RIM has no plans at this time to bring Microsoft Silverlight support to the BlackBerry Platform. Should they?!

The current problem with no Microsoft Silverlight support on the BlackBerry PlayBook / QNX BB Platform…

And RIM’s current plan to address that issue as relayed by the @blackberrydev twitter account today…

Some of you may be reading this post and scratching your head… What’s Microsoft Silverlight? To use the official verbage from Microsoft, Microsoft Silverlight is a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich business applications and immersive mobile apps. While most computer web browsers/OS’s support Silverlight, not a lot of mobile devices do (as you might guess, Windows Phone does).

RIM played a part in the making of Twitter

Granted, it’s a small part but when speaking of Twitters early days Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey credits the use of his then RIM 850 as a tool that helped spark status updates across the World.

“I had a RIM pager, the 850, the first email device. I programed a system where I could fire off an email from that and set my status from anywhere. And it worked! And I was able to also at a regular interval pull my buddy list and get those updates sent to my email address. It was awesome! But the number of people who had those mobile devices was so minimal that the timing was just not right. This was 2001.”

We’d like to pretend we are surprised at this news but really — we’re not. People tend to forget that RIM was one of the first companies to make use of mobile data. The RIM 850 provided e-mail and WAP services, with limited HTML all across what was then basically a 1G network, called Mobitex. The inter@active pager was in the hands of approximately 400,000 users in 1997 then blew up to 51 million users by 2002.

Source: Gizmodo via:CB

Review: Size Matters 7” PlayBook Is Just Right

Somebody said 7″s isn’t enough I say what matters is what you do with it right? Well I think RIM did an awesome job with the PlayBook and the form factor just feels right. Since I got the PlayBook I been carrying around and everyone that sees it wants to play with it. The BlackBerry PlayBook is a power house, handles multitasking with ease, and transition from one application is easy. Learning the swipe gestures takes little time, and navigating through apps is fun. I am not going to bore you covering each feature with a microscopic point of view but the basics, what it does best and where it can improve, and will.

Price: $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB, and $699 for the 64GB

Hands On With the BlackBerry PlayBook Web Browser

 

The web browser on the BlackBerry PlayBook is one of the key parts making up the PlayBook experience. I do not think I could cover all it can do in one article but I will attempt to hit the highlights. The browser opens the door for many of the web apps you currently enjoy on your desktop or laptop such as: Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Pandora, Slacker, etc. It has some limitations in this current build of the OS such as pausing the browser windows and sometimes reloading them when you leave them for two long. Otherwise the PlayBook browser tends to put even my desktop browser to shame in terms of speed. I also like that RIM carries over some nice desktop features like the ability to remember which tabs you had open last time.

Updated: BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS

Research in Motion continues to stay true to its mission of supporting app developers, releasing today its latest beta for the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS. It’s a mouthful of a name, but it promises great improvements. WebWorks applications are web applications written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS; they install, work, and have the same security features as traditional apps. The update to the SDK changes much of the architecture, so developers will need to recompile their WebWorks apps in order to run them in the latest Tablet OS (PlayBook) simulator.

• Code signing enabled – you can now secure your application using the BlackBerry code signing process for BlackBerry Tablet OS.
• AJAX support for local context. This fix improves the quality of support for using AJAX to retrieve local resources. A benefit of this fix includes improved support on the BlackBerry® PlayBook^TM tablet for JavaScript® frameworks like jQuery.
• Loading screen image – Developers can define a loading screen and transition effect in their config.xml file to improve the user experience during application startup.
• Major improvements in Mac support – Absolute paths now allowed in ZIP archive; _MACOSX folder no longer being included in BAR file; Format of bbwp command line arguments changed from “-” to “/”

More information about the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS Beta3

Via: Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog

BlackBerry App World now accepting apps for BlackBerry PlayBook

It was announced today that BlackBerry App World will now be accepting applications designed for the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM has opened the vendor portal for developers to start submitting their PlayBook applications. As a bit of incentive, any developer who submits an approved app will be eligible to receive a free BlackBerry PlayBook upon its North American release.

QNX OS Slated To Replace BlackBerry OS Confirmed By RIM’s VP

This morning a VP at RIM confirmed that the QNX based OS on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will eventually be replacing the current BlackBerry OS architecture. There was no time frame given nor were there any other details. Moving the BlackBerry to the QNX OS seems like a logical transition. The Java structure of BlackBerry OS is quite outdated and difficult to work with. The new QNX OS is based on common standards such as HTML, CSS, java, and features support for important processing engines such as HTML5, Flash, and OpenGL. Some of these are available on the current BlackBerry OS but not in full. The new features and ease of development for a QNX OS would help RIM drive the BlackBerry even farther into the business and consumer space.

The current rumors are saying that the QNX OS will come after BlackBerry OS 7, with BB7 being a mixture of the old BlackBerry OS architecture with the new QNX OS system. From the looks of the QNX OS BlackBerry users will be very happy in the near future. The features that RIM has built into that OS are mind blowing on a tablet and will be even more amazing when they bring it to us in the BlackBerry smartphone form factor. It will be interesting to see how RIM moves from BlackBerry OS to QNX OS. We should begin to get more details in the coming months. In the meantime, who’s excited for BlackBerry 6 on their new and existing devices?

Source & Image: IntoMobile

Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service

RIM today launched their BlackBerry Advertising Service. The service for the BlackBerry platform allows developers to easily integrate advertising into new or existing applications. The advertising can be integrated into applications with just three lines of code, making it super easy to get things rolling. The ads will be relevant to the application as well as be able to tie into native BlackBerry applications like email, maps, calendar and more.

Press Release

Press Release: RIM rebrands widgets as WebWorks; Releases open source code to developer community

RIM announced today their new WebWorks platform (what we knew as widgets) that will allow developers to build full applications in HTML-5, Javascript and CSS. The applications can take advantage of features through API’s and other services as well. RIM is also working with the community to allow for use of open source components to help in the evolution of the platform.

Press Release

BlackBerry Torch 9800 available from Telus on September 24th

Following closely in the footsteps of Rogers, Telus announced via Twitter that they too will be offering the BlackBerry Torch 9800 on September 24th. Both Canadian carriers are set to release now on the same day making for lots of happy folks. Unlike Rogers however, Telus made no mention of the pricing in their release, but it’s a pretty safe bet to say it will stick to the $199/3-year pricing scheme. No extra information has been posted up on Telus’ site just yet. Hit the jump for the full release.