1st Meeting of Berlin Group

Read about it at: http://berlinblackberrydevelopers.blogspot.com/

BlackBerry Developer Day Hamburg

Just returned from Blackberry Developer Day in Hamburg.
It was much better then I expected although still very introductive.



A lot of attendees had already iphone or android apps developed and are now trying to find out how complicated BB development would be.
This mapps to a survey by Appcelerator where BB is number 3 in developer interests:
http://www.appcelerator.com/mobile-developer-survey-june-2010/

Everyone with BB experience aggreed that RIM has a platform with a much higher learning curve at least in the beginning. Therefore the support forum seems to be most important institution.
I had also a lot of interest in the Blackberry Developer Group in Berlin. Hopefully we'll have some more groups soon.

Don't forget, today is mobile tuesday: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123601887675677&ref=mf

Multiclipboard for BlackBerry

Just uploaded a private app development:

Multiclipboad: the idea:
Use your standard copy menu but paste via the new paste (multiple) menu. Choose from every part of text you copieed lately and have a easy manageable history of your clipboard items. No more application switching when copying multiple entries. View the content of your clipboard and keep your important text snippets always at hand. And the best: the list persists reboot :)




http://www.handango.com/catalog/ProductDetails.jsp?storeId=2218&deviceId=2432&platformId=40&productId=270573§ionId=0

5 things you didn't know about ... JARs

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-5things6.html?ca=drs-

AppWorld near to Robbery?

I just wanted to create an AppWorld vendor account for distribution of a private app I developed. But I just realized the pricing is awful: 200$ for 10 submissions including refuced apps, that's even worse then the announcements for Windows Phone apps.

I always wondered why there are so few apps in the store compared to Android Marketplace for example. I always thought that's because of many providers do not distribute AppWorld but know I think RIM does not get the small developers because of their pricing policy.

I myself will go to other stores now with my app.

Blackberry Developer Day in Hamburg

There will be a Blackberry event in Germany this month:
June 28th
One day in depth Blackberry development. If you are new to BlackBerry development you should join this free event, it's a great overview and start.

http://devblog.blackberry.com/2010/06/blackberry-developer-days-in-europe/

.. about Windows Phone 7

I visited Microsofts Tech Talk in Berlin about Windows Phone 7 last week. And now after some days as more as I think about those 4 hours the more disappointing I am about it.

Why?
They copied from all 3 successful platforms: iOS, BlackBerry, Android. Just look at the featues and you can tell where they are from. That does not have to be bad, you can copy and make it a great product. But only if they would have copied the best. But they copied a lot of bad thinks, too:

- no shared file storage (incl no changeable SDcards)
- no interprocess communication
- no multitasking (no services, no background processes)
- application can only be installed via marketplace
- no copy&paste

You can do these things to your developers and users if your name is Apple and everything you say will be handled as religion. But if your name is Microsoft and you have lost a lot of developers with Windows Mobile? I don't think so.

Also I did not saw any bluetooth on the OEM restrictions or APIs and because the OEM can not extend the API's there probably won't be any bluetooth for developers soon. And the list goes on: there is no access to the videostream, this means no augmented reality apps!

Somethimes I thought they talk about MIDP 1.0 from the year 2001. Why? Mostly because of:
- no socket connections!! Only HTTP(S) is allowed

I know it's hard starting all over again and they promised a lost of things will come later but aren't they already too late?

I also think MS copied a big mistake of J2ME: developers are getting frustrated if native apps can do much more, if your app looks like a native app but is always slightly different. They made the same now again: developers have to use Silverlight3/C# apps but the apps on the device are not implemented that way (you can tell because the icons for app must be in 2 resolutions as pixel graphics but all icons withing your app will be vectory SVGs). If the apps itself would be programmed with the same language and APIs any problems or restrictions will be found before the release of the platform but now they will be detected by us and it will take long to get them into the platform.
That's why I like BlackBerry: nearly all apps are implemented in Java, this is how they developed a lot of tools they needed and provided them to the community as well. But if your 3rd party API always will be a VM layer on top of your's you don't care.

But MS doesn't seem to care about development community. Another example is their marketplace: As an app developer you can only upload 5 apps within a year for free (if your app is free). And it seems (the MS guy did not know for sure) this is not 5 apps but 5 uploads even the one that failed the MS tests. Didn't MS realize that free apps is what makes appstore successfull?
It's the apps stupid!

1st Meeting of BlackBerry Developer Group Berlin

Come and talk to us:
nerdy blackberry talk with beer or lemonade at tuesday 29 this month:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123601887675677&ref=mf

Uncaught Exceptions and the BlackBerry Whitescreen

Most BlackBerry developer experiences an uncaught excecption at some point.
Very oftens it's a RuntimeException the developer did not expect.


What's the best way to find it?

The default behaviour is to choose "continue" and search for the problem in the code.
This could be done by looking into the EventLog where uncaught exception will be logged with full stack trace (see also

But did you ever scroll through all the options?
There is "attach debugger" which is the easiest way to find the problem when this happens in the simulator.


Simply connect your Eclipse via "Debug As" -> "Remote Java application" to default port 8000. Afterwards(!) click "attach debugger" on the simulator.


Voilà! :)

You will be directly sent to the codeline where the exception occurs with full stack trace available, you can check all the variables. Finding an exception was never easier