Lately RIM has been trying to drive home the message that BlackBerry developers are extremely important to them, and they have shown this in many ways. While many may wonder if the Hackathons that they have been having are worthwhile on their end, the simple answer is yes. Each time that RIM is able to entice another developer to make use of their tools, and develop for their platform, it is yet another potential app for the BlackBerry users.

Until recently many people have viewed BlackBerry as a platform to stay away from when it comes to development, saying it was hard and not worth while, but luckily we have seen new developers stepping up to the plate still. Last year at a Boston Hackathon Jad Meouchy of Jadware Inc began his BlackBerry development career. It was this event, learning about the social SDK of BBM, and the inner workings of WebWorks development. Could what started out as a two day development session begin a career in BlackBerry development, and show developers the potential of the platform? Let's hit the break and check out an interview with Jad Meouchy.

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Are you an aspiring BlackBerry developer but just aren't sure where to start? Keep reading for your chance to win a BlackBerry PlayBook!

Last week I had the pleasure of spending my day in New York City at Pace University with some folks from RIM and a room full of students who had never developed for BlackBerry before. Last year I attended the NYC BBM Hackathon as well, so I somewhat had an idea of what to expect, but this was completely different. Last year I was in a room full of BlackBerry developers -- they had an idea, they had an app and they wanted to integrate the new social end of the BBM integration -- this year it was students. These students who were attending signed up only based on the fact that RIM was coming to talk to them, teach them about some development tools and to talk about HTML5 and the benefits it brought.

Over 40 students signed up for the Future Developers day hoping to gain some knowledge, learn some things about the BlackBerry coding process and identify some of the benefits. Little did the students know that when they walked into the room and signed in that RIM would be handing them a brand new BlackBerry PlayBook to keep and help with their development efforts. With each student that entered and got their PlayBook the energy in the room just continued to fill and fill.

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CrackBerry.com is the #1 BlackBerry website in the world so it only makes sense that we should have the best BlackBerry app in existence to match. To date we've had a few CB apps make their appearance in App World for the BlackBerry OS, like our CrackBerry Launcher, CrackBerry Podcast App, and Wallpaper Changer app w/ CrackBerry Wallpapers. And for the PlayBook we do have the CrackBerry App which offers a basic experience of getting our CrackBerry content, but it is still pretty limited in features and functionality. So while we've had some popular CrackBerry apps over the years, we really have yet to deliver to our users an amazing app experience that fully reflects our full CrackBerry offering. That changes, starting to day.

My Goal here is simple. When BlackBerry 10 phones hit the market I want CrackBerry to have the best BlackBerry 10 app in BlackBerry App World. I want our next-generation CrackBerry app to be so mind-blowingly awesome that Research In Motion is going to showcase it as an example to all web and media companies of what can be done on the BlackBerry 10 platform. I want it to be feature rich, taking what we do on the web with CrackBerry and putting it into the palm of your hand.  I want it to be beautiful and fun, making use of all that TAT/Cascade goodness coming our way in BlackBerry 10. I want it to take advantage of every API RIM opens up for us. I want this app to be absolutely uncompromising in nature. We'll of course want it for all BlackBerry 10 devices - phones and tablets.

To make it happen, we need BlackBerry development talent to work with. In the past our CrackBerry apps haven't cost us anything - developers did them up as way of giving back to CrackBerry Nation. But we know top talent doesn't always come for free and we're setting our expectations through the roof on this one, so yes developers we will pay for this one (though if you still want to do it for free, that's cool too - we'll shower your company with love).

Interested? OK amazing developers. Look at our site. Ponder it. Think on it. And if the decision is made that you/your company have the skills and desire to work with us to build an absolutely amazing CrackBerry app, then shoot us an email to sitesupport@crackberry.com (subject: BB10 CrackBerry App) and let us know you're interested, show us your portfolio and give us a sense of what you want to do with the CrackBerry App and how much fun it will be to work with you. Get Ready CrackBerry Nation... our next-gen CrackBerry App is going to ROCK!

With titles like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope finally hitting the BlackBerry platform, we're really starting to see evidence that the app gap on BlackBerry is starting to close and things are gaining momentum. There are now over 50,000 apps available for BlackBerry and App World has passed 2 billion downloads. Not bad!

No doubt there is still a lot of work to be done, and at CES 2012 we caught up with Research In Motion's new VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders, who caught us up on the progress and plan. The focus for RIM right now is on making sure everything is in order for the launch of BlackBerry 10 Smartphones later this year. Between now and then it's all about getting out there and making sure the BIG NAMES are on the platform at launch that people expect to be there, and also getting the native tools into the hands of developers who can really set an example for what can be done on the platform as well. It's also about spreading the word, and the BlackBerry evangelist program has gone from concept to reality - we had the pleasure of meeting one of the evangelists at a RIM Meet-up on Tuesday night (we'll follow up with more soon on that).

