Ever wanted to go to school and learn about BlackBerrys all day long? Well, two bits of news for you: one, you’re crazy. Two, RIM is officially offering curriculum to academic institutions under app development, support, and administration branches. This can help you provide students the knowledge they need to achieve those dreams of making the killer app, ruling a BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) rollout with an iron fist, or manning a soul-draining tech support cubicle. Instructors can use the textbooks, labs, and materials to teach the courses in whole semesters, or piecemeal as modules in other courses.
This is a really interesting strategy on RIM’s part, and reminiscent of their past efforts in certification programs. Plugging into legitimate educational institutes ensures that the hard skills necessary to maintain RIM’s infrastructure in the big wide world don’t die, and young tech professionals recognise the platform as a valid and real path to make a living. I’m interested in seeing the quality of graduates versus other IT professionals who have fallen into BlackBerry after finishing nonspecific courses…
For more information, hit up www.blackberry.com/academic, and be sure to stay tuned over the coming week for more information from the 2009 BlackBerry Developer Conference.
Here’s a little tidbit I missed out on by avoiding the sessions at the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference last week… RIM pretty much shot down any hope of the OS source code becoming available to the developer community at large.
“We do have an open source management team that is investigating this,” said Cassidy Gentle, a senior RIM software developer. “I would expect some of our Eclipse or Mobile Tools for Java could be made available on an open source basis, but as for our APIs or other software—that’s a pretty big leap,” Gentle said.
The whole BlackBerry Application Storefront announcement had a few people glancing innocuously in Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s direction, but clearly the similarities to Android end there. It’s not a huge surprise to be honest. RIM has always been pretty open about being closed, not only for the sake of stability, but security as well. Also, despite what the BlackBerry Storm release might insinuate, RIM wants to stay away from imitating as much as possible – if devs want an open sandbox to play in, Android is the way to go.
Welcome to Episode 5 of The Signal, right from the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference!
Sorry for the lateness all, travel arrangements from the BlackBerry Developer Conference in Santa Clara got a little extended, but we’re ready to go with the latest IntoMobile podcast. Even if you’re not into the BlackBerry scene, it might be worth your while to hear about the upcoming BlackBerry Application Storefront due to land in March. It’ll be paired up with a carrier-powered Application Center, following closely in Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s footsteps by providing a bundled, unified interface for browsing BlackBerry software. Besides the daily rundown, we go over the show’s announcements with DevelopIQ’s James Shannon and ISEC7’s Matthias Hager and Guido Wilken to see what developers themselves thought of the devcon. Just in case you can’t get enough, be sure to take a read-through of our interview with RIM VP of Global Alliances, Jeff McDowell, on what it was like from an organizer’s standpoint. And of course, if it’s all rubbish to you, we still have the week’s biggest news laid out all fancy-like behind the jump. It looks like some big names are saying “no” to Android…
Oh, hey, I guess there was one more goodie left in the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference bag-o-treats. We’ve got some of the first hands-on video of the BlackBerry Storm that doesn’t involve some kind of advertisement. A lot of the OS is still a work in progress, so it wouldn’t be fair to do a whole run-down, but I thought a demo of the more-than-ample video playback would be nice. Sorry about the umbrella reflecting in the back, things were a bit spur-of-the-moment. The screen is 480 x 360 HVGA – not bad compared to a lot of things, and more than steps up to the Bold, but the one thing you do risk with larger screens is more pixelation. The Storm wasn’t that bad at all. The one thing I was iffy on was the sound quality.
Maybe the Bold has spoiled me, but the Storm did sound a bit tinny. As far as I could gather, most of the sound was coming from a rear speaker down by the battery door latch, with a little sound coming from the phone bit, while the Bold has an extra two sound ports on the rear. Part of me thinks that there might be a speaker under the screen, since it seems to wrap around fairly nicely. I won’t lay the haterade on too heavily – maybe some clever equalizing on the software end will boost the bass and give it a fuller sound. The picture itself was great, and easily on par with many alternatives now available.
The dust had settled from yesterday’s announcements at the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference, and everyone was ready to hit the books in the sessions today. Those many of us without the foggiest clue of what to do with a line of code were in a bit of a pickle, but some breathing room after a hectic day 2 would actually be alright. In fact, it turned out to be a great time to get some full-bodied opinions about the show from those it was built for, rather than, say, the ones who had built it.
