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Hot on the heels of RIM’s successful BlackBerry Jam World Tour that covered 24 cities around the world, BlackBerry Jam Americas continues RIM’s fervent developer courtship for its new BlackBerry 10 platform.
We’ve had glimpses of where RIM is headed with BlackBerry 10 — we’ve been impressed by what we saw — and we’re hoping to see more of what RIM has planned as RIM CEO Thorsten Heins kicks off the show with today’s General Session.
Gearburn is in San Jose, California for this one, so stay tuned as we cover the event live. If you have the bandwidth, there’s also a live stream of the keynote.
We’ll get going at 8.30 PST or 5.30PM CAT (SA time).
Woah inception… The BB10 browser is written in web technologies… Javascript,CSS,HTML… Pretty wild.
There’s strong integration with BBM.
Apparently the BlackBerry browser has gone from the worst mobile browser in the world to the best in BB10.
Matthew Staikos technical director for web technologies on stage talking about the new BB 10 web browser
JQuery mobile on BlackBerry launches today. JQuery developers that want to utilise the JQuery framework to create apps for BB10 will love this…
This is good news for folks looking who develop in HTML 5 that want the look and feel of native BB 10 apps.
“Beyonce’s social networking apps are built on HTML 5 Sencha touch” Fancy.
Michael Mullany CEO of Sencha on stage talking about HTML 5 development
Now showing off Shadowgun
Alpha Zero
Jetpack Joyride!
Here’s one from Halfbrick
Shark Dash from Gameloft. Looking super smooth.
Some games are about to be announced
Sean Paul Taylor, Team Lead Gaming up on stage!
Showing off WebEx for BlackBerry 10
David Ouyang engineering lead at Cisco on stage
Again. This is all looking very polished.
Now showing off the Foursquare app.
App World
Web browser
Homescreen
Peek action
In the meanwhile check out some hi-res pictures from today’s keynote
They’re showing off how developers can implement the concept of “peeking” into their apps.
Talking about the building blocks for BlackBerry 10. Cascades — seeing some work from the TAT acquisition here.
Christopher Smith, VP app platform and tools up next
“we think this is a very important aspect of what is expected of BlackBerry users. managing time and effort”
“let’s say you’re reading an email and you see the red LED flashing. you can start a swipe gesture to see who the message is from, and reverse the gesture if the message is not important”
“let’s say i’m in the middle of browsing a web page, the BB LED starts flashing. today i would have to leave the browser, navigate or task switch to the messages application. what peek allows me to do is start swiping, see the number of notifications, but then continue the gesture to see the full message and reverse the gesture to go back to browsing”
“peek for example allows you to touch the screen, move it up to see the time, and reverse the gesture to make the phone go back to sleep”
“peek keeps you in control and preserves the “flow”"
“getting access to system status and notifications is important too, so peek is something that’s as easy as glancing you at a watch. peek allows you to pull aside the stuff you’re working on, see the information and reverse the gesture to go back to what you were working one. you don’t close apps, or task switch.”
“applications should own the entire screen, it’s a principle that guides the entire experience”
“it’s all about screen real estate, it’s limited. precious”
He’s listing some innovations in BB10. Starting with “Peek”: “gone are the days of going back to the home button”
Don Lindsay up next VP for UX design
App World will officially open for submissions on October 10th.
BlackBerry App World will focus on discoverability, trending and quality of applications. Applications will have to be BlackBerry certified to enter the store.
Fruit Ninja, Shadowgun, Nova 3, some nice games at launch
The new App World will have music, movies, apps and games
BlackBerry App World has a total of 105 000 apps to date.
Here’s some more partners involved…
They’re showing off the new BB10 Facebook app, it looks a lot like iOS
Here’s a list of partners that gave RIM permission to show their involvement so far…
Heins spoke earlier about RIM being involved in various industries such as healthcare and automotive, but so far haven’t said much about developers will be able to tap into that.
Video time. “10 000 reasons to believe” showing reasons why developers should develop for BlackBerry 10.
5000 developers have development alpha BlackBerry units… That says something about the number of apps we might see at launch
“Take advantage of the features of BlackBerry 10 and write apps specifically for BlackBerry 10″. Saunders is saying that apps are associated with the platforms they launched on.
This is getting really geeky. Saunders is asking which programming languages the developers use. Some shouts for HTML 5, C++, Adobe Air, all can be used to develop apps for BB10
Alec Saunders, developer relations is up on stage.
“We’re going to keep on loving you.” Yup it’s all about courting developers.
Um, there’s a music video starring Alec Saunders singing about BB10… Some cheers for that.
“we are convinced that the BlackBerry 10 will shape the next 10 years as profoundly as it did the last 10 years. We are excited about the future. We are fighting, join us. Thank you”
“it’s not about i-solation, it’s about conversation” *stab at Apple there*
“Our subscriber base have grown to 80 million users.”
“We recognised the need for change. There’s a lot of fighting spirit at this company”
There’s a genuine excitement in the room. BlackBerry 10 is looking polished and the UI looks intuitive.
They’re also showing off BlackBerry App World for enterprise.
Enterprise controls being showed off.
The OS is looking really polished.
The real-time multi language switching capabilities in BBM are novel, but really intuitive.
BlackBerry 10 looks crazy. It’s something completely unique.
Going to show off BlackBerry Hub and BlackBerry Flow.
Vivek Bhardwaj up on stage.
“BlackBerry 10 is our most important launch ever.”
Heins is talking about the changes in SDKs, developer relations including marketing changes that will make BB10 a great platform to develop for. “We [BlackBerry] are dedicated to your success. Your success is our success.”
“We understand that the Blackberry platform was not always easy to develop for.”
“We are making believers out of our partners including those that have written BlackBerry off.”
“Carrier lab entries will start next month.”
“BlackBerry 10 is on track.”
Heins is talking about the excitement of people that have experience BlackBerry 10 “retail devices”… They’re out there folks. Apparently people are excited.
“We changed one major approach to the market. It’s all about partnerships. Our developers are working around the clock to bring the best features to BB10. What you see is the best of the best. We want to take mobile computing in a new direction over the next decade. Carriers are excited, they support BB10.”
“We take our traditional strengths to the next level”
“We’ve always been famous for keyboards and with BB 10 I promise it will get even better. We’ll take predictive text to a whole new level.”
“What BlackBerry users want is a keyboard they can really type on — touch or QWERTY”
Heins is talking about the importance of the security of the BlackBerry platform while embracing the Bring Your Own Device movement
There’s a lot of talk about “the seamless flow” here
“We got feedback from users on what would make their lives more efficient. We listened. BlackBerry users will be able to live more and enjoy more”
“You can continue to use your standard BlackBerry connectors on BlackBerry 10… laughs for that”
“The BlackBerry hub allows people to flow from conversations and actions with the touch of one finger”
“We have 60 million BBM users”
“BlackBerry 10 is all about the flow, gone is the era of the home button”
With BlackBerry 10 we are at the start at the new era of mobile computing
Thorsten Heins on stage!
“Ladies and gentlemen the show will begin in 5 minutes”
Almost ready to get going. In the meanwhile enjoy some of the visuals.
Seems to be a packed house.
These visuals are really trippy. Feel like raving… Where are my glow sticks?
Some bass heavy techno getting everyone pumped.
We’re almost ready to get underway…
-
thomas
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