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This article comes to us via Leigh McRae. A veteran game developer working with the PlayBook NDK, it gives an honest look at both some of the pleasant surprises and frustrations experienced while porting a game to the PlayBook for the first time....

Today I found myself with some extra time on my hands so I decided to send Kevin a small email letting him know my initial experience with developing for the Playbook using the NDK. After receiving the email Kevin asked if I would be willing to expand on it. So I opened up my Open Office and wrote a little piece.

Just a little background about myself. I have been in the 3D industry for about 20 years, 15 of which have been in the game industry directly. I worked on PlayStation 2 and Xbox titles such as Oni, Max Payne and The Warriors. I left the big budget console industry to start Lone Dwarf Games Inc and ended up making BlackBerry games in early 2009. The first game I released was Wrath, a retro shooter.

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At this year's BlackBerry Developer Conference I had the opportunity to be one of the Community Speakers and host a session, so I chose to present on a topic that I have a lot of direct experience in - working with bloggers.

All said and done, my session COM32: Working with Bloggers and the Media to Promote Your App turned out to be a pretty solid success. It was the second most attended presentation of the week (after featured speaker Jane McGonigal's session) and the survey responses from those in attendance were overwhelmingly positive!

In general it's a pretty common sense subject, but it's one of those topics where the common sense doesn't necessarily jump out at you until you're made aware of it. If you're a developer, you know apps from the standpoint of a developer. This presentation gives you the perspective of how bloggers and the media will look at apps, which is a perspective you may not have thought too much about previously. 

Even though I approached this presentation based on my experience with CrackBerry.com and geared it towards BlackBerry Developers, there are a lot of good bits of info in here for app developers on all platforms. Even fans of CrackBerry who are not mobile developers might want to check out it - I kick things off with a bit of CrackBerry history and you'll pick up a bit of a glimpse of my perspective along the way. 

I hope you enjoy the session and find it useful. I had a lot of fun putting it together!! It also shows how far RIM has come on the social media side of things, letting a blogger give a session at DevCon. Kudos to RIM!

During BlackBerry DevCon we heard a lot about the new tools being offered to BlackBerry developers for building applications. One of those tools was the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK and its great HTML5 capabilities. Now that DevCon is over -- RIM has released the latest BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Smatphones bumping it up to v2.2 for release with the open source packages also available via Github.

What’s new in this release?

• Mac OSX Support – Need we say more? This very exciting and highly demanded feature is now available. A Mac version of the WebWorks SDK installer is available for developers to use and build WebWorks applications using OSX.
• Payment API – the same API that was recently made available for the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK for PlayBook OS can now be used to sell digital goods through WebWorks applications running on BlackBerry Smartphones. This feature gives developers an incredible monetization opportunity for increasing the revenue of their applications. Read more about our payment service.
• BB7 net_rim_api.jar – The underlying API library used by the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK has been updated to the BlackBerry® 7 developer APIs. This means that WebWorks developers can now create their own JavaScript Extensions and make use of APIs found in BlackBerry Device Software versions 5.0, BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7.
• BBM APIs – Developers can now find the BlackBerry WebWorks APIs needed to integrate their applications with the BBM Social platform automatically included as part of the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK. Read more about the BBM Social Platform SDK.
• Side by side installs – The installer has been modified to produce a standalone install of the WebWorks SDK for Smartphone. This feature gives developers the ability to build different versions of their applications based on different versions of the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK, which is often a requirement for supporting production code.
• Memory leak fixes – many performance and stability improvements have been made to the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK to fix memory problems encountered with WebWorks applications running on BlackBerry 6 and 7 OS smartphones.

If you head on over to the new developer resources pages you'll find both the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Smartphone and Tablet OS available in the v2.2 variety. Also, you can grab Ripple right from that page as well so that you can test out your apps before publishing them to BlackBerry App World.

Download the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Smartphone v2.2

Back in January at DevCon Asia, RIM announced the beta SDK for the BlackBerry Payment Service and now today -- they've taken the beta staus away and released v1.5 to all BlackBerry Developers. As noted on the BlackBerry Developers Blog:

The BlackBerry Payment Service SDK 1.5 builds on the existing API from 1.0, so it is designed to allow developers to quickly add subscriptions without having to learn a new API. The new SDK provides APIs to check for the status of a subscription and the ability to cancel subscriptions. BlackBerry Payment Service manages the subscription renewals automatically and sends out renewal reminders and receipts to users. Please note that applications with subscription services will require users to have the recently released BlackBerry App World 3.0 installed on their device.

With these tools now fully available to developers there is benefits to be had for all. Developers can now set up freemium apps where consumers can download the app for free but when it comes to add-ons, those can now be purchased within the app or game itself. Take for example a game, that comes with 5 free levels but if that isn't enough -- you can then purchase 5 more levels for $.99. This allows consumers to try out the offerings with no buy in cost but also allows developers to generate profits from their additional content being provided.

