Pixelated Plus has been updated to version 3.0 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This update adds BBM integration, and expands language support to English, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese. This update also improves the stability and efficiency of the application.
BBM Integration
Pixelated Plus now integrates with BlackBerry Messenger, allowing you to publish your best scores to your BBM personal message, and posting your achievements earned to a Pixelated Plus profile box. You also have the option of inviting your friends to download Pixelated Plus by using the “Share via BBM” button on the About page.
About Pixelated Plus
Pixelated Plus is an addicting puzzle based strategy game that requires a mixture of skill and luck in order to accomplish. The object of the game is to change the colour of the squares until the entire screen is a single solid colour. Starting with the square in the upper left corner you can change the colour of the blocks in order to match that of the surrounding squares. This is done repeatedly until the entire screen is a single colour. The object of the game is to clear the screen in as few moves as possible. Under the default settings you must do so in under 22 moves in order to win.
On Wednesday, Verizon sent out an email to the ‘Verizon Developer Community’ once again trying to push their V CAST Apps Store. This store isn’t actually used or wanted by developers or consumers, but that doesn’t keep Verizon from trying. So allow me to take a minute to use this email to show everything that they are doing wrong. I will start by pointing out that nobody seems to know what V CAST is actually an acronym for. A quick search brings up nothing. So Verizon is not off to a good start. Here is the image that heads their email to developers.
The thing is the developers generally have an engineering background. Which means for the most part we have a solid understanding of simple mechanical systems. Things like gears. For those at Verizon who clearly do not understand this, gears need to actually touch each other in order to work. The teeth of the gears need to interlock, so that rotating one gear will result in movement of the other gear. This is how machines operate. As such if you are going to add out apps to your machine most developers don’t really want them to be placed between the teeth of the gears. That is where things get crushed. Getting to the text of the email doesn’t make things any better for Verizon.
“Want to increase your app sales?”
Of course. All developers want to increase app sales. But after talking to one of the few developers that is actually in the VCAST apps store, there is really no evidence that being in the VCAST apps store is actually going to do anything in order to increase app sales.
“Submit your app to V CAST Apps”
The thing is, I tried. I honestly did. The submission process asked for lots of paperwork, lots of legal documents, lots of fluff about my company. I tried the best I could to generate a lot of this nonsense that no company outside of the Fortune 500 actually has or cares about. You wanted screenshots formatted as .gif files. I still don’t know why. You wanted a single build to support all screen resolutions, OS versions, and input mechanisms. I complied by using a low OS build and limiting the list of supported devices. I honestly forget at which point I gave up and figured that it just wasn’t worth my time, but the fact is that I should have quit much, much sooner.
“it’s the only way to enable carrier and subscription billing on Verizon.”
That is disappointing. Carrier billing is rising in popularity. It results in more people buying apps. But only if it is tied to a store that actually has content to sell. Verizon would make far more money taking just a 1% cut on all the transactions from their customers through BlackBerry AppWorld, then they will taking 30% through the VCAST store. There is money to be made, but Verizon is too interested in pushing a redundant service to actually benefit.
“Submitting your app to V CAST Apps is the only way to get access to the power of our Efficiency Machine.”
This mostly scares me due to the capitalizing of “Efficiency Machine”. Is that honestly the proper name of what you want me to sign up for? To me it doesn’t look any different then what devs have been ignoring from you for years.
“TURN ON THE MACHINE Put the Machine to work for your app today. It’s quick, free and it’s never been easier.”
You know what would actually be easy (and efficient)? Integrating your existing carrier billing with the existing BlackBerry AppWorld. Every BlackBerry Developer already sells through AppWorld. It is already preinstalled on every phone sold. If Verizon added carrier billing to that it would be awesome. Developers would sell more apps, and Verizon would actually be part of the ecosystem, instead of an outsider looking in. Vodafone which owns 50% of Verizon Wireless is already on board in Europe. If they could take the same approach in the United States it would be great for everyone.
A few quick calculations based on the overall size of the market, Verizon’s market share of that, and the popularity of carrier billing shows a lot of money on the table. I don’t know what cut RIM offers the carriers, but at 10% Verizon is passing up $3.2 Million in revenue. If the cut to the carriers is closer to 15% then Verizon is missing out on $4.8 Million in revenue per year.
Two years ago in the fall of 2009, Verizon ran a competition for developers. Only myself and 20 other devs signed up. I have since talked to about a quarter of these developers, and despite actually being involved from the beginning, the majority of us still do not have any apps in the Verizon store. It is time for Verizon to just do what is best for everyone, and work with AppWorld.
