Now that BlackBerry® Java® SDK v7.0 is available in BlackBerry® Developer Zone, it’s time to start getting your apps ready for BlackBerry® 7 in order to ensure that you’re ready to support the new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9930 smartphones at launch. To help you out, I’ve prepared a little step-by-step guide for getting your app BlackBerry 7 ready.

But before we get into things, it’s important to note the following: If you are currently distributing your apps through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, you will need to log into the vendor portal and select the apps that you would like to have posted as “For Sale” for those smartphones running BlackBerry 7, because your apps will not automatically be available for these new smartphones. So, now’s the time to start testing, updating, and posting your apps for BlackBerry 7 to be ready for launch.

With all that said, on to the step-by-step guide!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

Following the announcement of BlackBerry® 7 at the BlackBerry® World™ conference, I’m pleased to announce that the BlackBerry® Java® SDK v7.0 is now available in beta!

This new version of the SDK also comes with simulators for the new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 series of smartphones, allowing you to test your applications against the latest and greatest. With the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9930 smartphone on their way, you will have the tools you need to make sure your apps are running on these smartphones at launch. What’s more, the BlackBerry App World™ storefront is also accepting app submissions for these new devices! You now have the chance to be among the first to have your application submitted and ready for these exciting new products.

The BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse™ and the BlackBerry Java Development Environment have also both been updated to support the new OS version, featuring an abundance of new APIs. They’re all listed out in great detail in the “New in this Release” section of the Release Notes.

For more information on what developers need to know about BlackBerry 7 and to download the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 beta, check out the BlackBerry 7 landing page on BlackBerry Developer Zone.

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

One of the highlights for me this week at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was having the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing work from developers starting to leverage the BBM social platform. Social networking application foursquare is one such example, and was demoed during the Tuesday General Session keynote by Senior Director of Developer Relations (and fellow Inside BlackBerry blogger) Mike Kirkup.

foursquare developers Pete and Jeff provide a great demonstration of the upcoming foursquare for BlackBerry smartphones app integration with BBM in the video above. If you want to learn more about developing with the BBM social platform, check out my Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog post, which has an extended interview with both Mike and Pete!

foursquare and BBM: A Super App Meets the Social Platform (VIDEO)

The BlackBerry® Partners Fund has just announced the launch of the BlackBerry® Developer Challenge for 2011 and has started accepting submissions for the first Competition! This year, there are three Competitions in total. Their purpose is to recognize, reward and celebrate innovation within the BlackBerry developer community. Similar to last year, each Competition will recognize winners in their respective regions, which will give developers the opportunity to stand out from one another with local content and language support.

The three Competitions are as follows:

• Best Adobe Flash/Adobe AIR app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet – now accepting submissions – click this link for the Official Rules
• Most innovative BlackBerry® WebWorks™ app on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry® 6 (same app or companion app) – begins May 9, 2011
• Most Addictive social app using the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform – beginning later this summer

New this year, in addition to the Competitions, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will be honouring applications in six categories to receive a Recognition Award. The recipients, which will be recognized regionally, will be selected in the following categories:

• Best B2C app developed for a customer by an Agency or ISV
• Most useful enterprise application (all technologies)
• Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform
• Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics
• Top Performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service
• Academic – Most compelling app created by student or faculty

It’s exciting to note that across the three Competitions, there is approximately $3 million US in prizes available to be won. That’s almost double the value of last year’s prizing. This includes the incentive prizes that will be given out to the first 100 submissions in each Competition. Each incentive prize includes a free BlackBerry smartphone and a feature in the BlackBerry App World™ carousel for 1 week! Please click this link for the full terms and conditions.

To find out more details on the BlackBerry Developer Challenge and to submit your apps, visit the BlackBerry Partners Fund website and BlackBerry Developer Zone. I’m very much looking forward to seeing your apps submitted to the Competitions – happy building and good luck!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Are you looking for the next awesome BlackBerry® smartphone app? If so, you’ll want to peruse the winning applications from the 3rd Annual BlackBerry Partners Fund Super Apps Developer Challenge. The Super Apps Challenge started with an open call to the BlackBerry developer community to tell us how they had used the Super App characteristics to deliver an application that users can’t live without. Now that the Challenge has wrapped up, we wanted to highlight some of the winners and finalists (check out the above commercial for one of our winners!).

Selected from nearly 400 applications for BlackBerry smartphones across four regions—North America, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America – these apps range across nine categories: Maps & Navigation, Reference & eBooks, Photo & Video, Business, News, Shopping, Utilities, Sports & Recreation, and IM & Social Networking.

Discover the kinds of Super Apps that people love and use every day:

North America

Winner:

Poynt (Maps & Navigation): Poynt is designed to enable users to find businesses, retailers, restaurants, events, movies, gas prices (US only) and weather information. It uses GPS or cell-site location to quickly deliver the information users need, whenever and wherever they need it, right on their BlackBerry smartphone.

Finalists:

• Dictionary and Thesaurus – Dictionary.com (Reference & ebooks): The only free dictionary app for BlackBerry smartphones is from Dictionary.com. Their well-known reference content from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com includes more than 500,000 words, definitions, and synonyms. The app also features phonetic and audio pronunciations, spelling suggestions and Dictionary.com’s popular Word of the Day that is enjoyed by millions of people.
• Vayyoo (Photo and Video): With Vayyoo it is easy to capture and share life’s moments in one BlackBerry application. Whether users are out with friends, having fun on vacation, or witnessing breaking news, Vayyoo makes capturing and sharing moments simple by integrating the camera, location, email and many other BlackBerry smartphone features.

