poynt, developed by Multiplied Media Corporation, is designed to enable users to find businesses, retailers, restaurants, movies, gas prices (US only) and weather information. It uses GPS or cell-site location to quickly deliver the information users need, whenever and wherever they need it.

• Latin America Winner: Vlingo Plus – Voice App is the intelligent voice app that is designed to turn a user’s words into action. Developed by Vlingo Corporation, Vlingo enables users to simply speak to their BlackBerry to send a text or email message to any contact; search the web using Google or Yahoo!; call a friend; update their Facebook or Twitter status; use instant messengers; and, speak to virtually any application. It also reads incoming text and email messages while users are on the go.

• Europe / Middle East / Africa Winner: Developed by Ubiest S.p.A., UbiNav EU is designed to turn a mobile device into a reliable GPS mapping solution with real-time turn by turn navigation on screen. Users can listen to the turn-by-turn vocal instructions and find whatever they need wherever they are. They can find, map, navigate to, or simply call over 10 million businesses listed within the database.

• Asia Pacific Winner: Love Indonesia is an all-in-one guide for Indonesia on the BlackBerry. It is a free location-based lifestyle portal for BlackBerry designed to guide users in finding anything they need with its different search features. It provides regular reviews and discount promotions of merchants for each city in Indonesia, along with information on restaurants, hotels, shopping, movies, news, traffic, events and more.

Thank you to all the participants in the BlackBerry Partners Fund 2010 Super Apps Developer Challenge – as well as all of our valued sponsors.

What’s next? Stay tuned for special blog features on how some of the winners and finalists leveraged Super App characteristics in their apps and rose to the top of the challenge!

Today, the BlackBerry® Partners Fund released the list of Regional Finalists in the Super Apps Developer Challenge. After extensive testing (and a lot of play time!) by our application experts, these apps ascended in their respective categories and regions and have earned special recognition. Here’s the list:

North American Finalists:
• Dictionary and Thesaurus – Dictionary.com
• Poynt
• Vayyoo

Latin America Finalists:
• Vlingo Plus – Voice App
• Waze (LATAM)
• Navita Sports

Europe / Middle East / Africa Finalists:
• CamCard (Business Card Reader)
• UbiNav EU
• n-tv mobil

Asia Pacific Finalists:
• Ramadhan Pocket Guide
• Forum for BlackBerry®
• Love Indonesia

Regional Finalists will each receive total prize packages valued at over $35,000 USD in developer services to help make their applications even more successful – including testing and marketing services, media buys, and more!

Make sure you check back here tomorrow for the announcement of winners! In the meantime, why not check out the handy work of the finalists in your region on BlackBerry App World™? Happy downloading!

It’s now less than one week until the deadline of the Super Apps Developer Challenge, and we’ve seen a number of awesome submissions! It’s been a great experience to personally review some of these submissions, and I wanted to take this opportunity to provide some feedback to the wider community with some key pointers:

• Leverage push notifications to engage your user by keeping them informed on new events and information
• Look for ways to complete a task in the least number of steps
• Have your application do the heavy lifting by running in the background, pulling down critical data to update the user as appropriate
• Leverage GPS data to understand a user’s current location and deliver relevant data
• Allow the user to share and recommend your application to friends via PIN, SMS or email

Other examples to further enhance your Super App may include:

Fitness Application: Have your application listen for daily fitness updates, and provide an option for the user to integrate with the email application using the Application Messages API and Application Indicator. Another example may include having your home screen icon display calories remaining, and also integrate with the calendar application to set reminders for training exercises.

Maps & Navigation: Implement string pattern matching and have your application recognize addresses outside your application that the user can select and start navigating immediately.

IM Client: Integrate with the camera application and send pictures using the email application to contacts in your address book.

For those that haven’t yet submitted, don’t forget that there’s still time to win some prizes! Click here for more details on the challenge.

Good luck and keep those Super Apps coming!

