Archive for April, 2010

Blackberry OS 6 : A Video

Apr 27, 2010 News

There has been no news about the OS 6  neither we have heard about it in the press release ,
The New BlackBerry OS 6.0: Video and Details but , Mike Lazaridis announced in an analyst call that OS 6, or BlackBerry 6, will be available “in the next calendar quarter.” With WES going down right now, we can expect to hear more about BlackBerry 6 shortly. We’ve seen the screenshots, and apparently Lazaridis gave a demo of a touchscreen interface running BlackBerry 6.

There is still no update about the list of devices which would be eligible for an upgrade nor do we have any info on the webkit browser. But Webkit would be a part of Blackberry 6 is what we came to know. Here we can also conclude that the webkit browser may not be available for OS 5 devices.Blackberry OS 6 is supposed to bring in new API’s for Blackberry developers and would be useful in development of high end innovative applications .

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Pearl 3G and Bold 9650 new arrivals from RIM

Apr 26, 2010 News

Pearl 3G aka Pearl 9100 (Stratus) which is heading for Bell, Telus, and Rogers in Canada and its features include :

  • Small size: less than two inches wide (50 mm) and weighing only 3.3 ounces (93g)
  • 3G (UMTS/HSDPA)
  • WiFi (b/g/n) – this is the first BlackBerry to support the “n” standard , 802.11n
  • GPS
  • 3.2 MP camera
  • 624 Mhz processor
  • Up to 32 GB memory expansion
  • RIM’s new optical trackpad

The Bold 9650 is a device for users who have been looking for a CDMA phone , the features include :

  • 3G (EVDO) and (HSPA/UMTS)
  • Optical trackpad
  • WiFi (802.11 b/g)
  • 512 MB Flash memory
  • Up to 32 GB microSDHC cards
  • 2 GB card included
  • Qualcomm 7600 processor running at 528 Mhz
  • “Bold” branding (no more use of “Tour”)
  • A 3.2 megapixel cam
  • GPS

According to press release the device would become available around May with Sprint as its carrier.

With the new enhanced Web and Java development tools Blackberry developers can create apps with an ease , no resetting of stimulator , no hassles of application development separately, now common tools for Blackberry widgets and Blackberry web  development thus reducing the effort in Blackberry application development . Eclipse Java plug-in delivers Blackberry developers easier functionality than ever before . Blackberry SDK v 5.0 also sees addition of hundreds of new API’s and UI for blackberry developers .With addition of so many features the new SDK v 5.0 is going to take Blackberry development to new heights. The Pearl and Bold range of devices will see a broad variety of applications coming to them .

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Blackberry Developers Get Ready For The Pearl 9100 On Rogers And Bell

Apr 22, 2010 News

There has been a lot of talk on the web over the Pearl 9100’s release this summer , finally its coming on the rogers and bell’s  network  for $449.99 without any contract. The device may also be available with some contract pricing option that would bring down the price .

The frequency of Blackberry devices coming in the market is increasing day by day thus giving Blackberry developers a chance to explore the depths of Blackberry development .

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Bad News For Blackberry Developers : RIM To Take Additional 10% On Apps

Apr 22, 2010 Blackberry Developer

RIM has sent a notice to all blackberry developers which
states that they are going to take an additional 10% revenue on every paid app listed on Blackberry app market . Previously RIM allowed developers to keep 80% of the revenue they earned but now developers can only take away 70% of the revenue.

Blackberry says this has to be done in order to support the expansion into new markets and allow additional billing models. Blackberry is implementing credit card billing which is also offered by Apple in iTunes. Despite the lack of distribution of apps and a platform that is desperately in need of good developers this was a silly move on RIM’s part. This has largely discouraged Blackberry developers coming up with pretty good apps .

Blackberry had sent this copy of notice to all Blackberry developers  associated to the Blackberry App world vendor portal 2.0

Attention BlackBerry App World Vendors
We hope you are enjoying the new BlackBerry App World Vendor Portal 2.0, which adds a variety of new features and capabilities to make it easier for you to distribute your applications on BlackBerry smartphones!