Learn more about the BlackBerry Payment Service SDK today

The London BlackBerry developer group is a forum for London based BlackBerry developers. They held their inaugural meeting back in March this year. It looks like they will be holding another meeting next Tuesday.

The main agenda for the day seems to be on the topic of Understanding the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Architecture. It looks to be the first of many seminars on the subject. So, if you're a BlackBerry developer based in London, or anywhere in the UK for that matter and you're interested in knowing more about the BES Architecture then go along to the meet-up next week.

Meet-up details are:

Date: August 30th 2011
Location: Savoy Tup, London

For more information visit the group's website 

A few days ago I was lucky enough to get to attend the BBM Hackathon event in New York City, where they brought together around 30 BlackBerry developers. The event was put together to bring some developers into the same room as the experts from RIM to see what they could develop from the BlackBerry Messenger Social Plaftform. This experience was rather eye opening as I am not sure that many end users understand just what goes into development of these applications that we love so much. While at the event I was able to gain a lot of insight from these guys, and there was tons that needed to be shared with you, so let's take a deeper look into what goes on behind the scenes, why these guys love the BlackBerry platform so much, and how much of a struggle they go through to determine proper pricing for their application.

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While everyone else was busy discussing the open letters sent to RIM execs and concentrating on the all the doom and gloom surrounding the situation -- one BlackBerry developer took it upon himself to write up his own open letter. Not to make the situation worse, but in an effort to show people it's not as bad as some would have you believe.

“Letter from Outer Space” was written up by a developer named Ekke over at his personal blog -- Ekkes Corner and having been a long-term BlackBerry developer Ekke highlights the many reasons he sticks with BlackBerry development and his thoughts on all these letters from purported RIM employees. Ekke touches on a lot of things in his letter and even offers his outlook on the future of RIM in a portion he titled "RIM – Research in Motion in Transition", quite fitting really.

If you've not read the letter as of yet, and are tired of all the dramatic horror stories then it is certainly a suggested read. As each day passes, more people are ready to put the final, final nail in RIM's coffin but Ekke offers a his perspective from the outside looking in -- something that more developers and users should be doing. 

Read the full version of “Letter from Outer Space”

During BlackBerry World it was announced the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 would be released in beta form at some point this month. Keeping good on their word, RIM has now made the files available for download. BlackBerry developers looking to ensure their applications are BlackBerry 7 ready will certainly want to check the full package out.

We've looked at the changes in the past, and there is a lot that is new being made available to BlackBerry developers within the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0. The release notes specifically for the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 can be found here but you'll want to check out the full source link below for the full details.

Download the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 beta

The Native Development Kit for the BlackBerry PlayBook's BlackBerry Tablet OS hasn't been released to the public just yet (see our BlackBerry Developer Podcast for more details), but when it becomes available we should see a plethora of games become available. Developers can take any game developed for a POSIX environment and easily bring the code over to the QNX OS. From there it's just a matter of tweaking controls for the PlayBook's user interface and sizing graphics for the appropriate resolution.

In this video recorded at the Ask the Experts booth at BlackBerry World, we get an explanation of how easy it was to port Quake III over to QNX via the NDK and of course we get to see some multiplayer first person shoot em up action. Check it out! 

OK full disclosure - I'm not a developer; I have not written a line of code since 1988.  Now with that out of the way, Perfecto Mobile has extended access to its MobileCloud platform to BlackBerry developers for free.  If you're unfamiliar with Perfecto's MobileCloud, it's a development platform that gives you access to devices without the need to install the simulator on your computer.

As my disclaimer says I'm not a developer but this sounds like a pretty handy tool to have access to.  With the multiple types of devices a developer has to accommodate for when developing an application not needing to have multiple simulators running on your computer would be a real asset.

The MobileCloud platform also allows you to test your application across multiple networks in various geographic regions.  Currently their devices are located in Canada, USA, UK, France, India and Israel.  I can see the many benefits of this ability.

More information on the Perfecto MobileCloud

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If you're a BlackBerry application developer who is building apps for the BlackBerry OS then it is pretty crucial to know where the majority of your potential users are. That said; Research In Motion has just put some great charts outlining data that puts a few things into perspective.

You'll need to know which OS' the majority of your users are going to be working off of. Much of that decision will be based off of the fact whether or not your app will be that of a free one or a paid one. If you are working on paid app, then of course you'll not want to be working on an OS that is no longer supported and most people downloading apps are only making use of free ones. You would want to target the audience with current supported OS' and the one where paid apps leading over top of free apps to maximize sales and leverage use of the newer system integrations and tools.

The landscape for BlackBerry Developers as we know it is changing -- with the launch of the PlayBook we're getting amplified look at the way BlackBerry Development is headed. But until then, knowing which BlackBerry Smartphone and audience to cater to is still a big part of day-to-day operation in developing BlackBerry apps. Head on over to the BlackBerry Developers page to get a further look at the numbers.

Choosing a target OS to develop for