At this point you know all about Super Apps, you know the details of the BlackBerry Partner Fund’s Challenge, and you definitely know that there’s over $1.5 million in prizing that will help you market your app to BlackBerry® smartphone users…so what are you waiting for? There are only two weeks left for submissions!

We’ve been seeing some amazing submissions in the last week. Do you have an app idea that’s worthy of ‘Super App’ recognition? Is your existing app just a couple features short of being a Super App? If so, then don’t miss out on the opportunity to win some amazing prizes. Our judges are getting ready to sink their teeth into the submissions, so make sure to get yours in soon.

Here are some links for more details:

• What is a Super App? Key features and characteristics
• Challenge details – Prizing, Categories and How to Enter

Good luck!

It’s been just over three months since we announced the BlackBerry Partner Fund Super App Developer Challenge. Again, this year’s challenge is focused on finding apps that leverage the best of the BlackBerry® platform and showcase the characteristics of a ‘Super App’.

If that sort of recognition is not enough, then let us remind you of the amazing prizes that are up for grabs – over $1.5 million in prizes that are all focused on building a business for your app! These include feature carousel placements in BlackBerry App World™ storefront, BlackBerry® Alliance Program memberships, marketing & promotional services from some of the industry’s top vendors, and much more. We’re seeing some fantastic apps come through the submissions, and we’ll start to share some of our feedback and thoughts on them shortly.

We want to see your apps! Don’t miss the opportunity to build your Super App and get that extra push it deserves. The submission deadline is September 6 – less than a month away!

Here are some quick links to get you started:

• What is a Super App? Key features and characteristics
• Challenge details – Prizing, Categories and How to Enter

Best of luck!

There’s been no shortage of excitement about BlackBerry® 6 lately – I am thrilled by the response to our latestBlackBerry 6 video and Inside BlackBerry blog posts. We wanted to find a way to outline for you, our developer community, some of the opportunities that BlackBerry 6 will bring.

One thing we want to do is differentiate the way BlackBerry 6 will affect Java® development versus Web development. Over the coming weeks, we will share tips, tricks and more information about developing for BlackBerry 6 through two separate paths. For our Java developers, we’ll work to highlight the new APIs being introduced, including a new powerful set of new User Interface controls, Universal Search integration, and a Barcode Capture API. For our web developers, we’ll start to redefine BlackBerry® Widgets and talk about the completely revamped BlackBerry Browser powered by a Webkit engine. We will cover HTML5, CSS3, and concrete steps for how you can bring your mobile site to BlackBerry® smartphones.

On top of that, we are going to continue our series covering Super Apps and how you can create an amazing user experience on the BlackBerry platform. We are now less than eight weeks away from the final deadline for the BlackBerry Partners Fund Super Apps Developer Challenge. With over $1.5 million in prizing, this is a challenge you don’t want to watch from the sidelines.

So bookmark the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog (if you haven’t already!) and be sure to check back frequently for all the latest content!

There was so much going on at the BlackBerry® Developer Conference last week that it was impossible to cover it all during our daily wrap ups. This week we’re playing catch up and posting BlackBerry Developer Conference content that was too good to miss.

For example, I had the opportunity to attend the great COM05 “Lessons Learned – Building the 7digitalMusic Store” session led by James Shannon of DevelopIQ. This was a can’t miss session because DevelopIQ had just won the BlackBerry Partner Fund Developer Challenge for their work on the 7digital BlackBerry app. Read my interview with James about his session, winning the Developer Challenge and BlackBerry development.

What were the key takeaways you wanted developers to walk away with from your session?

