RIM reinforces partnership with Adobe

SAN FRANCISCO--It has been a field day for developers as Research In Motion (RIM) made a string of announcements at the second BlackBerry Developer Conference (see our photo gallery here) in San Francisco.
Kicking off the event on Monday was co-CEO Jim Balsillie who spoke about the "deep, rich integration" in BlackBerry smartphones and creating a transformative experience for users. He identified application developers and carriers as key factors in achieving them.
The first BlackBerry Developer Conference was held in Santa Clara last year with approximately 700 developers. This time round, over 1,000 participants including both developers and media are present at the four-day event in San Francisco.
Balsillie said: "The rate of change of transformation is accelerating, but at the end of the day, strategies at the root are simple and fundamental. So what I want to do is share with you our fundamental strategic thinking and how this is manifested in the new services platform and the new tools and extensions."

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and RIM co-CEO Jim Basillie took the stage together in the closing segment of the keynote address.

Collaboration with Adobe

If there was one focus point at the keynote session that lasted nearly 4 hours, it was RIM's alliance with Adobe.
For starters, developers will be able to use familiar Adobe software including Flash 10, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flex to enhance the user experience on BlackBerry smartphones. Building on this is the Creative Suite 4 Device Central which will bridge the gap between designer and developer roles. Designers will be able to preview their work on an emulator in Device Central which is linked with the Eclipse developing environment. They can also preview scripts and upload changes directly to a BlackBerry smartphone connected to the laptop via USB.
In early October, RIM joined the Open Screen Project and said it will bring the Flash player to its mobile Web browsers. In the same month, the Waterloo-based company bought Torch Mobile which makes the Webkit-based Iris browser. Most critics saw that as a step forward in improving its smartphones' browser which seemed stuck in the last decade compared with the ones on competing devices such as Safari on the iPhone.
RIM confirmed without elaborating further that it will offer the Webkit browser in 2010. That would be one thing to look out for next year.

New services platforms

The company is also making it easier for developers to generate profits from applications with the new application programming interfaces (API) that integrate advertising, payment, geo-location and push notification for widgets and content.
A new advertising service, which will be available in the first half of 2010, will reduce the time needed for coding applications as there will be only one software development kit (SDK). With the SDK, developers can now integrate advertisements in contacts, applications and rich media such as videos which could drive down prices of the applications. On the other hand, end users can, for example, call a contact or add a calendar entry directly from the advertisement. Ad units comprise Jumptap, Lat49, Millennial Media, Navteq, 1020 Placecast, Quattro Wireless and Sympatico.ca, which are compliant with guidelines set by the Mobile Marketing Association.
Also unveiled at the event was a new payment service. In a Bloomberg Mobile demonstration, users will be able to purchase premium content within the application. Games that run on the iPhone commonly make use of such a payment process. The current payment service for RIM's App World is Paypal, but the company is looking to introduce subscription models and other payment modes next year. The new service is expected to be available in mid-2010.
Location-specific solutions have been getting a lot of attention with the recently announced Google Maps Navigation and Tele Atlas' Speed Profiles launch in Taiwan. Likewise, RIM's sitting up and taking notice with three location-based services that use cell phone tower data to triangulate a location. Not only can this be used indoors, it will be able to associate seemingly indecipherable coordinates to specific addresses and estimate travel time in navigation apps.
Third-party applications are also getting a new set of wings with the enabling of push service. This was traditionally available only on core BlackBerry apps. Due out in the first half of 2010, the push service will support both Java apps and BlackBerry widgets. The service will be provided free to all developers, letting them send up to 8KB of data to applications or insert a notification into your inbox. In a demo, Curtis Sasaki, vice president of Product Management for RIM, showed a CNN Money app which updates itself with an icon on the top of the screen as well as in the ribbon of application shortcuts along the bottom. Another example mentioned was WeatherBug for live weather data.
In addition, new Java development tools were made available. The JDE plug-in for Eclipse 1.1 beta features improved project and source code management as well as a deeper integration with Eclipse. The GUI Builder design studio, which got developers cheering, will be ready for use in mid-2010. With its release, this will let developers design applications within a drag-and-drop framework and a WYSIWYG user interface.

The BlackBerry Developer Program currently has over 200,000 registered developers. The company will also be participating in the Mobile World Congress App Planet developer event February 16, 2010 in Barcelona.

Games, user themes and widgets

OpenGL ES, currently available with the BlackBerry Java SDK 5.0, may not be a term that's familiar to most people, but the graphics API plays a key role in the rich gaming experience. At the conference, EA Mobile demoed Need for Speed Shift on the BlackBerry Storm which features touch controls that let the gamer tap the screen to brake the car and swipe to fire the booster. As far as the demo went, the graphics ran smoothly on the projector screen.
End-users can expect to download widgets and user themes via App World from December. The new BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0 will let developers embed ringtones in themes to replace the default ones, as well as customize home screen icons, backgrounds, transitions and include dynamic animations.
According to RIM's manager for Development Tools, Tim Neil, BlackBerry widgets are coded entirely in HTML or CSS and the mini applications will have access to the memory card on the device, PIM (including calendar, email, tasks, notepad and contacts) and native apps. They also have the ability to invoke native as well as third-party applications, but require OS 5.0 to run.

What's next

While we were still reeling from the flurry of announcements which are set to deliver tools to developers for writing more interactive BlackBerry applications, the company also took the chance to introduce an Academic Program. This will provide college students and university undergraduates with know-how on developing for the BlackBerry platform. According to RIM, over 500 students have already participated in the pilot trial and several universities in the US and Canada are looking to offer this program in their courses.
No doubt, the biggest beneficiaries of today's BlackBerry Developer Conference are the developers. While it does seem exciting, it's also worth noting that RIM is playing catch-up with the iPhone in its push to offer more consumer-centric offerings. Ultimately, the end winners are the consumers.
To sum up the focus of the conference, Balsille had this to say on the promise of mobility: "You have this highly personalized user experience, where the UI is personal, the ads served are personal… this is not about thousands of islands of applications. This is about a very personal, rich, contextualized experience."