That is the question Kyle over at BlackBerryCool discusses in his blog today. Its something that I’ve wondered about in the past and can’t understand why developers would build such an app, for the very same reasons Kyle points out. Do a reset of the device and it cleans the memory out and you start afresh. The only thing an app developer can do is call the system.gc() which effectively blocks every other app from running and cleans out unused memory. A device reset will go further as no apps are currently running when booting your device, hence its the cheapest and most effective way to do the job!

So take Kyles advice and don’t spend your hard earned $$ on junk apps.

Kevin over at CrackBerry wrote a piece on the new gaming development book from Apress. I completely agree with Kevin’s primary conclusion – we NEED more games on BlackBerry. Of course OpenGL hardware support is limited to the latest Verizon devices (Storm 2 & Curve 2 aka 8530) which is a bummer for the coder who wants to get mass market appeal when it comes to deployment time. However, considering there are very few commercial grade games in BlackBerry App World, you’ve got the ecosystem to yourself if you ship a top-notch game.

Check here for all the details. Finally RIM are adding some flare to the user interface components although its only for apps targeting 5.0 or higher devices – so don’t even think about using these features if you aim your app at the 40 million BlackBerry users out there.

For me, the SQLite and BrowserField enhancements are favorites for this release. Hope to see more soon, perhaps at WES.

RIM today released updates for developers to the Eclipse Plugin @ v1.1 and the Web Plugin v2.0.

The following is a snippet from the updates of the Java Plugin for Eclipse:

New features

• Reload a BlackBerry smartphone application without restarting the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator.

• Package a BlackBerry smartphone application project for multiple versions of BlackBerry® Device Software.

• Support BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator sets installed outside the Eclipse environment.

• Debug your BlackBerry smartphone application by loading it on a BlackBerry smartphone automatically.

• Access KB articles, videos and BlackBerry® Developer Zone content through the getting started page.

• Support Eclipse project artifacts and folder structures, including compatibility with source code control systems and Eclipse methodologies.

• Leverage familiar Eclipse functionality for BlackBerry smartphone application development. Enable use of Eclipse features such as:
  • Multiple source folders in a project
  • Eclipse variables
  • File and folder linking in projects
  • Refactoring
  • Working sets and launch configurations
  • Inclusion and exclusion patterns in projects

• Support multiple BlackBerry smartphone OS versions within a workspace for reduced development time and cleaner project organization.

• Define project properties in a BlackBerry smartphone application descriptor file. XML-based files enable easy maintenance and tracking of changes using a source control system.

• Import sample applications or BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment (BlackBerry JDE) based projects into a workspace through a wizard to reduce your development lifecycle.

Whilst all these updates will be well received by my fellow BlackBerry developers the big bummer that remains for many developers is the lack of 64-bit Windows support with these updates. Its promised soon according to Mike Kirkup in a recent webcast, but when is soon Mike?

As for the web plugin updates, this is the relevant snippet from the updates:

New Features

Debugging

• Support for debugging web projects with BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators
• Ability to set, remove and disable breakpoints in JavaScript® code
• Seamless integration into existing Eclipse 3.5 or Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Profiling

• Support for profiling web projects with BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators
• Visibility into the contents of XMLHttpRequest requests and response data
• Visibility into data traffic for web-based content, including elements such as images, CSS, JavaScript, HTML and Objects
• Reporting on the time to load for web-based content, including elements such as images, CSS, JavaScript, HTML and Objects

Additional benefits

• Intuitive installation, including quick start directions and resources to quickly get started using the tools
• Integration with the BlackBerry® Signing Authority Tool to assist with ease of use when needing to sign a BlackBerry Widget
• Hot-swapping of BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators for easier reiterative testing of browser-based applications and BlackBerry Widgets

Deployment tool

(only required when deploying on a physical device)

You’ll need code signing keys to enable your application to run on a physical BlackBerry smartphone.

So if your a BlackBerry developer looking for the latest and greatest, go get these updates right now!

Download Java Plugin for Eclipse v1.1

Get Web Plugin v2.0 – Note the various options available to Eclipse or Visual Studio environments when downloading the web plugin from this page.

Came across this very useful page on BlackBerry’s developer site. Very useful for developers squeezing every pixel out of the screen in the various form factors.

