RIM's Sweden branch, previously known as The Astonishing Tribe, has made a big splash at Mobile World Congress 2012. One of two new concepts that they're showing off is called Confetti. It's a simple collaboration app that lets you easily transfer files between BlackBerry PlayBooks with a lot more flair than you'd expect. By mounting a webcam on the cieling, the PlayBooks are recognized, assigned a color, and positioned in relation to one another. Before a meeting starts, there's a casual game of virtual catch that you play by tapping your screen's dot. It shoots a streaming of jagged, funky pixels over to another member, and you keep bumping it around until the meeting is ready to start.
You launch the meeting with the top-down swipe, and now you can get to work. Little bubbles show up around the edge of your screen, each representing someone in the meeting, and they change position as the owner moves around. You can use the system menu to pull in images and documents, which can then be dragged to one of these edge bubbles to transfer the file over the local Wi-Fi network. You can also broadcast the file to the other users by pinch-zooming, or using a special gesture, shunt the image out to a projector. You can still share files directly with other users during this exposition mode by moving two BlackBerry PlayBooks close to one another.
Files are transferred over Wi-Fi, but Bluetooth is equally possible, and it's easy to imagine peer-to-peer pairing to be initiated by NFC down the road. If you've got an office already equipped with a bunch of PlayBooks, and you already need a spare to host the file transfers anyway, it might be easier to temporarily suspend one from the cieling than permanently dangling a webcam, but whatever works.
Now, of course we all want this. This is awesome. RIM needs to put everything TAT cooks up in BlackBerry App World. If the App World was exclusively a conduit for TAT apps, and nothing else, I would be perfectly happy with the PlayBook. Unfortunately, TAT was showing off some pretty sweet stuff last year that never found its way into the wild, so the precedent isn't great. As you'll see in my next video, my challenge to Michael was this: "How many CrackBerry.com comments would it take to get this app into App World?" So guys, make some noise in the comments, and show RIM just how serious you are about getting your hands on this beautiful, productive, creative app.
Read more
PitchRocket helps you make quick, good-looking presentations on the fly
The second concept demo from RIM's Sweden branch at Mobile World Congress 2012 is PitchRocket. This is both a PlayBook and smartphone app that help you quickly create visually-impressive presentations. Through the phone, you can create slide text and insert images, while the slide itself is dynamically created on the PlayBook based on whichever preset style you've selected. There would...
RIM and TAT demo BlackBerry PlayBook wireless document sharing at Mobile World Congress
[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ] With Mobile World Congress now officially open to the masses, RIM has been showing off not only the unofficially announced DLNA portion of BlackBerry smartphones at their booth but also a brand new wireless file sharing concept app for the BlackBerry PlayBook designed by The Astonishing Tribe. By taking a couple of BlackBerry PlayBooks and...
RIM's quest for app developers in the wake of PlayBook 2.0
RIM held a cozy little developer panel at Mobile World Congress, where VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders, got folks from Zinio, Marmalade and Pacemaker to talk about precisely how awesome it was developing for BlackBerry. While most of the conversation was predictably positive, the Q&A with press was a bit more critical. I made sure to voice a few questions that were raised...
Box.net gains 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBook users since launching in September 2011
There has been plenty of talk lately surrounding why developers should make their apps available for the BlackBerry PlayBook. While some developers have taken the time to make great apps for the PlayBook, some have not yet done so as they seem to feel the user base is not all that large. While that may be true to a certain point, realistically now is the best time to develop an app...