BBDC was unexpectedly busy – hear how the devs feel about it all! If you haven’t been following, the 2009 BlackBerry Developer Conference was the source of a lot of big announcements, like OpenGL support enabling some rich 3D graphics, an Adobe partnership that cements Flash on BlackBerry, and a long-overdue LinkedIn app. This episode…
Themes, Widgets, and Carrier Billing Announced for BlackBerry App World
The BlackBerry App World got some love at the Developer Conference keynote, with the announced inclusion of web-based widgets and themes. We had heard themes were coming down the pipe, and the widget SDK has been out there for a little over a month, but combined with the show’s focus on the new theme builder…
LinkedIn App for BlackBerry Announced
It’s about time. At yesterday’s keynote, RIM announced a LinkedIn application for BlackBerry, joining Facebook and MySpace as some of the platform’s pillars social networking pillars. BlackBerry was built from the ground up for professionals, so LinkedIn really is a perfect fit. All of the expected functionality is there, like notifications in the Messages folder,…
OpenGL ES Arrives on BlackBerry, 3D Gaming in Tow
Gaming on BlackBerry has never been what you would call breathtaking – a few low-key casual games here and there and the preloaded Brickbreaker could handle the lion’s share of twitchy boredom. Well, the platform is taking a big jump as OpenGL ES support has gone official and is currently available in the beta BlackBerry…
New Geolocation and Push Services Coming to BlackBerry
More goodies from the BlackBerry Developer Conference today: fresh location-detection options using cell site recognition, and push services for those who want to leverage RIM’s biggest advantage in mobile computing. First up, cell site recognition is a big one for location-based apps who want to keep battery drain down (GPS takes a significant toll). Anyone…
RIM Announces New Advertising Program and In-App Purchacing
One of the many announcements made at the BlackBerry Developer Conference is a new ad partner program that allows app creators to monetize their apps right away. The BlackBery Advertising Service will plug in ads from Jumptap, Lat49, Millennial Media, Navteq, 1020 Placecast, Quattro Wireless and Sympatico.ca – an impressive initial list, but I’m wondering…
RIM Announces Flash Tools for Developers
While Adobe might be taking potshots at Apple for not providing the footholds to get Flash on the iPhone, RIM has announced that upcoming versions of Creative Suite 5 will allow developers to import Flash content in a BlackBerry-friendly format through the Eclipse JDE plug-in. So, yeah, Flash on BlackBerry. We had heard this was…
Rogers and RIM Kick Off CampusChase in Ottawa
I took the morning to check out a contest RIM and Rogers were holding at the University of Ottawa called CampusChase, where teams of two run around town like headless chickens on a scavenger hunt for big prizes. Rogers wasn’t quite ready to show off the Bold 9700 just yet (all of the promos were…
Nokia Working on Augmented Reality Language Translation via OCR Character Recognition
After getting a demo of some of the cool vector map capabilities on the N900 at CTIA, I prodded a Nokia rep about what they’ve been working on with augmented reality (since zooming down to street level on the map to check out the 3D rendering of a stadium was awfully close). He mentioned that…
Good Technology Bringing Secure Enterprise Push E-Mail to iPhone
Ever wanted to use an iPhone for work, but got stuck with the standard issue BlackBerry? Well, Good Technology has made progress on their iPhone application, the back-end management for which was announced in the spring, and was showing it off at CTIA. The app has all the usual fixings, like e-mail (complete with push…