“RIM loves developers!” That’s the general consensus from the BlackBerry® developer community according to Kitchener, Ontario-based Motek Mobile. I had the opportunity to sit down with a few members of their team to talk about the BlackBerry development advantage, porting an app to BlackBerry 10, and tips for new BlackBerry developers.

The first thing you’ll notice when you enter the offices of Motek isn’t the arcade machine, the dart board, or the skateboards on the wall; it’s the 12 employees at their computers, hard at work despite these distractions. Tyler Weichel, Wes Worsfold, Attila Schmidt and Aaron Barnes took some time away from Cascades™ to answer my questions.

From left to right; Tyler, Attila, Aaron, and Wes.

DEV BLOG: Why do you develop for BlackBerry?

Wes: “I think the most important reason is the ability of the platform to do many things that other platforms just aren’t capable of. With BlackBerry 10, we can do so much more by integrating with BlackBerry hardware and software like the camera and calendar.”

Attila: “There are over 70 million BlackBerry users, and that’s a huge market. One of the most compelling reasons to develop for BlackBerry is BBM™ and BBM Social. The ability to have our apps connect to BBM so that people can share with other BlackBerry users is unique and exciting.”

Tyler: “The potential for revenue in BlackBerry App World™ is huge. It’s difficult to make a splash on other storefronts. BlackBerry App World gives us incentive to make something compelling and monetize it.”

DEV BLOG: How is developing for BlackBerry today different than it was five years ago?

Attila: “Five years ago, the idea of “Super Apps” didn’t exist. The API’s that tied in to the operating system just weren’t available. Our more popular apps like Color ID and Screen Muncher wouldn’t have been possible. With the API’s given to us today, we can do things on BlackBerry that we just can’t do on other platforms.”

Wes: “Before BlackBerry App World came along, our ability to distribute apps was limited. Today we know what our sales channel is going to be and we can develop the app around that.”

Attila: “Today we can choose to the best way to develop, whether it’s Native, BlackBerry® WebWorks™ or Adobe® AIR®. There’s a team that’s always standing by, ready to help us via tweet, email or in person. There’s always access to experts that can answer any question.”

DEV BLOG: Tell me about your experience porting your apps to BlackBerry 10.

Aaron: “Porting to BlackBerry 10 went very smoothly. At BlackBerry 10 Jam, we got our BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype devices at 8am. We found out an hour later that we were requested to pitch our app for App Circus. By 10am we had it ported successfully. Things like DPI scaling worked right out of the box, and the performance of the app on the developer device was amazing.”

DEV BLOG: Do you have any tips for developers who are new to BlackBerry?

Wes: “Go to the microsites for the platform you’re developing on; everything you need to know is there, so really make sure that you get to know those sites. Definitely follow @BlackBerryDev on Twitter®, and read the BlackBerry Developer forum and Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. It’s a really rich resource for anyone who’s getting acquainted with the platform.”

Aaron: “Make sure to look at public Github repositories — it’s a really good resource. Look at the example code and see how other people have developed their apps.”

DEV BLOG: You mentioned the benefits of BlackBerry App World. Do you have any numbers you care to share?

Wes: “On a typical day we average between 150,000 and 200,000 downloads. We have nearly seven million daily unique users and even more if we include the themes.”

Tyler: “There’s some really interesting numbers on our website. There were 387 million Screen Munches in the past year.”

DEV BLOG: What’s next for Motek?

Tyler: “Well, without giving too much away, there will be a social component to everything going forward. Everything we build will use the BBM platform. Stay tuned for some great stuff.”

Are you an app developer and would like to be featured? Let me know in the comments!

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.

COM26 – Logging: The Easy, Flexible Way
Logging is a powerful instrument to find bugs and understand why an application is under-performing or why something went wrong.

Ekkehard Gentz, Software Architect with ekkes-corner

Register for BlackBerry DevCon Americas now!

In an industry full of young up-and-comers, Ekkehard (Ekke) Gentz stands out for his 30 years of experience and insight in the rapidly changing world of mobile development. In 2010, Ekke realized that he could meet many of his customer’s needs with mobile business applications for BlackBerry® smartphones as part of his enterprise business applications. Using Java® and BlackBerry® 6, Ekke develops client software and server software for small -and medium-sized companies. Ekke is also very involved in the Eclipse community.

Ekke talked to us about why the BlackBerry solution is right for his customers, how BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry® 7 have led to the design of powerful apps, and how “Super Apps” are a key differentiator.

Why do you recommend the BlackBerry solution to so many of your customers?
I always go as deep as possible into frameworks, platforms, and technologies to find the best mobile solution for my customers, and I’ve found that there are a number of customer requirements that I can only solve using the BlackBerry solution. The combination of integrated native solutions like the BlackBerry Push service, the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, and GPS functionality have been hugely important to some of my customers. I’m astonished how many times I discover that a customer’s special requirements can only be solved using the BlackBerry solution.

