Where, Inc. has enjoyed substantial growth in recent years, establishing itself as a company at the forefront of the booming mobile application industry. WHERE®, the company’s mobile application, allows users to customize searches in order to discover new places to eat, drink, and play in cities around the United States. Where, Inc. was a BlackBerry® Super App Challenge 2011 Regional Finalist and the mobile and web versions of its WHERE application have a combined total of 4 million active users and more than 10 million downloads.

Sarah Hodkinson , Where Inc.’s Senior Manager of Partner Marketing, sat down to discuss the importance of Where, Inc.’s relationship with Research In Motion® (RIM®).

Why did you want to be on the BlackBerry platform?
Our goal is to make WHERE as widely available as possible and RIM is a key player in the marketplace. It’s also easy to follow the BlackBerry user experience and make an application follow that experience. In BlackBerry® 6, the location APIs are more reliable and faster – and now all of our new features are fully supported by BlackBerry® 7.

How integrated is WHERE with the native applications of a BlackBerry smartphone?
The focus for our application has always been about creating an amazing user experience, and a big part of that is not only a high level of personalization, but also ease‐of‐use and functionality. Using a
BlackBerry smartphone, users can save places, contacts, and events to their address book and calendar.
They can share places with friends by email, text, or by connecting to Facebook®, which is definitely more fun and engaging, and creates sort of a mobile word‐of‐mouth function. And the more you use
WHERE, the more we learn about you, which allows us to further customize recommendations in the future. The BlackBerry platform really extends integration possibilities through its Unified Search integration and the robust notification system.

Tell us about the transition to BlackBerry 7 OS.
The transition from BlackBerry 6 to BlackBerry 7 OS is simple for developers, since they can support a BlackBerry 7 OS version of an application with little additional resource commitment. In our case, there was no need for any backend changes and all our primary functionalities, like Facebook integration and unified search integration, were working as before.

How important has it been to develop a relationship with RIM over the years?
RIM developer teams have helped us in terms of visibility and with promoting our app on BlackBerry App World™ and the Regional Super App Challenge. When we get featured in BlackBerry App World, our downloads jump by 10,000 per day. We also take advantage of the resources provided to us within the BlackBerry® Alliance Program and the people at RIM have made some connections to help expand our network and grow our business.

What else would you like to highlight about your partnership with RIM?
The BlackBerry® Torch™ smartphone has been a successful smartphone for WHERE and has performed well in terms of subscription revenue. We are activating on average about 1,000 downloads a day through the subscription‐based service and over 1 million in page views across the app in any given month. Another interesting fact is that 40% of our BlackBerry users are using a BlackBerry Torch smartphone. We believe the touch screen has really improved the user experience.

Thanks for your time, Sarah! Readers, be sure to check out Where, Inc’s website to see what they’re currently up to.

COM25 – How One Latin American Company Used BlackBerry to Mobilize its Field Service Team
Join us for an engaging session about an innovative Latin American company that has successfully integrated the BlackBerry® solution into their field service team.

Bryan Tafel, Mobile IT Director with Sensebyte Mobile

Register for BlackBerry DevCon Americas now!

Since 2004, Sensebyte Mobile® (Sensebyte) has recognized the need to mobilize business processes. The company develops mobile applications that are designed to improve workflow and software automation, while helping customers navigate through a wide variety of SAP business services.

Bryan Tafel, Sensebyte Mobile’s IT Director, discusses the company’s use of the BlackBerry® Application Platform and its unique integration with BlackBerry smartphone features and functions, as well as leveraging BlackBerry® Enterprise Server and why their partnership with Research In Motion® (RIM®) has been so important.

How does Sensebyte utilize the native features and functions of BlackBerry smartphones?
The “Super App” experience that the BlackBerry Application Platform enables makes a real difference. We develop our corporate-focused applications using a number of APIs that integrate with the native features of the BlackBerry smartphone and leverage the BlackBerry® Push Service. These features, combined with the security of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, allow the user a more enriched mobile experience.

Do you have a specific example of using the BlackBerry solution to help optimize business processes?
Of course. One example is the background thread, which is designed to allow us to take all of the information that needs to be sent on the server side and send it on a separate thread from the main process where the user is interacting with the application. The information that needs to be sent is held in the background, until we see that the screen has turned off or the application is running in the background. This helps to prevent the app from slowing down, and it greatly improves the user experience – and we can do it with just one line of code.

