Every once in a while, a feel good story comes around that rallies the troops in the BlackBerry® Developer Relations team. Such was the case with this story. It all started with a developer named Laurence Muller taking advantage of the RIM® offer to submit his Android™ app (fIRC) to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront to qualify for a free BlackBerry® PlayBook™tablet. After Laurence received his BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, he instantly recognized how powerful the device was – especially the BlackBerry® Tablet OS built on QNX – and thought that it might be possible to port the NodeBeat application to BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as a native app.

Laurence had worked on porting the NodeBeat application to the Android platform in collaboration with Affinity Blue (owned by Seth Sandler). NodeBeat is built using an open source application framework called openFrameworks. Therefore, the first task at hand was porting the framework. Laurence started reading the NDK documentation and began the process of porting the API under the ofxQNX repository he setup on GitHub. One by one, each API set and sample was ported and running.

Laurence eventually hit a roadblock with audio. He built a native app to test some audio code but it wasn’t running properly. He finally decided to post a question to the BlackBerry Developer Support Forum to explain his project and ask for help. I was assigned this question to answer. I reviewed the question and sample code provided, checked the blogs that Laurence previously posted (Laurence’s blog is available at http://www.multigesture.net/) and, after checking the NDK documentation myself, ascertained that Laurence was running into a buffer underflow issue and that his current test approach was not running consistently enough without a separate thread.

I answered the post and provided some suggestions to try to correct the problem. Laurence tried the suggestions and it did get better, but not quite good enough. After someone else on my team suggested that OpenAL might help and I passed that suggestion on to Laurence, further investigation by Laurence’s partner Seth Sandler led to switching over to SDL for injecting the audio — and suddenly the audio was performing much better. At this point, the ofxQNX port was complete, and Laurence contributed it to the BlackBerry GitHub repo. To see some of the samples in action, check out the video below:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

The next task was porting the NodeBeat app, which took just a few days once RIM supplied another BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to Seth. Laurence and Seth were pleased that the native BlackBerry PlayBook tablet port easily outperformed their Android port. This was primarily due to the low input and audio latency for the native implementation (whereas the Android build runs slower since native code is running in a different layer and communication between GUI and the native thread is slow over JNI) and its performance was on par with their iOS version. NodeBeat was quickly submitted to BlackBerry App World for approval.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

What’s in the cards for NodeBeat? Well, Laurence has already started porting it to BlackBerry® 10 using the simulator, and they’re looking forward to getting their hands on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing device. In the meantime, if you like composing music and want to try a new app for doing so, give their app a whirl.

What makes this story so special is this project was not sponsored by RIM. It was totally driven by developers in the open source community and it was almost completed without any help from RIM. This clearly demonstrates that RIM’s open source strategy is working, facilitating the port of apps from other platforms to BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry 10. Our developer community is engaged, resulting in even more improvements to the platform for all developers. We strongly encourage our developer community to follow their desires and port what they need to the platform. However, know that we’re here and ready to help if you run into any issues. In the end, by working together, the platform will get even better and everyone wins.

If you are working on an open source project for the BlackBerry platform utilizing the NDK, let us know. We’ll be glad to write a blog post about it.

For more information about OpenFrameworks, Laurence’s port, and Laurence himself, check out the links below:

• The openFrameworks repository that where ofxQNX is currently hosted: https://github.com/falcon4ever/openFrameworks/tree/developPlayBook
• Some additional video material (most links are on Laurence’s Twitter stream): https://www.youtube.com/user/falcon4ever?feature=mhee
• The official openFrameworks website/ support forums: http://www.openframeworks.cc/
• Some more information about the project on Laurence’s blog: http://www.multigesture.net/2012/04/27/playbook-add-on-ofxqnx/ and http://www.multigesture.net/projects/ofxqnx/

BlackBerry BBX, the next generation mobile platform for BlackBerry® smartphones and tablets, was introduced to developers during the General Session Keynote at BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 today. BBX combines the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to to connect people, devices, content and services.

Development environments supported by the BBX platform include HTML5 with BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®, Native C/C++, and the BlackBerry® Runtime for Android™ Apps. Apps built today for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet will also run on BBX.

Additionally, BBX will include the new BlackBerry Cascades UI Framework for advanced graphics, also demonstrated during the General Session Keynote. BBX will also extend the core BlackBerry DNA of collaboration, communication and immediacy, with familiar “Super App” capabilities such as deep integration between apps, always-on Push services, BlackBerry security, the BBM™ Social Platform and much, much more.

