The voice of the BlackBerry community.
We have already told you that Xobni are here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference showing off their upcoming app for BlackBerry.
The Xobni BlackBerry app does an excellent job of organizing your contacts and saving you time finding and sending emails. The app seamlessly integrates with your email and the above video demonstrates a typical time-saving task with their application.
The 7Digital Music Store for BlackBerry has gone version 1.1 and there are a host of improvements as well as new features. Some of the latest additions include more countries supported, as well as enhanced functionality and a fully optimized touch-screen UI for the BlackBerry Storm.
With this latest version, the following are new:
The following have been improved in the newest version:
The latest version is available from 7Digital or BlackBerry App World.
RIM announced that App World is now accepting theme submissions. The announcement was a little buried along with the announcement of the BlackBerry Theme Studio 5, which helps developers make more compelling themes for BlackBerry.
RIM have said that they are taking submissions now, and next month we will see an update to App World with a themes category. Presumably, the category will feature a wide range of themes for all the latest devices including the Storm2.
Stay tuned on BlackBerry Cool for more info.
Here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference, Loopt have announced a major update to their free BlackBerry app. The Loopt application is a location based services app that connects relevant people and placing while constantly running in the background.
Today we got a demo of Loopt by Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, to show off the latest features as RIM announce their latest location services. The app now offers dynamically-generated, relevant local content about places and events from some of the best sources on the Web to help users meet up with nearby friends, explore new places to grab food, and find local events happening now. Feature highlights include:
Here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference we got a sneak peek at the upcoming Xobni app for BlackBerry. The app features a ubiquitous search bar that is seamlessly integrated into your mail, contacts and social networks. The app gives you a great deal of data about each contact including basic contact information as well as updates from that contact’s social networks. The app will also show you possible connections from within these networks.
One of the most impressions features is the way Xobni organizes your contacts across all your email services. The Xobni demo showed how easy it is to take a common name, for which there could be tens of entries, and efficiently move between the Xobni app and your email. Also, for those names which could have multiple entries, Xobni uses a ranking system that means your most interacted with contacts are at the top.
Xobni isn’t currently available but it looks like they are very close to a launch. Stay tuned because this app looks great.
The BlackBerry Developer Conference kicked off with Jim Balsillie announcing a wide range of new tools available to BlackBerry developers that are going to redefine what we think of as a BlackBerry app.
The latest set of APIs available to BlackBerry developers are focused on making ad-supported apps easier to develop, and help to more easily monetize the developer’s hard work. The new BlackBerry Advertising Service will allow developers to integrate ads from networks such as Jumptap, Millennial Media, Navteq, 1020 Placecast, Quattro Wireless and Sympatico.ca. The Advertising Service and SDK will be available in the first half of 2010.
Click through for more announcements from the BlackBerry Developers Conference
The latest location services from RIM offer some great implications for BlackBerry apps.
The latest location services from RIM use cell tower triangulation to help with location based apps. Using cell tower triangulation, you can get location services inside a building where you wouldn’t normally get a GPS signal.
Another feature of the new location services is that it leverages a community generated database of information. An example of this is pictured above where a map displays all the available cell towers around the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco.
For a good example of an app that leverages these new services, check out Loopt in App World.
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At the BlackBerry Developer conference we got a sneak peek at the upcoming ebay app for BlackBerry.
The app features a deal of the day where you can bid on the day’s hot item. Another great feature of the app is the ability to add a reminder to bid on an item, with a fully integrated calendar alert system.
If you’re an ebay fan, be sure to pick up this app when it goes live. We’ll keep you posted on pricing and release date, but so far all we know is it will be available in App World later this month.
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BlackBerry apps are going to get very consumer friendly, very fast as RIM keep making announcements about new features and services for developers that appeal to the consumer market.
Today, at the BlackBerry Developer Conference, RIM and Adobe announced that creative professionals and application developers will be able to use the Adobe Flash Platform and Adobe Creative Suite content development and authoring tools, to easily create rich content and application experiences for BlackBerry.
With Flash, OpenGL support and the new GUI builder, BlackBerry apps in 2010 are going to look very different than in 2009.
For more information, developers can visit the BlackBerry Developer Zone and Adobe Developer Site.
The BlackBerry Developer Conference has kicked off with a great start as RIM have announced a host of great features for developers that are going to help them make richer and more attractive content.
The first major announcement is the addition of OpenGL ES support that will help developers make 3D games and graphics. The high performance rendering engine is available on the Storm2, and it makes games like EA’s Need for Speed Shift, look really impressive.
Another announcement is a GUI builder, integrated into the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse. The builder will make it faster and easier for Java developers to build user interfaces for BlackBerry applications.
The next big announcement is the BlackBerry Theme Studio 5 that replaces the previously available Plazmic Content Developer’s Kit. The studio allows developers to make themes with the ability to import Adobe Photoshop files to BlackBerry Theme Builder, add ringtones and build screen transitions such as zooming, sliding, wiping and fading within themes. Ringtones and screen transitions are supported for BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS 5.0 and higher.
So stay tuned because we’re about to see some very compelling applications for BlackBerry that have rich 3D graphics and more integration with the device.
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