In this interview, Jeff talks about Magmic’s NYT license and how they leveraged the brand to develop NYT Crossword and NYT Sudoku. The first thing that struck me during the interview, was Jeff’s comment about the fact that when they first started developing for BlackBerry, there were only a few models and implicitly suggested that development for BlackBerry has become more complicated. If a veteran developer such as Jeff is lamenting about the development process, RIM should these comments very seriously. At around 8 minutes, on the subject of costs associated with porting, Jeff says “it can get frustrating sometimes…why is someone releasing a new device that requires us to redesign a new UI for it?” The release of the BlackBerry Storm, apparently caused a lot of headaches dealing with the touchscreen, and cost the company dollars in porting and redesigning their games. Continue reading ‘Magmic’s Product Manager Jeff Bacon on BlackBerry, iPhone and NYT Brand’
Since the release of the BlackBerry Presenter and the announcement of the iPad I’ve been thinking more about mobile word processing. Until now I was satisfied just using the notepad and email functions to export the note-taking I do on my BlackBerry, onto my desktop. When iPad’s iWork word processing got debuted, I started thinking about how great it would be to get advanced word-processing features on my text-nimble BlackBerry.
After some testing I found myself wondering why bold, italics, and basic text formatting aren’t part of the BlackBerry experience. I would love it if I could compose BBMs or emails in bold, italics, and strikethroughs.
UberTwitter have launched version 0.970 and they’ve included a nice changelog for those looking to see what specific updates and fixes have occurred. Some of the notable updates include the ability to opt out of sponsored tweets, delete direct messages and they’ve added a new shortcut for scrolling up your timeline (press ’0′). Click the jump to see the full changelog.
Verizon have begun to push their Skype Mobile services on YouTube, and while the video doesn’t reveal anything new about the product, it’s good to see that things are moving forward. Verizon claims the call quality will be excellent, and messaging will be an integral part of the service. Hopefully Verizon haven’t locked Skype down from doing business with other carriers, as I know many other BlackBerry users in Canada and on other providers would love to get their hands on this service.
Shazam is the app that’s famous for being able to tell you what song you’re listening to, simply by having the app tag a portion of the track. The app has been recently updated, and the major feature is that they are now offering sales through the 7Digital store. Also new to the app includes the ability to watch music videos of tagged songs with YouTube (Vevo?) and tweet tags to your followers.