We are now taking the first step to introduce credit card and carrier billing support for BlackBerry App World, as announced at the 2009 BlackBerry Developer Conference.  These new billing models will open up additional opportunities for you to sell your applications in new markets.

In part to support the addition of these new billing models, if you are distributing paid applications, there are changes to your agreement with Digital River.  This email is provided as notice to you, by RIM on behalf of Digital River, of changes to your Digital River Vendor Agreement.  You will find both black-line and clean copies of the amended Digital River Vendor Agreement attached.

In addition, there are also changes to your agreement with RIM.  This email also provides notice to you of changes to your RIM Vendor Agreement.  You will find black-line and clean copies of the amended RIM Vendor Agreement attached.

These new agreements will also be posted in the Vendor Portal shortly.

The changes in these agreements include an update to the BlackBerry App World revenue share from 80% to 70%.   This change is being made to support the expansion into new markets and to allow for the additional billing models referenced above.

We are also introducing Bango as the Merchant of Record for carrier billed transactions.  If you are distributing paid applications, you will soon be presented with the Bango Vendor Agreement, for acceptance, when logging into the Vendor Portal.

Our goal is to ensure that BlackBerry App World provides developers with unique opportunities to successfully monetize applications created on the BlackBerry application platform.  We hope that you are as excited as we are about these new billing models.
Best regards,

BlackBerry App World Management

This is definitely going to affect Blackberry development in the coming months ,if blackberry doesn’t think about the Blackberry developers they may jump to other platforms for better opportunities.

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Blackberry Developers Need To Think Over The Low CTR’s in Mobile Advertising

Apr 15, 2010 Blackberry Developer

Smaato is a mobile advertising and ad optimization company which has recently announced their March 2010 figures on mobile ad click through rates (CTR), which shows that Blackberry has least click through rates in mobile advertising, where Windows and other Featured phones have seen a significant growth in CTR.

It’s a main concern for Blackberry developers and advertisers ,there are many advertisers which sponsor developers to meet their development cost and bring their apps in market for a low price or even for free , but low CTR’s would eventually affect Blackberry apps in the market , the advertisers would step back from Blackberry’s market and place their ads somewhere else , why would advertisers think of investing their money on an application which doesn’t bring them back a good revenue .

I think the way these ads are served is not appealing to Blackberry users or maybe Blackberry users simply don’t care about the ads. I personally dont click such ads unless they are really useful on my part of interests, maybe Blackberry developers should work over it and design attractive ads which are targeted to the Blackberry users requirements and give the advertisers a better chance to reach the audience. Ads can be a source of healthy information as long as they don’t muck up the user experience .

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BreezyPrint for iPhone, printing at the go

Apr 9, 2010 Uncategorized

BreezyPrint is a new software which allows you you to print from your blackberry directly to a printer .

Many times it so happens that BlackBerry users want to print something that came to their corporate account on the BlackBerry device but that isn’t immediately available on their computer. Sure, you can spend 10 minutes logging into some remote access terminal and starting up the remote access version of your email client, then downloading and printing your document , but instead of wasting time on your computer you could have done something else , here’s where Breezyprint comes in it tells its companion app what to print and the companion app on computer passes the document to the printer .

The service isn’t cheap because it relies on the Breezyprint servers and ensures that corporate firewalls don’t get in its way , they are charging an yearly fee of $25 after a 30-day trial , currently this service is only available for Blackberry devices keeping in mind the use of the device in professional world , but is definitely going to come on the iPhone and the Android’s too.

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Blackberry Development Poised to Change with New WebKit Browser

Apr 8, 2010 Blackberry Development

As mentioned in World Mobile Congress, BlackBerry is likely to get its first Webkit based browser very soon. Now what does that mean to Blackberry developers and all the development work going on in this platform?

WebKit is the platform for all the major browsers today, including Chrome for Android and Safari for iPhone. It offers complete web access for the users, thereby enhancing their overall experience.

Once Blackberry adopts to this WebKit based browser it would mean all the great webapps which are built primarily for iPhone and Android would likely start to work on new BlackBerry browser too (upon some tweaks).

The new BlackBerry browser will also get the full support for HTML5, CSS 3, and DOM L3 allowing Blackberry developers to come up with more interesting and rich web apps for the platform.

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