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Well, it's been a long while since I've had something new to announce. I apologize for that, school has to take precedence over blogging and fun, unfortunately. But, i come to you today with something new and exciting to announce!

My second app, Simplenote for Playbook is live in the BlackBerry AppWorld!

This app is a native gateway for the popular Simplenote service, which already has apps on all other major platforms, most notably iPhone. I had, for a while, used the Web based site on my playbook for this app, however i decided that enough was enough, and people needed a good native app. So, here it is.

I spent the first few weeks of summer developing it, perfecting it, testing it, and doing just about everything i could to try to break it. Fortunately, i couldn't. So now, it's live!

Everyone who has a playbook should go and download my app. I know it's shameless self promotion, but I made it for the betterment of the platform, and for the enjoyment of all. So, everyone, go and enjoy it!

I do plan, in the near future, to bring this app to android tablets, and maybe to android phones. Keep watching here, and i'll post all news on future updates, and more!

You might remember how I said that in a few weeks time, i'd be the proud owner of a BlackBerry PlayBook? Well, that time has come. I am now using my playbook on a daily basis, for just about whatever i can. Mostly, my uses revolve around school, as that's what most of my time is being consumed by at the moment.

At first look, this is a really sleek machine. The interface is very well designed, all the transitions are smooth, and everything just seems to flow. Nothing seems to be able to slow down this thing. Flash runs beautifully in the browser, as do youtube videos and other such web elements. The only complaint i have is that javascript is sometimes a bit laggy in the browser. Everything seems to render fine, it just is a bit slow. Other than that, it's perfect.

Still though, as many people have complained, it lacks native email or blackberry messenger. I am able to use the tablet optimized version of GMail in the browser, but it doesn't give me push or fetch notifications or anything. That's something i'm waiting for. RIM says it should be out within 60 days, so i'm holding my breath. The did deliver on the video chat application, so there's reason to be hopeful.

The tablet itself has two cameras, both of which take HD 1080p video. The video quality is incredible. It doesn't do frameskips like other devices (Droid X) do. It captures at full 1080p, 29 frames per second, in all its glory. The picture quality is okay as well. It's not perfect, but hey, it's on a tablet.

There are a few applications that are not present at all in the AppWorld for the PlayBook. One is a twitter app. There is no good twitter app in the app world. All that seems to be there are the basic 'twitter trends search' app that everyone got from the Flash Builder Burrito example applications. Everyone is still waiting on developers for this one. Another one that's missing is Skype. I don't know what the status of this one could be, given the recent MS acquisition of skype, but I'm still hopeful. It does also lack a good Dropbox app. It has BlueBox, which is promising, but it is missing the very important upload feature. Currently the only way to access this feature is through the browser. But that is coming soon, and i can't wait to see it. The tablet did come with the documents to go suite, which is nice. It seems to work great, except it lacks a few features that Docs to go on other platforms has. But i'm sure those are coming in an OTA upgrade in the future.

In all, this is a very solid device. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a smaller tablet to enter their life.

I will post some reviews on applications on the playbook in the near future, to give everyone a taste of what's available on this platform.

All for now!

Now that I've officially had my app accepted into the BlackBerry AppWorld for the PlayBook launch, I thought I'd take some time out to talk about my experience on getting my app published.

Let me start out by saying that this whole process has not been easy. From start to relative finish, it's been almost 5 months. What with figuring out the app world vendor portal, flash builder, and the blackberry airpackager and simulator, it's been a wild ride.

Let's start with the beginning. The playbook was announced in december. I began my app development in late december, and submitted it on December 31, 2010. Getting the app packaged up for submission was fairly difficult however. At that point, there was almost no documentation on how to actually package the app and get it submitted to the app world. I had to go off of blog posts and blurry screenshots. But, i got it packaged and submitted.

"Finally," i thought, "I'm done with this." Well, that wasn't true at all. Once the app was submitted, i was always nervous, because i didn't hear back from RIM for the longest time. I thought that my app had been rejected or something, and I hadn't been notified. The vendor portal said only "Waiting on Test House" for my product for a long time. Then, one day, i got an email notifying me that (1): My app was approved, and (2): I had a coupon code for my free playbook.

First thing's first. I ordered my playbook right away. That order is now safely placed, and I still await my playbook's arrival. Second, i was also notified that i would have to re-upload my app with a code signing certificate attached to it. Well, like a good developer, i went right over to the page where i could order up my certificate. Well, i did that, and 3 weeks later, i still haven't received a response. I got a notification yesterday telling me that my product was now rejected, since i hadn't uploaded a signed version. Well, i replied right to that email, letting them know that I hadn't received a certificate. I still await a response on that one.

I believe that RIM could have done much better to streamline this process. For instance, they could have had appropriate documentation, or maybe had the appworld functioning when they started accepting applications. I don't know. This is just me speaking from the perspective of a slightly annoyed developer.

All for now!

In this tutorial, I show you how to get an AIR app up and running on your android device in less than 10 minutes!

All for Now!

Image via Wikipedia

"In addition, for the first time we are publishing the App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how we review submitted apps. We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store."

"We are continually trying to make the App Store even better. We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart. Based on their input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."

I can't wait for Catalyst to come out. It loks like a really great product. In preparation fot it, I have already created a sample InDesign file that I will use catalyst to turn into an RIA. Another question that I will have is as to wether it can export to AIR. I know it makes flash, but can it make AIR? I'd be curious to see.

Just a thought.