Specific details regarding BBX products and availability will be provided at a later date, so stay tuned for more information in future posts on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog!

Here’s what the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog (IBBDB) learned.

IBBDB: Congratulations, Alec, and welcome to the RIM team.

Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

IBBDB: Tell our readers a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been in technology for over 20 years now. I’m a University of Waterloo graduate (1987) and I’ve spent most of my time working with software developers in various roles throughout my career – first at Microsoft, and then as VP of marketing of QNX Software Systems – which is the embedded operating system company that created the OS for the next generation of BlackBerry devices. In 2002, I went to Versatel Networks, a company that built a platform that allowed software developers to create compelling voice applications that ran in telephone networks, and in 2003, I struck out on my own with a friend and mentor, Howard Thaw, to build a company called iotum inc., which we conceived, financed, staffed, and launched successfully. At the beginning of this year, I went to my board and asked them to find a new CEO. After eight years I wanted a change, and I felt the company needed a really strong sales oriented CEO. So I offered to help find a new CEO, and in June we brought in the new guy, and I started looking for something new. I went looking for something that would allow me to return to what I love doing most, and that is working with developers.

And of all the opportunities I looked at, RIM was the most exciting to me.

IBBDB: What makes it so exciting for you to join RIM?

I’ll take you back to the late 90’s for a second, my first encounter with BlackBerry, or at least, what would become BlackBerry. It was Las Vegas, CES, and there I was in the back of a cab trying to get a press release edited … on a RIM pager. It was cool. I’d never seen anything like it and the promise of being able to do email wirelessly was mind blowing. Pretty soon tons of people on the Microsoft corporate campus were carrying one. And over the last decade, since that time, RIM has expanded to 175 countries, and its products are distributed by over 600 carriers across the globe and all from that start with the RIM Inter@ctive Pager. Despite the intensely competitive market out there, RIM continues to pull down huge numbers: 150 million devices RIM has shipped to date, 70 million subscribers on RIM’s network today, over 1 billion app downloads (increasing at 120 million per month) since BlackBerry App World launched.

All of that adds up to a huge opportunity for our partners, for developers … There’s no reason why developers shouldn’t be able to make a great living just by serving BlackBerry customers. And my team’s job is to make it as attractive, easy and fun as possible for developers to build for the BlackBerry platform – smartphones and tablet alike.

IBBDB: How are you planning to accomplish this?

Good old fashioned elbow-grease, as my Dad used to say.

Developer evangelism is all about personal contact, listening, responding, and educating. We’re going to work very closely with the developer community, expand on support and programs that make it easy and rewarding for developers to create apps, be in the midst of developers to understand their needs and secure a great developer experience, and identify and remove the barriers developers face in supporting our platforms and doing business with us.

IBBDB: In terms of direction what would you tell developers – should they invest in BBOS or QNX?

It’s not actually an either/or question. Although we’re not making any secret of our move to QNX, BBOS will be in the market for many years to come. I’m always telling developers that there’s a great business opportunity in the BBOS market. Think of the companies that made millions supporting Windows XP when Windows 7 was already on the market! We are in the midst of a major global launch of BlackBerry 7 and we’ll have customers on BBOS based smartphones for years to come, and they’ll continue to want to buy software too. And, we’ll have other customers who want to migrate to the latest and greatest devices as soon as they are available. It all depends on the customer. And the best part is that with our HTML5 solution – BlackBerry WebWorks HTML5 – developers can build great applications that target both environments.

IBBDB: DevCon Americas 2011 is coming up …

I’m excited and looking forward to the conference. It’s a great opportunity for us to discuss our development platform with our partners, get their valuable input and engage for future collaboration. We will have lots of updates to share with developers including about the QNX development platform for PlayBook and smartphones, about our plans for a global roadshow – be where our developers are – as well as our educational campaign, which we will be kicking off at the conference itself … I won’t divulge more but I do encourage developers to check out the DevCon Americas sessions catalog and sign up to hear first hand from RIM and other BlackBerry experts and contribute their ideas …Oh, and not to forget, those developers who don’t yet have a BlackBerry PlayBook, here’s their chance to get one at DevCon and kick start the development of their next app directly on the PlayBook …

IBBDB: There are lots of things happening today in the mobile space, where do you think the industry is going?