You mentioned the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. How important has it been in the development of your custom business applications?
All of our corporate applications are compatible with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. This definitely makes our life really easy because it allows the IT staff to deploy applications remotely. Security is also a huge consideration. With some other operating systems, the user needs to have the SKUs to connect to a VPN from a mobile device and that’s difficult. With BlackBerry smartphones, that’s already part of the solution, so the user doesn’t need to take those extra steps.

What about leveraging other features on the BlackBerry platform?
We have two applications (ClubMobile and CouponMobile) running on BlackBerry® Messenger 6 (BBM™ 6). Integrated with the BlackBerry® Messenger SDK (BBM™ SDK), it’s a simple business application that is designed to allow you to share content freely and even recommend the application to others. The BlackBerry platform offers us so many advantages compared to other mobile platforms.

You are currently creating BlackBerry PlayBook tablet apps. Tell us about your experience developing for the tablet?
We’re working hard on a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet application because we’d like to expand on our success with BlackBerry smartphone apps. When you already develop with Java®, it’s very easy to use those skills to cross over and develop with Adobe® AIR®, which is built on the Adobe® Flash® platform. Our experience enables us to use tools like Adobe Flash, Adobe® Flex®, and Adobe® ActionScript®, which are all simple languages compared to the other programming languages available. And the various Adobe tools simply allow us to give the user the rich visual experience that they have come to expect, especially while using the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Thanks for your time, Bryan! Developer’s Blog readers, be sure to check out Sensebyte in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

It’s always great to see how adding Super Apps characteristics will extend the functionality and stickiness of a BlackBerry® smartphone app. Sometimes, an application will end up surprising you, as was the case with the AccuWeather for BlackBerry application I got to see at BlackBerry World™ 2011 last week. In the above video, Mike from Xtreme Labs shows how something as seemingly simple as a weather application can leverage Super Apps characteristics to become a valuable tool in your daily life.

How are you building Super App features into your applications today? Leave us a comment and let us know!

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

With the BBM social platform development tools now in open beta, we are beginning to see developers create Super App experiences on BlackBerry® smartphones in new and exciting ways. One of the best use cases I’ve seen so far is in an upcoming version of the ScoreMobile for BlackBerry application, showcased by Five Mobile last week at BlackBerry World™ 2011. In the video above, Jeff from Five Mobile shows me how they’re leveraging the BBM social platform to make sports fandom a more social experience via status updates and BBM chat. Not only does this provide an enhanced user experience (half of the fun of sports is talking about them with friends, right?) but it means that developers can make their apps that much stickier using the BBM social platform.

If you’re interested in seeing other applications leveraging the BBM social platform, make sure to also check out our foursquare and BBM video demo.

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

One incredibly cool demo that I saw this year at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was Poynt’s integration of BlackBerry push services to call a number on a BlackBerry® smartphone from their BlackBerry PlayBook™ tablet app. Peter Werry from Poynt, winner of last year’s BlackBerry Partners Fund Developer Challenge, walks me through this new feature and other innovative uses of BlackBerry services in the above video.

Post a comment and let us know what super app features you’re building into your application.

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

One of the highlights for me this week at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was having the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing work from developers starting to leverage the BBM social platform. Social networking application foursquare is one such example, and was demoed during the Tuesday General Session keynote by Senior Director of Developer Relations (and fellow Inside BlackBerry blogger) Mike Kirkup.

The above video is really three videos in one! First, I speak with Mike about the overall opportunity available to developers that integrate BBM social platform APIs into their application. Then, foursquare developers Pete and Jeff provide a great demonstration of foursquare for BlackBerry integrated with BBM. I then pass the mic to Mike for a brief sit down with Pete about developing for BlackBerry and how the coming BBM social platform integration enhances the foursquare super app experience.

Post a comment and let us know what you think of the integration of BBM with foursquare, and what other applications should leverage the BBM social platform.

