An image of a BlackBerry device

Category: BlackBerry

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Articles about the BlackBerry platform, BlackBerry development, and my time working at BlackBerry (Research in Motion).

This page lists all posts in the category, in reverse chronological order.

  • BlackBerry 10 Charging Foibles

    Posted February 4, 2014 in BlackBerry
    Me ranting about the battery life of BlackBerry 10 devices.

  • BlackBerry Car Pairing

    Posted November 6, 2013 in BlackBerry

    I've been carrying a BlackBerry Z30 for a while now and one of the cool things with this latest version of the OS is what happens when you pair the phone with an automobile. During the paring process, the software asks you if this is your car or not. If you say yes, the pairing is labeled 'my car' or something like that. Another interesting thing that happens is that the Bluetooth software knows what kind of vehicle its attached to and shows the car logo on the lock screen as shown below. Not rocket science, but cool none the less.

  • BlackBerry Facebook Application Broken

    Posted May 14, 2013 in BlackBerry

    Something's up with the latest version of the Facebook app for BlackBerry. Parts of the UI simply don't work and I don't know how to let BlackBerry know about it. Apps like TeleNav Navigator have a feedback function which allows you to let them know when something doesn't work or if you have suggestions for the application. All of the different mobile OS are adding APIs for Twitter, Facebook and so on, why not add a feedback API that allows an app to send customer comments/feedback to the developer? No sense in each developer writing their own when it can simply be a default API on the device.

  • BlackBerry World Day 1 Begins

    Posted May 1, 2012 in BlackBerry

    Got up early this morning and made it over to the hotel's gym. It was nice to get some exercise in before starting my day. When I finished, I decided to walk around a bit just to get my back loosened up. As I walked past the BlackBerry World registration desk, I thought about my registration process and thought I'd write about it.

  • BlackBerry About

    Posted January 20, 2012 in BlackBerry

    I can't remember why, but for some reason I wanted to look at my BlackBerry device software version the other day, so I fired up the Options application and started typing 'about' as shown in the following figure. I noticed some interesting things and that prompted me to write this post.

  • BlackBerry Status Updates Pane

    Posted January 11, 2012 in BlackBerry

    I'm struggling to find value in the BlackBerry 7 Status Pane that appears at the top of the BlackBerry home screen and, when clicked, displays the screen shown in Figure 1 below.

  • RIM's Depressing Me

    Posted December 21, 2011 in BlackBerry

    I was doing some thinking about Research In Motion today. I was sadly disappointed (is that redundant?) when I heard RIM was delaying the release of the new QNX-based devices until late next year. That's a truly boneheaded move after a series of boneheaded moves.

  • BlackBerry DevCon App on WebWorks

    Posted November 7, 2011 in BlackBerry

    During BlackBerry DevCon 2011 I did some analysis of the BlackBerry DevCon 2011 mobile application; it was part of my everlasting "What Were They Thinking" series of articles. In the article, I postulated that the application was a BlackBerry WebWorks application which made sense since it's RIM's direction for mobile application development on BlackBerry and because it's a cool and quick way to build mobile applications.

  • BlackBerry Development Tool Macintosh Installation Weirdness

    Posted October 21, 2011 in BlackBerry

    I was excited to learn at BlackBerry DevCon 2011 that RIM had finally released the Macintosh versions of their development tools for BlackBerry and Playbook development. Having a MacBook in my hotel room (my Windows Laptop died ore than a week ago) I downloaded the code and tried to install it. I noticed some weirdness with the tool installation, so I thought I'd write about my experiences here.

  • BlackBerry DevCon 2011 Days 2 and 3

    Posted October 21, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Today wraps up BlackBerry DevCon 2011. Overall it was a great conference. Like I said in a previous post, the sessions and the pace were great. There wasn't a lot of energy about the place, but it was a big crowd and lots of focus on web development and open source tools.

  • BlackBerry DevCon Day 1

    Posted October 19, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Well, Day of BlackBerry DevCon 2011 has wrapped up and it's been a pretty interesting day.

  • RIM Update

    Posted August 31, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Research In Motion made some interesting announcements yesterday.

  • Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS

    Posted August 31, 2011 in BlackBerry

    This could be fun!

  • Can't Speak at BlackBerry DevCon

    Posted August 12, 2011 in BlackBerry

    I got my 'thanks but we don't need you to speak at the BlackBerry Developer Conference' email this week. I'm really frustrated; I've been silent on this for years now, but I have to say something now. Here we go, but be sure to keep in mind that the opinions provided here are mine alone and do not reflect the opinion or public statements of my employer.

  • What Were They Thinking 9 (RIM Again)

    Posted July 13, 2011 in BlackBerry, What Were They Thinking

    For a long time now, I've been running a series on mobile applications, highlighting where developers build an application for a mobile device without really paying attention to the mobile device or the needs of the mobile user.  In this article, I'm going to shift gears and talk about something related to mobile, but not directly to mobile applications. I've written about this company many times before, let's take a look…

  • On the Open Letter to RIM

    Posted July 1, 2011 in BlackBerry

    I don't know if you heard about it or not, but a RIM executive published an open letter to his bosses: Mike L and Jim B of RIM. It's an interesting read and it had to be said. It's really sad, but RIM has been slow in its response to market changes and it's likely that they won't be able to recover.

  • Seesmic & BlackBerry

    Posted June 29, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Apparently Seesmic has announced that they're dropping support for BlackBerry users. You can read the announcement here: https://blog.seesmic.com/important-update-for-blackberry-users.html. Seesmic makes social media tools for mobile devices and, back when their solution was in beta, it was a highly anticipated product.

  • Review of Advanced BlackBerry Development

    Posted June 21, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Here's a review I wrote more than a year ago for Chris King's Advanced BlackBerry Development:

  • Review of Beginning BlackBerry Development

    Posted June 20, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Here's a review I wrote more than a year ago for Anthony Rizk's Beginning BlackBerry Development:

  • BlackBerry Developer Book Reviews

    Posted June 17, 2011 in BlackBerry

    Back in 2009, right after BlackBerry Development Fundamentals came out, I approached Dr. Dobb's Journal about writing some reviews of the other BlackBerry development books that were coming onto the market. The editor told me to go ahead, so I did the writing and submitted two reviews. Nothing happened; I'm not even sure the articles were ever read. So, what I'm going to do is publish them here next week.

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Header image: Photo by Randy Lu on Unsplash.