taking a pause

Been switching my lifestyle in the past months towards something more… minimalistic, simple, relaxed and in contact with nature. Spending more time with people, in real world, playing with real things

At the same time, I’ve been steadily loosing my motivation to develop apps as a “full-time hobby”. Actually, it never really made any sense to me the exaggerated importance people give to having apps on their phone. My Curve 9360 has the same apps installed it had 6 months ago, most of them, the ones that come by default. I love it, I use them, I don’t need anything else. I’ve seen the same happening with lots of other friends. After the “app honeymoon” passes away, they just stick to a few that they actually use.

There’s a saturated market for apps, an artificial need created for more apps, and yet, it’s a bubble that I bet will explode more sooner than later.

Don’t get me wrong, if you do have a great and useful idea, make it happen. Otherwise, it starts smelling like app-pollution to me

I, for one, am going to take a pause in the app-crazy world. Maybe if a really good idea pops up I’ll get back to it. For now, other things in life are sounding much more interesting
Still, very curious to get my BlackBerry Z10 and play around with it to see if it can take the place of my Curve. (I know, sounds crazy :p)

See you around!

PS – this is unrelated to BlackBerry development, I would say the same thing if I was using my android phone or an iphone, or whatever phone you want.

Tempus – Time Tracker for #BB10

Its such a big difference to have a Dev Alpha available to test your apps instead of using a simulator! I returned my DA a few weeks ago, so now I’m stuck without a BB10 device, which really slows me down

Anyway, got my first app entirely developed using a simulator. It’s called Tempus (comes from Latin), and it’s a time tracker for BlackBerry 10, classified in the business category.

The first version has all the basic stuff, you can set up different projects, assign clients from your contacts, set up independent prices and billing periods per project and see statistic.

Now I’ll be working on the reporting feature, which I know has a very high demand for people who use these kind of apps. Hope to have it launched soon

Tempus in BlackBerry AppWorld »

Screenshots follow…

To a successful #BB10 launch!

Finally! The long awaited day is here

In less then 2 hours BB10 will be fully revealed to the world. I say “fully” because there are many surprises that RIM is keeping behind very safe doors…

As a developer, just wanted to take 5minutes to write a very special THANK YOU post to the most awesome Developer Relations team on earth. It’s truly amazing the amount of time, energy and concern that the Dev Rel team has invested in this past one year or so, and the results are here.

From awesome BB Jam meetings all around the world, discussion boards, IRC(!) and even twitter support, there was nothing that these guys didn’t cover.

A more personal thank you to a few of them who I had the pleasure to interact over the past months and that helped me move forward in the BlackBerry development: @filos, @brcewane, @ken_wallis, @WaterlooErik, @jeffheifetz @n_adam_stanley, @alexkinsella, @timothywindsor.

And now, let’s officially rock and roll this

Follow up: new version for Podcast Center

So, I couldn’t wait to get the first version approved, already submitted an update with a working download manager and lots of interface improvements. Screenshots below

My own private hack-a-thon for BB10

Today was the deadline to submit apps to AppWorld on time for the Built for BlackBerry program.

I had finished my first BB10 app last week, so I was quite relaxed about it. But something just took over me in the last 2 days and I *had* to do another one before the time ends!

A few months ago I started a PlayBook app to download and manage podcasts. Always thought it was unbelievable how can a tablet not have such an app (well, there are some, but honestly, they suck). I never took it further as many other things got in the way.
Now it was the perfect timing to revive it and bring it to BB10

So, with just a few hours of planning and preparing, last night I undertook my own hack-a-thon, from 7pm to 9.30am, and pretty much finished the app.
There are still a few details that were left out, but I will work on those in the next few days, and hopefully they will be ready before the launch too (the most important one, downloading episodes for offline viewing).

Screenshots follow, after the break!

Coming soon, a smarter and more natural way to manage information

Hi everyone!

Long time since last post. Life caught me with tight claws, had to move house, change job, and adapt to a lot of new things. In that process, my BB development went into a state of hibernation, so I got a bit disconnected.

Good news is: I’m back again! Happy to see the gold releases of the SDK and how good this BB10 Dev Alpha looks! Can’t wait for the real stuff to come in January.

I decided to put my time and energy (now more reduced) into creating my first BB10 app, and it’s going to be a special one! 4 years ago I had an idea for an webapp that would help us manage information in a way that your brain does, by intelligently linking it. Last year I attempted to implement it, by left it to die after 2 months as I did not like how it was coming up in a webapp. I needed the right technology to do it well, and lo and behold, BB10 is here and it fits perfectly

I’ll see if I can make some good progress during the holidays, need to have this ready before the BB10 launch!
Will release more details soon, right now it’s still in a very rough stage

And merry Xmas to you all!

BlackBerry WebWorks interactive config.xml generator (for PlayBook, BB10 and BB OS)

As I wrote previously when I published the Photoshop template for BB10 UI design, it helps to have tools that speed up the planning and development of our apps.

Today I coded a simple javascript page to interactively generate a config.xml file to use with WebWorks Apps.

It will ask you the target platform on start, so that it will only show relevant fields. Future version will add more things and some validation to the values entered.

If you find any bugs or want to suggest improvements, please do

Try the generator at: http://www.bitoutsidethebox.com/configgen