I felt the key takeaways were really broken into two areas – technical and operational. From a technical perspective, I wanted to get across that a compelling consumer user experience is not just about an appealing UI, but also the optimization of the ‘invisible’ factors – from bandwidth optimization, content pre-loading and caching through to efficient ways to paint the UI and selective use of background threads. Also, that the BlackBerry® platform offers developers many powerful device integration APIs that really transform the user experience – for instance in our case, Bluetooth® audio streaming and integrated media key support. From an operational perspective the key takeaways were to use analytics to better understand your users and their usage patterns as well as providing comprehensive in-app support, with the aim to resolve every support query on the first reply.

What are your thoughts on winning the BlackBerry Partner Fund Developer Challenge?

It’s clearly an honor and great kudos for our development/QA team. However, I think the greatest benefit will be the effect on the profile of music on BlackBerry® smartphones. A clear message needs to be broadcast that the BlackBerry smartphone is a platform that can take mobile music to the next level. We have a great ecosystem of music applications that provide everything from identification through discovery to advanced playback features, and we now have a music store hub that glues all of these together to provide a user experience that offers so much more than other mobile platforms.

Describe some of the unique considerations for making music available on mobile devices.

As an mp3 download store and advanced media player, the 7digital application’s top priority is to maintain the optimum performance of a user’s BlackBerry smartphone – whether it’s by ensuring we’re playing music in the background in a memory & battery efficient manner, or allowing the user to make an impulse purchase, perform a quick download on the carrier network and then automatically replace it with high quality media when they return to Wi-Fi®. We therefore spent considerable time optimizing the download user experience and ensuring we were delivering and playing media in the most memory and battery efficient manner.

Is platform fragmentation a challenge?

Fragmentation is the challenge of mobile. How do device manufacturers innovate whilst providing a consistent platform and form factor for developers to create compelling applications? I actually think RIM does a pretty good job here – we have robust forward compatibility, powerful pre-processor support and device simulators that provide realistic performance when it comes to development and testing. We made a decision to support BlackBerry OS 4.6 and higher, which reduced our challenge to a certain extent. We also needed to take various screen resolutions into account, as well as display rotation. We took the approach from day one to abstract many of the layout/display size factors from the application logic itself, thereby making the application easier to maintain as new devices are launched and new display sizes require supporting – this made it significantly easier.

In what ways will the new BlackBerry services or platform enhancements announced at the BlackBerry Developer Conference help you moving forward?

The new in-app purchasing and advertising APIs are huge. It’s been well proven that a free application can lead to greater downstream revenues than paid-for applications since it removes so much of the initial barrier in acquiring the user. It also offers consumers choice and application developers recurring revenues, since modular applications may be easily offered that allow users to incrementally purchase features or content over time. I think OpenGL ES support was also an exciting milestone for the BlackBerry platform.

What else would you like to see?

Robust support for shared libraries on the BlackBerry platform would create better options for inter-application integration, another opportunity for developers to commercialize or open-source their work as well as allowing larger developers to create common libraries shared between several of their applications – thereby saving the end user memory on their devices.

You placed an emphasis upon analytics in your session… Why do you feel it’s so important?

Analytics are critical to mobile consumer applications. With limited screen real estate, multiple carriers, regions and device models, it’s important to understand where and how your application is being used. It allows product management to make feature prioritization and user interface enhancements based on concrete data, and allows you to measure the impact of various marketing strategies on your application usage.

Talk to me about pre-processing and why you’re a proponent…

Pre-processing allows us to support multiple BlackBerry OS builds/APIs from a single codeline. This was important for us since the majority of variances between the builds were largely either to support additional hardware features (like media keys) or the BlackBerry® Storm™ touch-screen interface. There are other good strategies for multiple OS support, but these approaches weren’t really justified or appropriate in our case.

What’s the future of the 7digital app?

Our vision for 7digital is to become the hub of music on BlackBerry – whether it’s acting as the purchase & download gateway for radio or streaming apps, offering the user location-based recommendations for their favorite band’s local tour dates, or integrating your music preferences with your social network. You’ll be seeing several updated releases over the next few months, each integrating feedback from our growing user community and adding additional compelling features.