There is a good post over at the Creately Blog today which outlines the strategy they use to drive traffic to their website. Even though its very web centric I believe the same applies to mobile applications, even more so as mobile apps are not yet as mature as web apps resulting in less noise in which to compete for user attention. Where web and mobile differ is the distribution method. Web apps are simply sites, one click away from a story whereas mobile apps require a download. So how do you solve this scenario?

Very first step is to look at the App Stores as distribution only, not marketing. Unless your app is featured by the app store, your not going to get marketing assistance from the stores. They are all pretty much the same nowadays, it was different when the stores only had 1000 apps in total so you could feature highly in your category. Once you accept the stores are only distribution, you can move on to the specific marketing steps that best suit you. The Creately article addresses this pretty well, and is certainly a good starting point for startups. To tailor it to mobile, the key thing you want to aim for is a reasonably top spot in your category of the relevant stores your using for distribution. To that end, spreading the word online will certainly get people aware of your brand/product. Therefore its a critical task to undertake even during the development phase so your name is known in the relevant communities when it comes time to engage the community with your product. On mobile I often notice a successful approach to launching your product is to first engage beta testers across a range of devices/networks. Its gives your community something to play with early and provides you with hugely valuable feedback both on features and quality of your product across a potentially diverse set of supported handsets. This is also key to the app store distribution strategy, as you want to ensure you have a top quality application when you release it via the store. In BlackBerry App World, RIMs approval process is pretty simple, so don’t rely on that for quality assurance! The key reason you *NEED* a quality app in the store is because your new users will rate/review your product pretty quickly and an average star rating less than 3 out of 5 will send your app to an early grave.

Ensure to promote the web links for your appropriate mobile app store’s online site. So if you use App World to distribute your BlackBerry app, use the link to their App World web site for your app, so it gives users an easy option to send the app to their device. This removes a step which is often seen as a disconnect where users have to open their device resident App World instance and find your app. This is a lot to ask for a user who briefly engages with a comment about your app on a website. To illustrate the web link for App World, see this example which points to the Bloomberg BlackBerry app.

In conclusion, the ingredients to a popular mobile app are quality and downloads. To achieve those goals, engage with your target audience wherever they hangout and use your credibility to firstly acquire valuable beta testers and later spread the word by evangelizing your product.

The folks at BlackBerry Leaks got hold of two photos of a BlackBerry in slider form factor. Some good coverage and commentary can be found at CrackBerry so I won’t repeat any of that here. I can say one thing, I was chatting with a number of RIM employees recently at MWC and they were loosely throwing around the idea of a slider as a possible future direction for the Storm line. I didn’t make much of the comments at the time, but perhaps those folks knew what was about to come.

My take: In light of Verizon’s rumored dropping of the Storm devices from its lineup, this ‘leak’ might be just what RIM need to restore some momentum to the Storm and keep it relevant in the touch form factor.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a nice piece in todays paper about the use of BlackBerry Messenger in Chile when all other means of network communications were failing. The truth is that BB messenger traffic is routed differently to other mobile internet traffic. BBM doesn’t leave the RIM infrastructure, hence avoiding many of the gateways and internet routers that suffer from severe load during such a crisis. Its as much a reflection on the weak infrastructure of the modern day smartphone networks as it is a feather in the cap of RIM to build a sold messaging layer into its products.

Well done RIM, good on you!

TechDigest report the release of the BBC iPlayer application on BlackBerry App World in the UK. Exciting news given the massive audience the BBC iPlayer appeals to and a good win for RIM to finally have a strong media offering on its devices, even if it is restricted to the UK only. But our friends at the BBC wouldn’t have it any other way.

And next for RTE to release a BlackBerry app

RIM have just posted a helpful page to expand on the ‘Super Apps’ concept they introduced at MWC last week.

It’s worth the read for developers building innovative applications, especially us BlackBerry developers. I’m not going to give much commentary on the Super Apps concept by RIM, its better you read it for yourself. However there is a lot to be said for a platform vendor to take the time and effort to encourage developers to build better applications. How you interpret ‘better’ is up to you, as long as us developers actually strive to improve our mobile apps in user experience, functionality and integration it should result in a win-win.