Latin America

Winner:

Vlingo Plus – Voice App (Utilities): Vlingo is the intelligent voice app that is designed to turn a user’s words into action. With Vlingo, users can simply speak to their BlackBerry smartphone to send a text or email message to any contact, search the web using Google® or Yahoo! ®, call a friend, update their Facebook® or Twitter® status, use instant messaging apps, and speak to virtually any application. It also reads incoming text and email messages while users are on the go.

Finalists:

• Navita Sports (Sports & Recreation): Navita Sports is designed to provide up-to-the-minute sport scores and coverage including soccer, tennis, Formula 1 racing, basketball, football, hockey and rugby. Game times are based on a user’s time zone; in some sports, users can choose which categories they like to watch and more.
• Waze (LATAM) (Maps & Navigation): Waze’s social navigation app is designed to bring users to the intersection of where geogaming meets crowdsourced traffic info and real-time live maps. In addition to providing free turn-by-turn navigation on BlackBerry smartphones, Waze is also designed to give drivers the ability to actively update users on traffic, construction, and more, reflecting a live description of the road at any given moment.

Europe / Middle East / Africa

Winner:

UbiNav EU (Maps & Navigation): UbiNav is designed to turn a BlackBerry smartphone into a reliable GPS mapping solution with real-time turn by turn navigation on screen. Users can listen to the turn-by-turn vocal instructions and find whatever they need wherever they are. They can find, map, navigate to, or simply call over 10 million businesses listed within the database.

Finalists:

• CamCard(Business Card Reader) (Business): CamCard is a professional business card reader based on IntSig’s market leading OCR technologies. It is designed to help users turn piles of business cards into BlackBerry contacts with just a few clicks. Users need only provide clear card photos either by built-in camera or album. Snap and click, and all info on the business card will be automatically recognized and categorized.
• n-tv mobil (News): This application is designed to enable users to get the latest news and videos on their BlackBerry smartphones. Users can open news articles at the push of a button; open and configure Favorites; find information on scheduled German soccer league matches, and more.

Asia Pacific

Winner:

Love Indonesia (Shopping): This application is an all-in-one guide to Indonesia on BlackBerry smartphones. It is a free Location-Based City Directory with different search features that are designed to help users find anything they need, such as discount promotions of merchants for each city in Indonesia, information on restaurants, hotels, shopping, movies, news, traffic, events and more. Love Indonesia currently covers 16 cities, with more cities to come.

Finalists:

• Forum for BlackBerry (IM & Social Networking): REMKO’s Forum is an application for mobile devices designed to enable users to discuss the latest news and events, politics, gossip, music, sports, religion, fashion, love and relationships, and more with other BlackBerry smartphone owners worldwide. Users can also exchange images, ringtones and files with others while on the go.
• Ramadhan Pocket Guide (Utilities): Ramadhan Pocket Guide for BlackBerry smartphones is designed to provide up to date information about Islamic Prayer Schedules, Imsak Schedules and Adzan reminders. Users can choose schedules and reminders based on location, enhanced with notification alerts using vibration and actual Adzan sounds.

Are you using any of these apps right now? Which ones do you like the best? Let us know in the comments!

With a great deal of anticipation and excitement, the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK for BlackBerry® Tablet OS was recently announced at BlackBerry® DEVCON Asia. The BlackBerry WebWorks SDK provides developers with an additional mechanism for writing applications for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, in addition to a framework that enables rapid application development and easier portability between the BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platforms.

Developers are invited to attend a four-part webcast series about the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, hosted by Application Development Consultants Adam Stanley and Prosanta Bhattacherjee.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

The time has come to crown the Regional Winners of the 2010 Super Apps Developer Challenge!

Here’s a quick recap of some of my highlights along the way…

The challenge launched in April, with an open call to the developer community to tell us why they thought they had built a Super App by explaining how they used the Super App characteristics to deliver an exceptional user experience. During the challenge, we shared insights through our blog posts and webcast series, and even dropped a few special Super Apps tips. And the community responded – at BlackBerry® DEVCON we accepted almost 400 participants into the challenge. Some of those entries were highlighted at the Community Connection event on Monday night.

And now, after many hours of reviewing the application forms and applications, we are happy to shine a light on the Winners! We selected one winner for each region – North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Each winner is a great example of how to leverage the power of the BlackBerry platform to build compelling applications that customers want to use every day!

Check out the winners at the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

Our sister site, the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog, was overflowing with content yesterday from the App Planet BlackBerry Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2010. Fom keynote liveblogging, to new program announcements, or sneak previews of the forthcoming BlackBerry WebKit Browser (see above video), the Developer’s Blog had it all covered. They even threw in some BlackBerry smartphone-controlled LEGO robots for good measure! We’ve taken the time to round up all the great content below, but remember that all the latest news from Barcelona, Spain can be found at our dedicated Mobile World Congress 2010 blog page.

BlackBerry WebKit Browser Preview!
What is a Super App?
BlackBerry Developer Day Live Blog
New Community Programs – Developer Groups and Developer Recognition
Enhancements to the BlackBerry Developer Forums
BlackBerry Developer Day Robot Fun