Jim Tobin, SVP of the Software, Services & Enterprise Markets business unit at Research In Motion® (RIM®), has a great blog post on Inside BlackBerry highlighting the benefits of our recent platform announcements for customers and developers. For your convenience, we’ve pulled out the developer-related information. Click the link at the end to read Jim’s full post!

We recently announced plans to enable developers to leverage existing assets for the BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment and Android® platforms to be easily ported to the BlackBerry® Tablet OS via ‘application players’. The application player for supported Android apps will be available this summer, followed soon after by the application player for supported BlackBerry JDE apps. Both will be available through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

What does this mean for Developers?

• For the majority of developers, the way to go is still the BlackBerry platform and the widened set of tools we’ve made available. Only these can ensure that the developer harnesses the full power of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in terms of extremely rich graphics, full multitasking, and ultrafast processing. BlackBerry smartphone development options include the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ platform. BlackBerry WebWorks offers leading HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript support on a mobile platform. The BlackBerry WebWorks platform also supports modern web frameworks such as Sencha, PhoneGap, jQuery and Dojo.
• BlackBerry PlayBook tablet development options currently include BlackBerry WebWorks as well as Adobe® (Flash® and AIR®).
• RIM will add full tooling support for native C/C++ development for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet over the coming months. We’re highly confident about this. The QNX team RIM acquired to develop our BlackBerry Tablet OS has won awards for its Eclipse-based native Integrated Development Environment (“IDE”).

Because of the app players we’re providing, if there are developers currently developing for the Android platform, they can now rapidly move onto our platform while they evaluate our other development paths. We can now offer such developers an on-ramp to package and distribute their apps to our growing customer base of consumers, enterprises and governments.

Going forward, we will continue to evolve our various development technologies to deliver the most powerful, flexible and open experiences for developers whether they choose to build with HTML5, Java®, Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, or native C/C++. And for those developers using our BlackBerry platform tools, we will continue to offer access to a growing set of on-device API’s to enable best-in-class integration with core BlackBerry applications and features (which we call “Super App” experiences). We are also planning to provide a range of advanced cloud-based services including the BlackBerry Payment and Advertising Services, advanced location-based services, application analytics, and powerful Push services. Stay tuned for more details on these future release plans.

Read the entire post on the Inside BlackBerry Blog »

However, we can help with a few common variables: supported smartphones and key features, and information about BlackBerry subscribers and downloads from BlackBerry App World™. It’s simple – you want to build the best possible app (a Super App!) and get the most bang for your development buck!

In August, we added a new page to the ‘Getting Started’ area on the BlackBerry® Developer Zone, and it has just been updated with information from November. Did you know that you can now reach 93% of BlackBerry smartphones by targeting BlackBerry® Device Software v4.5 and higher? This is up 10% from August. Also, you can reach almost half of BlackBerry smartphones by targeting BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 and 6.

For more OS and BlackBerry App World information, check out Choosing a Target Device OS.

I wish you happy building and happy selling – and happy holidays too!

Date: Tuesday November 16, 2010
Event Start Time: 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
Duration: 1 hour
Presenter: Brian Zubert (Team Lead, Developer Relations)

Topics that will be covered include:

• BlackBerry 6 overview – learn about improvements to the UI and new APIs that you can take advantage of when creating your applications
• Master new Super App capabilities like Universal Search
• Learn about the new BlackBerry platform services
• See what you can do with the new BlackBerry Browser and BlackBerry® WebWorks Platform

To find out more information and to register for this event, click here.

It’s a busy and exciting time for all of us here on the BlackBerry® Developer Relations team. With all the announcements and developments coming out of WES 2010 and the BlackBerry Partners Fund Super Apps Challenge that’s now underway, there’s been a ton of discussion within the developer community.

That said, we thought we’d switch up our webcast format slightly and offer you an interactive video session, where we’ll talk further about Super Apps, the Partners Fund Challenge, and the key takeaways from WES that are most important to you. We’ll answer your questions throughout the hour-long session.

So please join myself and Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relations, Research In Motion (RIM) on May 25th. We look forward to speaking with you then.

An Interactive Hour with BlackBerry Developer Executives

Date:
Tuesday May 25th, 2010

Time:
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT

Presenters:
Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relations, RIM
Mike Kirkup, Director, Developer Relations, RIM

Registration is required to attend this event. Register now!