After dodging dirty looks from Verizon (NYSE: VZ) reps at the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference, I finally managed to get some time with the upcoming BlackBerry Storm. This here is actually the Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) version, which, although had less of a presence here at the show in California, will have a much more widespread launch through European channels and abroad.
I had heard rumblings of an AT&T (NYSE: T) launch party up the road from the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference in San Francisco, but all of the underhanded blogger-weaseling in the world couldn’t get me an invite. Regardless, someone still managed to get some pics.
The official word is that the AT&T BlackBerry Bold will be going for $299.99 as of Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Unlike SOME launch parties, AT&T was actually happy to be giving out the Bold to attendees. From what I’ve been able to gather over here, the latest delays were a result of MMS issues, and whenever AT&T fixes a bug, they have to begin their testing process from scratch, which resulted in the lengthy Bold delay. Good QA, but damn, that’s a bad string of luck. Good timing and placement of the launch party though, what with the Storm getting so much hype down here in Santa Clara. Do you think AT&T will be able to compete with Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s offering?
Oofa. Today was considerably more upbeat than yesterday – in fact, tomorrow seems more like a home stretch rather than something to be excited about. In the morning, just before the keynote address, we all had a few ideas about what was coming. The BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Store was more or less a given, but unless you were really into the development scene, the rest of the announcements were largely a mystery. Of course we were secretly holding out for free devices, like little girls wanting ponies for Christmas, but hey, that was more a pipe dream than anything else. Big ups to RIM for delivering.
One of the few official app launches occurring at the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference comes from PageOnce for BlackBerry. These guys are tapping into a wide variety of APIs and partnerships to provide live feeds of information from many, many services. I talked to the head honcho in the press room earlier today, and he gave me a bit of a demo. It was really incredible how you could see Netflix, investments, e-mail, bills, everything, from under one roof. Think of it as a Facebook News Feed for all of your personal information. Although BlackBerry just launched today, there’s been an iPhone app out there for a little while now. Very cool stuff, and hopefully they’ll see some love with the upcoming BlackBerry Application Center when it launches in March. Also, good on ‘em for making a low-contrast UI. I think a lot of people overlook the fact that using a mostly-white screen is like staring into a lightbulb.
DeviceAnywhere and O2 (NYSE: TEF) have teamed up to provide up to 30 free hours to mobile developers to test their software on all the devices they want to. I had bumped DeviceAnywhere at the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Developer Conference as they were simultaneously announcing membership with the ISV Alliance Program. In a nutshell, these guys hook up devices from carriers worldwide inside these boxes which then allow users to have remote control of the device. These users can then load up software and navigate and do everything they could do with the phone in a web interface as if they had it in their hands. After they’re done, the device can be wiped and reset to scratch, ready for someone else to test.
It’s a step up from pure software simulators in that you’re getting the real image from a real device somewhere, and the service has a bunch of features to help testing go easier, like queuing up programs to test on multiple device overnight, and video screen capture. Developers aren’t the only ones winning out by being able to test on a wide range of phones from many carriers – the carriers themselves save a lot of hassle by offering this service instead of issuing loaners and having to recall them. It even helps carriers let software developers test on unreleased devices, and reduce risk caused camera-happy bloggers in the neighbourhood. (Drat.)
I mean, a part of me thinks it’s a little perverse – you can’t help but imagine extensive prisons where rows upon rows of these poor, suffering phones are restrained and hooked up to an elaborate hive mind allowing far and away tormentors to wreck what havoc they will, only to blank their memory and do it all over again. But hey, that’s just me.
Ever wanted to go to school and learn about BlackBerrys all day long? Well, two bits of news for you: one, you’re crazy. Two, RIM is officially offering curriculum to academic institutions under app development, support, and administration branches. This can help you provide students the knowledge they need to achieve those dreams of making the killer app, ruling a BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) rollout with an iron fist, or manning a soul-draining tech support cubicle. Instructors can use the textbooks, labs, and materials to teach the courses in whole semesters, or piecemeal as modules in other courses.