The BlackBerry OS distribution is largely unchanged from last month. Use of OS 6.0+ increased 2.1% to 42.3% of the market, while use of OS7 increased slightly to 8.3% of all users.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of October 2010 through the end of October 2011.
Use of carrier billing has increased for the 14th straight month. September saw the use of carrier billing increase to 41.3% of all sales. September also saw a significant number of app sales on the PlayBook which does not support carrier billing, so if you were to look at just smartphone app sales the percentage would be even higher.
This data is generated from the dollar amount of purchases of all Ebscer applications over the given months.
The Hockey Scores app has been updated to version 2.9 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This update fixes an issue with showing the goal scorers, and also adds gray as a background colour.
About Hockey Scores
This application provides the day’s hockey scores is an intuitive and easy to use format. It also includes additional game statistics such as start times, goal scorers, shots on net, hits, faceoff percentage, team Corsi numbers, and the goal scorers. Additionally the app supports keyboard shortcuts for easy navigation, and a number of display options. All BlackBerry devices with OS 4.6.0 and higher are supported.
Last week we lost power for a few hours. Instead of lighting candles, I made a light out of a BlackBerry. I grabbed a spare 9900 and plastic cup, and made the contraption seen to the right. The camera LED is forced on by playing with the settings on the video camera, and then setting it to record so that it doesn’t timeout to save battery. The semi-transparent frosted glass is used to dissipate the light some, so you can place the LED on the table without blinding someone.
Happy Halloween, everyone. You can celebrate Halloween on your BlackBerry this year with the free Jack-O-Lantern app, available for all touchscreen BlackBerrys.
This app allows you to change the Jack-O-Lantern’s face by swiping in different designs for the eyes, nose and mouth from the left and the right. Also, you can change the back lighting of the design by clicking on the screen.
Little known fact is that BlackBerry actually does have a few stores. Ok, technically run by a third party called Wireless Giant, but something I had no clue about. Returning from DevCon last week, I passed by one in the Newark Airport and was completely shocked. The store itself had BlackBerry posters everywhere and was 100% dedicated to selling just BlackBerry phones and accessories.
After asking on Twitter, Alex Kinsella mentioned that the Philadelphia Airport has one as well. While the store was pretty cool to see, I have to admit that I am a little confused on its value to RIM. I would assume that the main benefit to having a brick and mortar BlackBerry store is so customers have a place to go for help and support. Placing the store inside of an airport terminal makes that pretty much impossible. Still the store had a good number of people in it, and I honestly don’t understand the business model of most of these in-airport stores.
I have to admit to be thoroughly confused by the class action lawsuits against RIM due to the service outage earlier this month. While the disruption in the EMEA region was significant, in North America, the outage only lasted at most 6 hours, and personally my device was disconnected for maybe two. While outages do suck, I am not sure what people expect to get from RIM. With most data plans costing only $30/month, six hours of downtime would justify a refund of $0.25. At the end of the day, twenty-five cents is not worth the paperwork.
If you read my DevCon expectations you will notice that they are very different from what was actually announced. In short everything that was not directly BBX related was ignored at the event, so no announcements about BBM 6.0.1 or the 9380 Curve.
Things talked about at DevCon
PlayBook OS 2.0 Released only as a developer beta. Actual release has been pushed till next February which is a huge disappointment.
Android Apps Unless they can get the apps out of the ‘Android Player’ and allow them to run like native apps, this is going to be a disappointing aspect of some BBX apps.
NDK Was officially released as expected
AIR 3.0 Included as part of OS 2.0 however native extensions actually work on AIR 2.0 and OS 1.0.7 so devs do not need to wait for that aspect of the SDK
Cascades The only real announcement at DevCon, the Cascades UI from TAT looks like a joy to use. It should make great UI easy to create, and runs very fast. The beta will be available in November, with version 1.0 going live in March.
Things confirmed dead (by omission)
BB Java It has been pretty obvious for awhile that RIM was going to take this approach, but it is still pretty disappointing. You can’t even really give RIM credit for finally being honest about this because for the most part they confirmation came more from what they didn’t say then from what they did.
3G/LTE PlayBooks I still think that we will see these eventually, but not until after the next hardware refresh. They are not yet confirmed dead, but at this point RIM has really passed up their chance to release them. It would have been much better if the company had been up front about this from the beginning.
I should start by pointing out that I expected version 2.0 to be rolled out to everyone by the end of DevCon, and am extremely disappointed that it did not happen. OS updates have not exactly been coming every two weeks like it looked like early after release, and the most recent update is about two months old at this point.
