One thing that distinguishes the BlackBerry brand is our strong focus on enabling productivity and professionalism. With the way people work constantly evolving, the expectations of what collaboration tools should do are also continuously changing. At MWC, we have taken a look at a few aspects we think will be valuable for collaborating and what collaboration might look like in the world of tomorrow – effortless aesthetics and productive yet playful collaboration. Take a look at our MWC demos PitchRocket and Confetti to see further examples of what this could mean in practice.

PitchRocket concept demo

Many have a limited time to prepare for meetings and presentations, still we all know how an impressive presentation can really help someone who wants to pitch an idea or a concept. What if there was a way to create an astonishing presentation on the fly, even just a few minutes before a meeting starts? The concept demo PitchRocket shows what possibilities open up when combining the efficient text input of a handheld BlackBerry smartphone with the powerful graphics and high-resolution output of a BlackBerry® PlayBook™. Imagine writing simple text on your handheld device, and then instantly see it rendered as a beautiful, fluid and “living” presentation available on your PlayBook. The immediacy and combination of minimal input with maximized output is what we mean by “effortless aesthetics.”

Confetti concept demo

People bring PlayBook tablets to meetings and use them for presentations, note-taking and communicating. What if all these devices could be seamless joined into an extended work space linking all the screens? The Confetti demo shows what futuristic collaboration may look like on the BlackBerry platform. The tool enables sharing and presentation among participants, with a presence and direction-aware user interface as well as dynamic particle-like effects, allowing meeting participants to seamlessly collaborate in a productive yet playful way. Also, after seeing this demo, it’s clear that the PlayBook experience extends beyond the size of the device’s screen.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Here’s a guest post from our friend Anders at RIM TAT! – Ed.

Cascades is the user interface (“UI”) framework that TAT has been using for many years to create numerous advanced UIs and applications, such as Scrapbook for BlackBerry PlayBook. I’m happy to announce that it will soon be part of the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS.

Here’s a short list of Cascades features:

• Great performance, including amazing transitions and animations
• Flexible UI layouts including free form lists.
• 3D support
• Support for mixing pre-packaged UI components with custom components
• Core UI feature support

Cascades was originally developed to enable development of really innovative and unique applications. This put hard requirements on the flexibility and extendibility of the UI framework. The need for designer/developer collaboration was also one of stronger driving factors when developing the framework. Let’s dig deeper into how Cascades will aid the development of rich and compelling UI.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

(YouTube link for mobile viewing)

Hey friends, we have a great guest post today all the way from Malmö, Sweden! Check out the sweet blogging styles of Dan and Minna, from The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) – now part of the Research In Motion® TAT team in Sweden.

Hi all! We’re excited to tell you we’ve released a new version of the popular Scrapbook app for the BlackBerry ® PlayBook™ tablet in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. We’ve listed the new features in Scrapbook v1.1 below, but make sure to watch the video we shot, too!*

Scrapbook v1.1 New Features:

• Share Scrapbooks on your Facebook® wall
• New postcard and summer themes
• Delete Scrapbooks

The history and teams behind Scrapbook

The User Experience (“UX”) Advanced Prototyping team first created Scrapbook as a demo for Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. Our intention was to create a fun, comprehensive and visually impressive demo that communicates the power and potential of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. As for all demos at large events, we looked for something that could be explained and demonstrated with an impact in less than a minute.

(YouTube link for mobile viewing)

The demo was a hit at MWC and many people who saw the demo wanted to see it become a real application for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Scrapbook was then handed over to a skilled app team within the Research In Motion TAT team, which faced the task of turning it into the real application that many of you enjoy today. People often underestimate how tricky it can be to maintain the great UX, simplicity and performance of a demo when developing a full application. A demo is a safe playground where behaviors and external factors are controlled, while a real application must solve all imaginable, unexpected use cases. It is a testament to the hard work of the Research In Motion TAT team and the ease of BlackBerry PlayBook tablet app development that we were able to maintain a great UX in the final Scrapbook version.

The app team that developed the Scrapbook application consists of highly experienced developers and designers. All of us worked closely together to be able to maintain a very agile work process. This means weekly, and often daily, iterations. The key is to have a cross-competent team and a clear vision!

