Now that BlackBerry® Java® SDK v7.0 is available in BlackBerry® Developer Zone, it’s time to start getting your apps ready for BlackBerry® 7 in order to ensure that you’re ready to support the new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9930 smartphones at launch. To help you out, I’ve prepared a little step-by-step guide for getting your app BlackBerry 7 ready.

But before we get into things, it’s important to note the following: If you are currently distributing your apps through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, you will need to log into the vendor portal and select the apps that you would like to have posted as “For Sale” for those smartphones running BlackBerry 7, because your apps will not automatically be available for these new smartphones. So, now’s the time to start testing, updating, and posting your apps for BlackBerry 7 to be ready for launch.

With all that said, on to the step-by-step guide!

1. Find a common form factor. In the case of the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphones, the common form factor is actually the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone. In other words, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone, with the keyboard slid out, is actually quite similar to the BlackBerry Bold 9900 series in these respects:

• Top half of the device is touch screen: Need to make sure that the interface for the app has large touch targets.
• Middle area features your track pad, phone keys, menu key and escape key: Need to make sure that the app supports UI navigation from both the touch screen and the trackpad.
• Bottom area features your physical full QWERTY keyboard: Unlike the BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 series of devices will never show a virtual keyboard.

2. Account for the new screen resolution and account for the new color depth. If your app leverages any fixed sized bitmaps, or has images optimized for a particular color depth, you may need to update your graphical assets accordingly:

• The BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone has 16-bit color display with a screen resolution of 360 x 480 (portrait) when held vertically.
• The BlackBerry Bold 9900 Series has a 32-bit color display (24 bits for color, 8 bits for transparency) with a screen resolution of 640 x 480 (landscape) when held vertically.

3. Update your application’s icons to match the design specifications of BlackBerry 7:

• Size: 92 x 92 pixels.
• Create icons that are consistent with the default icons in size, weight, and centering: See the UI Guidelines documentation for details.

4. Leverage new API features of BlackBerry 7. Highlights:

• OpenGL ES 2.0 for creating rich, hardware accelerated graphics.
• Window Manager for overlaying graphics on top of native screens such as camera viewfinder or video playback screens.
• Compass API, leveraging the new magnetometer sensor.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) APIs, leveraging the new NFC radio.
• Video capture APIs for HD video recording.
• Send Menu API, allowing apps to share content with contacts the same way that core apps do, by adding a “Send…” menu to their apps.
• BlackBerry Maps API updates for creating rich overlays on top of maps.
• Geofencing API, getting notifications of a user entering or leaving a given area.
• BlackBerry® Balance™ API for separating business data from personal data.
• Barcode API updated to ZXing 1.6 and support added for creating custom decoders.
• A full listing of all new APIs available in the Release Notes.

5. Leverage Super App features of both BlackBerry® 6 and BlackBerry 7:

• Characteristics of a Super App
• Reminder of API features of BlackBerry 6

6. Leverage Platform Services supported in BlackBerry 7:

• BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform
• Payment Service
• Locate Service
• Advertising Service
• Analytics Service

7. Test your application against the new simulators for the BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphone, available at the BlackBerry Simulators page.

8. Submit your application to BlackBerry App World, which is now accepting submissions for the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphones.

For more information on what developers need to know about BlackBerry 7 and to download the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 beta, check out the BlackBerry 7 landing page on BlackBerry Developer Zone.

Our North American series of BlackBerry® Developer Days continues with new dates announced for New York, NY on March 15th; Sunnyvale, CA on March 22nd; Toronto, ON on March 31st; and Washington, DC on April 5th.

This is your best chance to hear about the latest technical platform advances and market opportunities for your BlackBerry® platform apps. An updated agenda now features more sessions on developing apps for the new BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.

Join us for the morning sessions to get oriented to the BlackBerry Development Platform, and get up to speed on recent platform advancements and opportunities. The afternoon sessions will open with the opportunity to learn from a fellow developer’s success, and then focus on a few key platform updates including the new BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform, BlackBerry® WebWorks™ Platform, and Adobe® AIR® development for the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Check out the full agenda for these events and register now!

New York, NY – March 15, 2011
Sunnyvale, CA – March 22, 2011
Toronto, ON – March 31, 2011
Washington, DC – April 5, 2011

Free, paid, ad-supported, try-and-buy, or freemium…whatever your BlackBerry® smartphone app, we’ve got your service. BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 featured three platform services that are sure to make their way into thousands of apps this coming year: Advertising Service, Payment Service, and Analytics Service.

Let’s start with the Advertising Service, which allows you access to a wealth of ad networks and advertisers very simply and easily. How simply and easily? Well, with just three lines of code, you’re plugged into a mediation platform that grants you access to a number of top ad networks, no negotiations required.

Banner bannerAd = new Banner(MY_APID, targettingData);
bannerAd.setMMASize(Banner.MMA_SIZE_AUTO);
add(bannerAd);

Simple as it might look, the Advertising Service has more power than you might think. You have the option of displaying a traditional ad banner or with no additional coding, you can support ads that to do a whole lot more:

• click to launch BlackBerry App World™ to a given vendor or app download page
• click to add a calendar or address book entry
• click to view full screen rich media

So how do you track your success with the BlackBerry Advertising Service? Analysis and control are accessible via a single web console that houses all your data for analytics, tracking, reporting, fill rates, ad performance, and earnings. The central console allows you to easily add or remove ad networks and manage ad allocations without making any changes to your app.

If an ad-supported model doesn’t fit your needs, maybe micro-transactions/in-app payment is more up your alley. The BlackBerry Payment Service will allow you to easily offer digital goods for sale in your app while still providing the consumer with the same trusted and consistent purchase experience they have today in BlackBerry App World. As you would expect, with BlackBerry Payment Service, you will have access to the same payment options that BlackBerry App World supports today for traditional app purchases: PayPal, credit card, and carrier billing.

So when might you want to use the BlackBerry Payment Service? Some typical use cases are:

• Digital Content, such as eBooks, magazines, photos, artwork, or digital property that you can use on a BlackBerry smartphone.
• Additional App Functionality, which might include things like new features, levels, characters, or games. This use lends itself extremely well to the freemium app model and should be used as the new gold standard for try-and-buy.
• Services, such as premium video content, subscription renewal, pay-as-you-go application use, or voice transcription. Basically, any kind of digital service that a BlackBerry smartphone user pays to use.

Whether you’re using the BlackBerry Advertising Service, BlackBerry Payment Service, neither or both, the one service that most apps will be clamoring to access is the new BlackBerry Analytics Service, a service to monitor the adoption and effectiveness of your BlackBerry application. Here’s a high-level overview of the BlackBerry Analytics Service’s features:

• Key app metrics such as when and how often a user opens your app.
• Information about how much time a user spends in your app.
• User base stats such as which model of BlackBerry smartphone is being used, which version of software the user has installed, which carrier network the user is on, and which version of your application the user has installed.
• Flexibility to define your own metrics such as how many users make it to a certain level or actually complete a game, which features of the app are accessed more commonly than others, how and when users access remote data on a server versus leveraging cached content.

The BlackBerry Advertising Service is now live.

The BlackBerry Payment Service SDK is in beta now and the full SDK and app implementation is expected to launch this fall.

The BlackBerry Analytics Service goes into beta this fall and launches in the first half of 2011.

Let us know what you think of these or any other BlackBerry Platform service! http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/platform/