Still RIM did release a developer beta of the update, and it is worth taking a look at that. This is a true beta so there are many apps not included, and there are issues with Bridge but I think it is safe to ignore those things for now. The changes on the OS level are actually pretty limited, and include an overhaul of the homescreen, support for Android Java apps, and AIR 3.0.
The new homescreen is pretty nice, and most usefully now includes folders. Creating folders is pretty awesome one you figure out how to do it, but discovering how to do so is not that intuitive. Most of the other changes relate to an increased preview size for apps in the card view, which I think is just a result of the designers trying to figure out how to make BBX look decent on a phone sizes screen.
Android support is nice, but all of the apps launch in a single ‘Android player’ which means that they multitask differently, and are not quite true first level applications. Unless this is fixed, I think that many users will be disappointed by Android apps on BBX.
Most disappointing is what 2.0 has still not added. Mainly spell check/auto completion. Since launch, Docs to go has included a spell check, and some autocompletion (at least double space for a period) and it is completely unclear why this is not available for all text on a system wide level. More then any other feature this is the one that I really need.
Last week during the keynote at BlackBerry DevCon Alec Saunders posted his email address (alec.saunders@rim.com) on the screen and asked developers to email him. As a result he is “blown away by the passion and dedication” of those that emailed him. Really all he did to get this great feedback was to post his email.
I think the main reason that many others don’t do this is that they are afraid that they will be overwhelmed with email. Over the first few days Alec reported that he had received over 225 emails, while that is a big number it is not an amount that is unmanageable. Furthermore as director of developer relations this is what he should be doing anyhow.
One of RIM’s larger issues, communications wise, is that developers too often feel that their emails go into a “black hole”. While some departments at RIM are better then others it would be nice if more of them followed this policy of posting open emails.
On a related note, if you would like to talk to the head of a much smaller company, my email address is eric@ebscer.com
Xploding Boxes has been updated to version 2.1 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This version adds 15 new levels, adds BBM profile boxes, and improves navigation on the level selection screen.
About Xploding Boxes
Xploding Boxes is a strategy game for BlackBerry where the goal of the game is to start a chain reaction that will explode all of the boxes on the screen. Each level gives you a different number of touches, and requires a different strategy to solve. The first 25 levels are free, while the full 230 levels can be accessed by making an in-application payment and requiring no further downloads. This game is available for both the PlayBook, and for most smartphones running OS 5.0 or higher.
Improved level selection screen
When launching the game, the level selection screen now automatically starts with the last level played pre-selected. This allows you to restart the game where you left off, and get you back to playing the actual game quicker. Also you can use the keyboard short cuts ‘T’ & ‘B’ to quickly navigate to the top and bottom of the level selection screen.
BBM Profile Box
This version of Xploding Boxes, also allow you to attach a box to the bottom of your BlackBerry Messenger profile, to show off your success in the game. This feature requires that you have BBM version 6.0.1 installed, and that you check the box to allow Xploding Boxes to “Post recent activities to my profile”. There is a direct link to these BBM options from the Xploding Boxes options page, in order to make this checkbox easier to find.
I am arriving today in San Fransisco for BlackBerry DevCon. This is my first time at DevCon, and I am looking forwards to it. If you run into me at the event, as always, I would be more than happy to talk.
Ideally, RIM will find a way to surprise me at DevCon, but this will be tricky to do given how many things are already expected to be announced. My expectations for the event are as follows:
Things I highly expect to see at DevCon
PlayBook OS 2.0 The new OS for the PlayBook will be released including support for many new features mentioned below.
Android App Support Java apps compiled against Android OS 2.3
AIR 3.0
NDK release Support for native c code, and apps through services like Marmalade
Release of the 9380 Curve This device will probably not be available in North America, but if RIM can get the price on this low enough, this could be an extremely important phone.
Release of the 9790 Bold I have no idea why RIM is releasing this device, it is too unique to be easy for devs to support, but not unique enough to have a market. I really hope that AT&T doesn’t think this is a replacement for the 9900.
BBM 6.0.1 This has been in beta since late August, and is required in order to support the new BBM SDK 1.2
BlackBerry Tag Officially already announced, but I expect RIM to push this NFC concept during the event
PlayBook video store
Things that may or may not be announced
Python support RIM has been talking about this language a good amount, but have not said anything publicly yet.
BBAS for AIR BlackBerry needs to offer a good ad service for apps designed for the PlayBook in AIR, or else they are limiting the opportunity that devs have to offer free apps
LTE PlayBooks Originally promised for last summer, it is not clear if these devices will ever be released
BBM on PlayBook This may be dependent upon QNX getting support for BIS and BES which may not happen until the OS is on phones (in 2012)
