Two weeks ago it was just an idea, but today it is a reality. The most popular mobile payment solution in Uruguay took advantage of the BlackBerry Developer relation’s team support to port the entire solution to BlackBerry 10 – in just 3 days. How did that happen? Easy: they arrived to the BlackBerry Innovation Center in Buenos Aires on Monday with no BlackBerry app and left on Thursday with it already submitted to BlackBerry World. Simple.

Seriously, how did that happen?

I’ll let them tell you what, how and why…

Paganza is a revolutionary application for paying family bills. The app allows scanning the barcode of the invoice and making payments through a bank account. The service was recently launched in Uruguay and within weeks was already leading the ranking of finance applications in the iPhone and Android stores.

The last week of last December, Paganza was invited to the BlackBerry Innovation Center in Buenos Aires with the aim of having its application available on the new platform before January 30th. While those were complicated dates and the term was very short, we decided to accept the challenge. The result was that in single a week we managed to migrate the application and today we have the first version of Paganza available in BlackBerry World.

Development was carried out with the native BlackBerry 10 SDK, which allowed us to easily access existing C++ libraries without compromising performance. At the same time the user interface was developed with Cascades, which gave us access to an extensive library of controls and a rapid iteration of logic in JavaScript. The application uses a C++ library of recognition of bar codes developed in-house with the support of the National Agency for research and innovation of the Uruguay (ANII). This library, unlike those used to read barcodes of books, allows to read longer bar codes such as those present in utility bills, in a very heterogeneous universe of cameras, like the ones we have in Latin America.

The company’s plan is to consolidate a case of success in Uruguay to then expand to countries in Latin America, making agreements with banks in the region, where the payment of invoices is a headache and cell phones are growing exponentially.

Marcelo Lanfranconi
marcelo@mail.paganza.com
CTO – Paganza

This is another success story of a startup company investing a really small amount of time and money to bring their solution to BlackBerry 10. Additionally, this is another success story of the commitment of our developer relations team and how the one-on-one support makes a huge difference. Come and join us!

Do you want to know more about the BlackBerry Innovation Center and how you can leverage it? Ping me on Twitter – @bryantafel

One thing we heard over and over again during the BlackBerry® Got Game Port-a-Thon was that developers loved getting almost instant responses to their questions from one of the many members of our Developer Relations team.  Why stop a good thing?  Starting Wednesday, November 21^st and continuing right up until January 30^th, we’ll have be offering live time in the forums, where you can expect to get responses as quickly as we can type them.

How will it work?

Two hours a week, every week, we’ll address one of the developer audiences listed below.  We know we have an active developer community, and we want you to participate.  Since there’s no way to lock a forum thread, we’ll go low tech: if you know the answer to a question and you intend to respond to it, simply reply to the thread indicating “got it” then go ahead and type your response.  This simple claim of ownership will prevent multiple devs from responding to the same question at the same time.  And as per usual in the developer forums, if your question was answered, mark it as “solved” or if you see a good response, put a “like” on it.  Basically, just give recognition to those who deserve it.

When and where?

Mondays:
Marmalade: 10 AM to 12 PM (GMT-5) in Marmalade’s developer forums.
Sencha: 12 PM to 2 PM (GMT-5) in Sencha’s developer forums.

Tuesdays:
Cascades™ – BlackBerry Java porting to BlackBerry 10: 10 AM to 12 PM (GMT-5) in the BlackBerry developer support forums.
PhoneGap: 12 PM to 2 PM (GMT-5) in the BlackBerry developer support forums.

Wednesdays:
Qt: 10 AM to 12 PM (GMT-5) in the BlackBerry developer support forums.
jQuery: 12 PM to 2 PM (GMT-5) in jQuery’s developer forums.

Thursdays:
BlackBerry WebWorks™: 10 AM to 12 PM (GMT-5) in the BlackBerry developer support forums.
Android: 12 PM to 2 PM (GMT-5) in Stack Overflow.

Fridays:
AIR: 12 PM to 2 PM (GMT-5) in the BlackBerry developer support forums.

Watch for more time slots to be added in the near future to better accommodate our developers in Asia-Pacific.  See you in the forums!

Before we talk about what’s new in BlackBerry 10, let us recap what is available for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps for BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1. There were three major enhancements added to the Android Runtime in 2.1:

• Each Android app will now run in its own window. This greatly improves the user experience and consistency among the other application runtimes.
• Access to the cameras is now supported for Android apps, allowing many more application types to work on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.
• In-App Payments are now supported through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, so Android applications can include virtual items for sale in their applications.