Why do you like working with BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7?
Whenever I speak to Java developers or Eclipse developers, I explain to them that with the BlackBerry OS it’s easy to use your experience to develop really great-looking applications with all of the unique features of BlackBerry smartphones. The Research In Motion® (RIM®) team added more APIs and extended Java Specification Requests (JSRs) to make it easier for Java developers, and the BlackBerry 6 applications are oftentimes much more engaging than similar iOS applications because of its deep integration with the native app. Also, the command framework for Super Apps is designed to be straightforward. It’s a great way to work with applications communicating with each other, and it’s very powerful.

Do you have a specific example of using Super Apps to help optimize business processes?
One example is the location-based services and GPS tracker. SQLite is a database for mobile devices that is designed to allow access from one application at a time. To solve the issue of both apps needing to access the SQLite database at the same time, the background app registers its services as remote commands using the BlackBerry Command Framework API. The foreground apps then use these commands to communicate with the background apps. This works really well and isn’t something that I could do easily with Windows Phone 7, iOS or Android™.

How important is the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse?
Using BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 with the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse® definitely makes it easier to work with Eclipse, especially for users who are not as familiar with it. I work with it daily and it was the reason why I developed an Eclipse-based OSGi server with Eclipse Jetty. I integrated OsGi services that were using the BlackBerry Push SDK, which made it possible to install both the mobile software and server software — including all of the Push services — in one Eclipse installation. This was much simpler than having to install the normal BlackBerry Push SDK with the J2EE Stack and Spring framework.

How does your logging framework function?
I try to avoid using debuggers unless there are serious problems, because they don’t give you the real behavior of an application. I didn’t want to use a debugger or an event log. In the past I had used an open source logging monitor that was easy to use with applications and allowed me to search for and see debugger warnings. For BlackBerry smartphones, my logging works in the background; it’s a library, and it’s designed to be easy to implement. If I have a foreground application and a background application and my server application pushing content through the BlackBerry smartphone, I can go into this logging monitor and see side-by-side what happens in both apps on the server side.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Ekke! Readers, please take the time to check out Ekke’s website and all the cool projects he’s currently working on.

Picture the scene: 30 enthusiastic developers, Wi-Fi® and BBM™ experts, press and video crews on hand to capture the very process of turning ideas into BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM) connected apps. Early this August, developers spent two full days entrenched with their cohorts, hacking away at completely new applications that incorporate BBM and adding BBM into existing applications.

Organized into five groups, developers had the chance to work together and discuss their apps with direct access to members of the BBM development and product teams. It was evident to those in attendance that this new event format – open, collaborative – was working out well. Problems that could take hours for a developer to fix on his or her own suddenly took minutes, and a helping hand was always within reach.

Day one consisted of short presentations about the platform and tools, followed by intensive coding sessions – the perfect balance. Day two gave developers the chance to work out more kinks and eventually show off their apps. We were impressed: completion ranged from just the framework of an app to fully-functioning examples. Here’s just a sample of what we saw:

• Sharing tasks and status over BBM
• Finding friends based on tags or your location
• Challenging other BBM contacts through a game

I am excited to see these developers complete their apps and eventually submit them to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront and the 2011 BlackBerry Developer Challenge. The format of this event allowed us to collect feedback and ideas directly from developers, which are of immense value to us as we evolve the BlackBerry development platform, SDKs and tools. We’ll certainly be hosting similar events in the future.

To see some of the action that took place, take a look at our photo album on Facebook®. To get in on the action and build a BBM-integrated app, download the BBM Social Platform SDK and get started. And don’t forget to submit your app as the ‘Most Addictive Social App Using the BBM Social Platform’ in the 2011 BlackBerry Developer Challenge (see the terms and conditions). We look forward to seeing your creative ideas come to life through your apps!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

We sat down with Sydney developer Paul Haenel to chat about his experience developing for the BlackBerry® platform. Paul has developed a number of apps for the Australian market, including the Australian Weather Channel, Channel V and Manly Fast Ferry, all available from the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

In the video above, Paul shares his recipe for creating apps for the BlackBerry platform, and discusses developing for the new BlackBerry® 7 operating system Near Field Communication, Augmented Reality, Super Apps and distributing through BlackBerry App World.

For more news from Australia, follow @BlackBerry_AU on Twitter®.

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.

Following the announcement of BlackBerry® 7 at the BlackBerry® World™ conference, I’m pleased to announce that the BlackBerry® Java® SDK v7.0 is now available in beta!

This new version of the SDK also comes with simulators for the new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 series of smartphones, allowing you to test your applications against the latest and greatest. With the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9930 smartphone on their way, you will have the tools you need to make sure your apps are running on these smartphones at launch. What’s more, the BlackBerry App World™ storefront is also accepting app submissions for these new devices! You now have the chance to be among the first to have your application submitted and ready for these exciting new products.

The BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse™ and the BlackBerry Java Development Environment have also both been updated to support the new OS version, featuring an abundance of new APIs. They’re all listed out in great detail in the “New in this Release” section of the Release Notes.

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.

With the announcement of new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 series of smartphones – which include the new BlackBerry 7 OS – comes the announcement of new API features. Now that you know that the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and the new BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphone are on their way, it’s time to start thinking about how your apps will run on these new smartphones running BlackBerry smartphone software version 7.0.

The BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse® and the BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment will both be updated to support the new OS version, and they bring with them an abundance of new APIs taking advantage of new device hardware features:

• OpenGL ES 2.0, taking advantage of the new graphics chip, allows you to create games rich in compelling graphics.
• Window Manager API, also taking advantage of the new graphics chip and increased device horsepower, allows you to overlay OpenGL or any other UI component on top of anything you want, including camera and video.
• Compass APIs, taking advantage of the new magnetometer sensor, allows you to determine the device’s orientation and direction. When combined with Window Manager API, enables the creation of augmented reality applications.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) APIs, taking advantage of the new NFC radio, allows you to read and emulate virtual tags and create rich solutions for payment and m-commerce.
• Video capture APIs updated with support for HD video recording, taking advantage of the improved camera, allows your application to provide the user with the same high end media experience they get from the core apps.

Beyond supporting new hardware features, there are also new APIs to further enable the Super Apps experience:

• 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.
• Unified Search API has been updated, making integration with this device feature easier than ever before and allowing more control of indexed keywords.
• BlackBerry® Maps API has also been updated, simplifying how data is overlaid on top of BlackBerry Maps. Couple that with support for geofencing and the ability to overlay complex shapes and polygons, and you’ve got the richest integration with BlackBerry Maps to date.
• Options API has evolved to match the new look and feel of the BlackBerry 6 options screens, allowing third party apps to add their own entries into the options screen including an icon and descriptive text.
• Multimedia API has added support for buffer control for playback and bitrate definition for video recording.
• Barcode API has been updated to support ZXing 1.6 and allow for the definition of custom decorders.

With the upcoming beta release, scheduled for late May, application vendors will have the opportunity to not only begin porting their apps to support the new device launches, but also the opportunity to take advantage of new platform features, offering an application experience optimized for BlackBerry smartphones.

Stay tuned to the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for the official start of the beta for BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0, including beta simulators for the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphone.

The BlackBerry® Partners Fund has just announced the launch of the BlackBerry® Developer Challenge for 2011 and has started accepting submissions for the first Competition! This year, there are three Competitions in total. Their purpose is to recognize, reward and celebrate innovation within the BlackBerry developer community. Similar to last year, each Competition will recognize winners in their respective regions, which will give developers the opportunity to stand out from one another with local content and language support.

The three Competitions are as follows:

• Best Adobe Flash/Adobe AIR app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet –now accepting submissions – click here for the Official Rules
• Most innovative BlackBerry® WebWorks™ app on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry® 6 (same app or companion app) – begins May 9, 2011
• Most Addictive social app using the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform –beginning later this summer

New this year, in addition to the Competitions, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will be honouring applications in six categories to receive a Recognition Award. The recipients, which will be recognized regionally, will be selected in the following categories:

• Best B2C app developed for a customer by an Agency or ISV
• Most useful enterprise application (all technologies)
• Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform
• Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics
• Top Performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service
• Academic – Most compelling app created by student or faculty

It’s exciting to note that across the three Competitions, there is approximately $3 million US in prizes available to be won. That’s almost double the value of last year’s prizing. This includes the incentive prizes that will be given out to the first 100 submissions in each Competition. Each incentive prize includes a free BlackBerry smartphone and a feature in the BlackBerry App World™ carousel for 1 week! Please click here for the full terms and conditions.

To find out more details on the BlackBerry Developer Challenge and to submit your apps, visit the BlackBerry Partners Fund website and BlackBerry Developer Zone. I’m very much looking forward to seeing your apps submitted to the Competitions – happy building and good luck!

Research In Motion® (RIM®) and Telefonica have teamed up to host a webcast happening on Thursday, March 17, 2011. This webcast is for developers to learn how to take advantage of new features introduced in the BlackBerry® 6 platform and BlueVia network APIs to build Super Apps.

Date: Thursday, March 17, 2011
Event Start Time: 4:00 PM GMT
Duration: 1 hour
Presenters:
Sanyu Kiruluta, Team Lead, Developer Relations EMEA (RIM)
Andres-Leonardo Martinez-Ortiz, BlueVia Developer Programs Engineer (Telefonica)

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
• Learn about BlackBerry® platform commercialization services
• Learn how to use BlueVia SMS APIs

Register for this event and find out more information today!