One of the most exciting stories in the industry today is the rise of HTML5 for mobile applications. Developers everywhere are looking for a solution to the cross platform problem, and they seem to be landing on HTML5. The best part of that is that we’re so well positioned to compete on HTML5. With BlackBerry WebWorks HTML5 you can build awesome high performance applications using web technologies, and you can do it in days instead of weeks or months. I encourage everyone to check out WebWorks HTML5 if you haven’t already. I think you’ll be surprised by the rich quality of the applications created with WebWorks.

IBBDB: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers about yourself?

I’m a Waterloo Math grad (class of 87), married with 5 sons, an outdoorsman, amateur photographer (check out my flickr stream!), music lover, wine enthusiast and an avid blogger. In fact, one of the things I’m really looking forward to is starting to blog about what’s happening at RIM… I’m really hoping that blogging and social media are tools that we can use to further connect with developers.

IBBDB: Thank you, Alec, for sharing your thoughts with the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. We are looking forward to our next conversation.

I am very pleased to announce today that we are moving to the next stage in our launch plans for the Native SDK for BlackBerry® Tablet OS (‘Native SDK’) tools targeted at game developers. As of today, developers from around the world can apply to participate in our closed beta program to get access to these new and exciting tools.

The Native SDK provides you with the ability to create rich and compelling games for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet using C/C++, the Standard Template Library (STL) and Open GL ES 1.1/2.0. The Native SDK includes a number of POSIX compliant libraries, as well as support for accelerometer, device orientation, and a variety of other functions to make porting your existing games as easy as possible. When you check out games like Need for Speed: Undercover or the new Dead Space from EA, what you are seeing is the Native SDK in action, providing the framework for EA to build incredible gaming experiences on our platform. We are incredibly excited to see what the broader developer community can do when provided with access to these tools.

The Native SDK includes the industry leading QNX® Momentics® Tool Suite, which is an Eclipse-based integrated development environment. QNX Momentics provides unparalleled memory profiling, application debugging, and memory usage statistics, giving you the tools you need to debug sophisticated programs, including hardware accelerated OpenGL applications. QNX Momentics is designed to provide you with a safe, secure, and powerful environment to quickly and efficiently build applications for the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

During the beta we will be providing periodic updates to QNX Momentics to include additional APIs to further enhance your games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platform.

To apply to participate in the closed beta, please fill out the form, and we will contact you with more information. Space is limited in this preview and space will be granted on a first come first served basis. We will work to expand the program in the coming weeks for anyone interested in C/C++ development for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platform.

UPDATE 9/8/11: Thank you for all the applications to participate in the NDK closed beta. As discussed above, the focus for the beta is game developers who would be leveraging OpenGL ES to create or port games to the platform. We’ve received an overwhelming number of applications and appreciate your patience as we review them.

You may know that many attendees were surprised during the Adobe MAX keynote when Kevin Lynch of Adobe revealed that the tablet he was using was a BlackBerry PlayBook. You may have also seen RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis joining him soon afterward for a detailed BlackBerry PlayBook app demo.

What many of you might not know is that, owing to the ease-of-development of the BlackBerry Tablet OS and related tools, developers are already writing apps—and quickly. (Keep in mind that the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR has only been out since Monday!) Here’s a quick highlight of what developers are already building for the BlackBerry PlayBook.

First, there’s the eUnity app from Client Outlook that Kevin demonstrated using data streaming over the conference hall’s WiFi connection. eUnity allows medical professionals to share and collaborate around medical images.

According to MobiHealthNews, “it only took [Client Outlook’s] developers two hours to get its eUnity application running on the PlayBook, because the software development kit (SDK) that RIM provided was so easy to use.”

Image Credit: Shao128, Retrieved via CrackBerry Forums

Next, we have the folks at CrackBerry.Com. Claiming to be the first ever BlackBerry PlayBook app (the judges are still poring over the photo finish), they’re highlighting a CrackBerry launcher produced by Shaosoft.

They assure readers that “the app will only get prettier and more feature-packed by the time you get your hands on a PlayBook of your own.”

Now, check out these two tweets from developer Jerome Carty the very day of the PlayBook SDK introduction:

Jerome was kind enough to provide a video sample of the browser after a bit more polish (2 1/2 hours total development time, ed.):

Here’s what Jerome had to say about the whole process:

“Once I heard the PlayBook announcement, I was excited to get coding. The recent announcement of the AIR SDK being made available was a motivator and I started to write something that could be a challenge so I can gain knowledge of the APIs as fast as possible.

I was amazed to find that everything I needed was available via the API and made it simple to develop a browser for the PlayBook within a half an hour! I cannot wait to get started on my submission for App World now that I know how straight-forward it is to program for the PlayBook.”