Early Scrapbook sketches and prototypes

In creating the initial Scrapbook demo, we focused more on creating an impressive and rich user interface (“UI”) rather than adding lots of functionality, which is why the initial release included only a select number of polished features. We iterated the visual style, animations and effects many times before we were satisfied. Finally, we managed to make all objects move seamlessly between menus and screens and the reflections of moving photos were just right. The Scrapbook app might actually have the subtlest visual effects our 3D programming experts have ever created!

This paper sketch image is from the very first idea video made by one of our colleagues while he was at home.

This image shows an early visual style experiment for Scrapbook.

This is the summary of a brainstorming session, including photos taken from a whiteboard.

Socializing by remixing

When brainstorming around Scrapbook, we thought a lot about what tablets are good for. Yes, they are great for consuming media and for playing games, and they have also become a platform for content creation (e.g. text, images or music). However, we think they might be even better for remixing content. People want to communicate around content they have generated or experienced, whether it is images, video, music, games or web pages. So why not create an app that allows users to remix images into social objects that they can share with their friends?

As a social application that allows people to communicate through fun visual creations, we wanted to make Scrapbook open-ended enough to support emergent behavior, so people can come up with new ways to use the app. With the new postcard themes and ability to share with friends via Facebook, we hope people will use Scrapbook v1.1 in new and creative ways we have not yet thought of. If you have any great Scrapbook stories, please share them with us!

Download Scrapbook v1.1

* Video music graciously provided by Daniel Johansson from the Research in Motion TAT team! Check out more of his music here.

By posting a comment below you acknowledge that you have read and accept these terms and conditions and that any ideas you post will be the property of RIM in accordance with the terms and conditions.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Earlier this week, we showed you some BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet applications being demoed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) at Mobile World Congress 2011. Both the ‘Scrapbook’ app demo and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ videos were great demonstrations of the power the BlackBerry PlayBook platform has for providing a rich application experience – and that wasn’t all TAT had on hand for us!

The above concept demo, which shows a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet outputting stereoscopic 3D visuals, demonstrates many of the hardware features of the tablet: 1080P HD visual, micro HDMI output, and multi-touch support. It’s also really cool to look at, whether you’re wearing 3D glasses or not! Check it out and let us know what you think of the possibilities of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Following the BlackBerry Developer Day App Circus at Mobile World Congress 2011, Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup, was able to give me a brief look at a BlackBerry PlayBook application developed by The Astonishing Tribe that demonstrates the power and flexibility of BlackBerry WebWorks platform.

The “aura” application shown in the video above demonstrates rich graphics and physics engine similar to TAT’s “scrapbook” demo, but was built entirely with web technologies like HTML5 and CSS. Built in a week, “aura” demonstrates how web developers can leverage the professional grade performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook platform just like Adobe AIR and native application developers.

This is a perfect example of why developers packed the BlackBerry Developer Day WebWorks bootcamp sessions yesterday. Click the link below to download the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK and start building your own BlackBerry PlayBook Application!

BlackBerry WebWorks SDK For BlackBerry Tablet OS

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to catch up with recent acquisition The Astonishing Tribe this week at Mobile World Congress 2011. In the short amount of time since joining RIM, they’ve already built a variety of fun apps demonstrating the performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook platform. One application that caught our eye was the “scrapbook” app, which demonstrates advanced four-finger multi-touch controls and rich graphics in the above video.

Like Need For Speed Underground, the “scrapbook” application is a great example of the power BlackBerry developers will be able to utilize in quickly making their own PlayBook applications with the native BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK. We can’t wait to see what our friends at TAT will show us next!

Today we are pleased to confirm plans for The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) team to join Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the TAT team will be joining RIM and bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.

For those who don’t know, TAT is renowned for their innovative mobile user interface (UI) designs and has a long history of working with mobile and embedded technology. TAT focuses on delivering great user experiences, from a design, technology, and usability perspective. Their design technology is used today in a variety of industries including the consumer electronics and automotive sectors. Examples of TAT’s UI designs and concepts can be viewed on their web site at www.tat.se.

– David Yach, Chief Technology Officer at RIM