Building on this fantastic set of features, there is now support for telephony APIs for the Android Runtime in the BlackBerry 10 Beta. This includes support for cell location, and access to information about the network services on the device. For additional information, head on over to our API support page. We have completely revamped our Documentation and API Support page to make it easier to find the information you need! Let us know what you think.

All these features are now available for the Android Runtime on the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device and simulator. How do you start using these great new features? Jump to the newly updated Runtime for Android Apps microsite. There is an updated 1.2 Beta release for the BlackBerry Eclipse™ Plug-in for Android Development Tools and Command-line tools to get starting using all these new Android Runtime features for the BlackBerry 10 Beta. For the Eclipse users, point your update site to https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/android/downloads/eclipseplugin/beta/

We are pleased to announce the gold release of BlackBerry® Theme Studio 6, and want to thank all of the developers who helped improve the product by providing feedback from the beta releases.

If you haven’t been using our beta, here’s an overview of some of the new features:

• Support for the latest BlackBerry devices, including the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 and BlackBerry® Style™ 9670 handsets, and BlackBerry® 6.
• Support for theming BlackBerry 6 features such as graphic popup menus, plus the addition of BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), Facebook®, and Twitter® feeds to Today screens.
• New productivity features allow you to batch update all of the graphics in a theme automatically. You can also change fonts across multiple phone screens automatically. Also, BlackBerry Theme Studio continues to be compatible with popular graphic design tools such as Adobe Photoshop® and Corel® Paint Shop Pro.
• A Background Wizard makes it easy to add dynamic wallpapers to your theme. Options include date-based or time-based changes (to highlight a special holiday or change images by the time of day), and slideshow backgrounds (to cycle through your favorite photos).
• A new user interface lets you click on any item on the preview and directly edit its settings. This allows faster editing and a shorter learning curve, plus you can select multiple items to change them all at once.
• A new export option makes it easier to offer themes through BlackBerry App World™. The export packages all of the correct files and settings into a single zip file, ready for upload to BlackBerry App World.

You’ll find BlackBerry Theme Studio 6 to be easy-to-use, yet a powerful tool for designing compelling themes with unique graphics, animations, sound effects, applications and navigation. The new release can be downloaded from here for personal use, and from here for commercial use.

We look forward to hearing about your impressions and seeing your cool new themes!

Since we updated the BlackBerry Support Community Forums a year and a half ago, we have watched both the number of posts and participants increase dramatically.  In just 18 months, our community has created over 95,000 posts on the forums across all of the different topic boards.  One of my favorite features of the forums is giving kudos, which we report on the blog to highlight the key contributors.  Developers have given out over 7,000 kudos to recognize these key forums contributors for a job well done!

One of the key aspects to a successful community forum is ensuring that experts from Research In Motion (RIM) are on the boards answering questions, capturing feedback and helping to kick start conversations. We’ve had some really phenomenal employee participation on the forums.  Mark Sohm in particular has done a fantastic job in all three of these areas and I know that many forum participants will know his name well.

However, with the number of posts continuing to increase dramatically, we are looking to the community to help us better participate in the conversation.  To that end, I am very pleased to announce that we have created a new mechanism in our Developer boards to allow existing super users to “escalate” key posts that they feel need a response from RIM.  This provides RIM with an opportunity to recognize the contributions of these super users but also helps to ensure that RIM is responding to all of the important posts.

Please join me in thanking each of our top contributors for their help in the forums and their willingness to help ensure that continued success of the BlackBerry Support Community Forums.

Top Ten Kudoed Authors in BlackBerry Development

1. bikas Specialist II 45 Kudos
2. simon_hain Expert I 43 Kudos
3. peter_strange Expert II 29 Kudos
4. RexDoug Expert I 19 Kudos
5. Gareth Trusted Contributor 10 Kudos
6. lictor4 New Member 10 Kudos
7. andre_impi Contributor 9 Kudos
8. klyubin Super Contributor 7 Kudos
9. paulhaenel Regular Contributor 5 Kudos
10. CMY Trusted Contributor 5 Kudos
    

Top Ten Kudoed Authors in Java Development

1. bikas Specialist II 45 Kudos
2. simon_hain Expert I 43 Kudos
3. peter_strange Expert II 29 Kudos
4. RexDoug Expert I 19 Kudos
5. andre_impi Contributor 9 Kudos
6. klyubin Super Contributor 7 Kudos
7. paulhaenel Regular Contributor 5 Kudos
8. CMY Trusted Contributor 5 Kudos
9. Justindutoit Regular Contributor 5 Kudos
10. johnbibs Specialist I 4 Kudos