One reason why Jerome is eager to get his app submitted into BlackBerry App World: we’re giving away BlackBerry PlayBooks to developers whose Adobe AIR apps are accepted into BlackBerry App World prior to the PlayBook launch. (More details as to eligibility coming soon.) Post a comment and let us know about your own BlackBerry PlayBook app development story!

As you have likely heard, Mike Lazaridis introduced the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® Tablet OS yesterday during his keynote at BlackBerry DEVCON 2010. The BlackBerry Tablet OS – based on technology by QNX Software Systems – has been designed to deliver unparalleled performance in a tablet. In honor of this announcement, we have with us today Dan Dodge, co-founder and CEO of QNX Software Systems, to talk about the BlackBerry Tablet OS and the opportunities it opens up to app developers, web developers and publishers.

Can you tell us a bit about the QNX® Neutrino® operating system?

If I had to sum up the QNX Neutrino OS in one word, it would be architecture. In fact, when you look at the qualities that have made QNX Neutrino so successful — reliability, scalability, performance, portability — they are all a natural product of its microkernel architecture. These qualities are baked into the very core of the OS.

This architecture explains why the QNX Neutrino OS is popular in such a huge variety of applications, from Internet routers to in-car infotainment systems. In fact, you’ve probably encountered QNX Neutrino today without even knowing it. It’s part of everyday life – being used to control power stations, automate TV broadcasts, and even to help ensure that your food is safe to eat. Now we are leveraging the flexibility and proven reliability of this architecture in the new BlackBerry Tablet OS.

What are some of the key features of the BlackBerry Tablet OS that our application developers need to know?

First off, you can develop some really cool apps for BlackBerry PlayBook using Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Flash, and HTML5. Under the hood, we have a 1GHz dual core processor, accelerated 3D graphics, HD video, and a 7″ multi-touch widescreen. Think of the potential for applications that can combine all these technologies!

Of course, since the BlackBerry Tablet OS seamlessly pairs with BlackBerry® smartphones, the types of things that customers have come expect in terms of enterprise-grade mobility features are available to BlackBerry Tablet OS applications.

Flexibility is in the very DNA of the BlackBerry Tablet OS. We’ve designed it to easily support additional runtime frameworks and virtual machines. For instance, you can expect to see a virtual machine that supports BlackBerry® 6 Java applications.

From a tools perspective, you can use standard Adobe products such as Flash Builder for application development and debug directly on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. For applications that require access to the native OS environment, developers can develop and port C/C++ applications and also take advantage of the QNX® Momentics® Tool Suite, which is based on the Eclipse standard. The BlackBerry Tablet OS provides built-in interfaces to integrate the rich graphical application environment with underlying native code.

We know that the BlackBerry Tablet OS is built upon the QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture. What are some of the key advantages that QNX Neutrino brings to the table?

First and foremost, with the QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture, every application, device driver, networking stack, and virtual machine runs in memory-protected user space. As a result, the BlackBerry Tablet OS can provide a resilient, self-healing environment in order to protect applications from hurting one another or the OS itself. And that’s exactly what you want when running software from a large community of developers.

The QNX Neutrino architecture can also support true multitasking on multicore hardware — in fact, its multicore prowess has been performance-proven in the world’s highest-capacity routers. As a result, it can run multiple applications simultaneously, while delivering very high performance. Multitasking might be new to other tablet platforms, but for us, it’s bred in the bone.

What was the most exciting aspect of this project?

That’s easy: creating something that is more than the sum of its parts. Over the years, QNX and Research In Motion® have developed phenomenal strengths in their respective domains. This project provided an opportunity to bring those strengths together on a single platform — and I believe we’ve succeeded brilliantly. Because our technologies are so complementary, and because our cultures are so compatible, we’ve been able to create a tablet OS that surpasses anything on the market today.

Dan, we have heard about how the QNX Neutrino OS already powers solutions in a variety of challenging environments. What is your favorite story around where it is being used?

Honestly, I couldn’t pick just one. The QNX Neutrino OS controls medical devices that save lives, in-car systems that find the nearest Starbucks, and vision systems that helped build the International Space Station. Some of these systems are incredibly important and others are simply cool — but they’re all immensely gratifying.

Thanks for taking time to talk to us today, Dan. I know that I can’t wait to see the great applications that get developed for the BlackBerry Tablet OS. For those of you interested in learning more about the new BlackBerry Tablet OS, check out the materials and sign up for the upcoming webinar on BlackBerry DevZone – and watch our BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for more details coming soon!

BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK Registration