Top Five Kudoed Authors in Web Development (30 days)

1. Xandrex Elite II 51 Kudos
2. Jwargo Super Contributor 20 Kudos
3. skysoft_dev New Contributor 10 Kudos
4. david45 New Contributor 10 Kudos
5. Gareth Trusted Contributor 10 Kudos

Top Five Kudoed Authors in BlackBerry App World™ Development (30 days)

1. Fermora New Contributor 7 Kudos
2. RLord321 Trusted Contributor 2 Kudos
3. Sblantipodi Super Contributor 2 Kudos
4. Jonberry Trusted Contributor 1 Kudos
5. EpicDraws Regular Contributor 1 Kudos

Make sure to post a comment giving thanks to the users mentioned above, and remember to keep posting good posts. It’s the only way to make these lists!

We are very excited to be participating in the WIPJAM event at CTIA on Thursday, October 8th.  We had a lot of fun at the previous WIPJAM event in April and even won the bowling challenge in the evening!

IPJAM is continuing its “unpanel” format again and we are excited to be leading a discussion on “Addictive Applications”. Here’s the discussion description:

Addictive Applications

What makes an application addictive? What separates the ones that get downloaded once and forgotten from the ones that get downloaded first every time? We’ll talk about the features and technologies that make good apps addictive, and how you can use them to pull users in and keep them hooked.

WIPJAM is a free, invitation-only event.  Make sure to check out the complete event roster and request an invitation.  Note that you must be registered for CTIA to gain access to the WIPJAM event. We hope to see you there!

Register for the 2009 BlackBerry® Developer Conference before September 18, and you can take advantage of the Early Bird Discount.

You’ll save $200 off the regular rate – and you get to attend what many consider to be the best event for today’s application developers making their mark with the BlackBerry solution.

Don’t miss out on other savings opportunities; learn more about special offers such as the Group Discount Program and the Alumni Discount.

An Abundance of Targeted Sessions – You Can’t Beat the Value

Take a look at the Session Catalog – technical, demonstration-packed sessions are geared to every interest level. This is the place to see how the tools have advanced again, making it easy, fun and profitable to develop applications for the BlackBerry platform.

Where else can you find out how to:

• Leverage familiar web technologies to create rich, tightly-integrated applications for BlackBerry smartphones
• Create fresh UI for your BlackBerry application
• Push information to consumers and also ensure reliability and relevance for your BlackBerry application

Attend BlackBerry Developer Day – A Developer Community Event

With your conference pass, you can also be a part of the NEW BlackBerry Developer Day on Thursday, November 12. This is a day when the developer community gets together to network and enjoy some great activities, including:

• Breakout sessions with Research In Motion (RIM) developers where you have the chance to offer feedback on today’s development tools
• The Developer Soapbox, where you can share your expertise and experiences developing for the BlackBerry platform
• BlackBerry Developer Certification where you solidify your credentials

What are you waiting for? Register today!

FITC mobile is 2-day event assembling industry leaders from the mobile design and development community.  Intended for developers of mobile content, this conference includes business, technical and creative presentations and events. Adam Stanley and Sarim Aziz from the BlackBerry® Developer Relations team will be speaking at FITC Mobile in Toronto.

Adam will be presenting a session on Developing Web Applications for the BlackBerry Solution and Sarim will be presenting two sessions: Getting Started with BlackBerry – Developer Platform and Programs and Creating Rich Mobile Content using the BlackBerry CDK.

If you will also be at FITC Mobile this week, be sure to say hi to Sarim and Adam.  They will be happy to see you there!

As a follow-up to the August issue of the BlackBerry® Developer Newsletter, we will be hosting our first ever developer webinar on September 10th, 2009 from 2pm until 3pm (EST).

In this live webinar, we will present an overview of web development for the BlackBerry® platform. We’ll share some tips and tricks for improving the quality of your web content and creating a great user experience for your mobile visitors.  As well, we wish to share some of the features of the BlackBerry® Plug-in for Eclipse® and the BlackBerry® Plug-in for Microsoft® Visual Studio®, and how you can use these toolkits to preview, debug and optimize your BlackBerry web applications.

At the end of our presentation, we look forward to answering any questions you might have regarding web development for the BlackBerry smartphone. All members of the BlackBerry web development community are invited to register for this free webinar.

We look forward to seeing you online September 10th!

BlackBerry Developers Webinar More Information
BlackBerry Developers Webinar Registration Page