Built For BlackBerry

[helex]

Screamager looks very feature rich for this kind of App, at least from the screenshots.

Some of my useless sugesstions:

Making a Invocation Target out of this App (share text to display it immediately as a LED banner) may be a "useful" feature which raises the "productivity".

If possible adding HDMI support for a second display may be a good idea. (Displaying a LED Banner via HDMI and on the handset your normal UI to control it)

I'm sorry if those features are already contained. Reviewing a App from Screenshots has its drawbacks. So I can't be aware of those.

[TheMarco]

They're good suggestions! Thanks! I hadn't thought of the invocation target idea. Pretty cool and should be doable for sure. But yeah, Screamager is pretty feature rich at this point and it has a cool UI. People universally love it. 

For now however I'm trying to focus on the calculator first. I just want to try and get one app in and then work from there on the rest. 

[peter9477]

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georg22 wrote:

I was just told from my source, that only the best app(s) in each category will be selected. They compare the diffferent apps and select the best. I can be wrong, but i think the term "competition" discribes this nice and clear. 

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I hope that turns out to be wrong or a simplification of things too. Otherwise it means either that currently approved apps can be "pushed out" as better ones are submitted, or it means that contrary to the "best" claim, it really just means "best amongst the first ones submitted" but then no newcomers will be allowed even if they're better. Neither fits how the program has been described.

I'm taking Jason's advice now though, and will stop over-analyzing stray words. It's a bad habit of mine...

[georg22]

@ peter9477

As i understood, a new app needs to be better than the existing qualified ones in its category. You will not qualify when you make an app with less features than the existing ones, even when you want to sell your app for less. It needs to have more, or you will be out.

In my example, my interest calculator app does not only compete with the 31 other BB10 interest calculators (>25 are android ports). My app is still at rank #1 and has more options than the competing ones and 5 stars.

No, it competes with calculators in general. Or finance apps in general. There are other types of calculators and finance apps with huge functionality for sure - therefore my interest calculator has no chance ever. Even when i add more features.

[TheMarco]

You know, I would have been fine with this program being only for really big apps with loads of functionality that really showcase everything that's great about BB10. But that's not how it was presented. It now kind of feels like $10k was waved in front of developers' faces with no intention of actually giving it to most of them. I'm sure that's not the original intention behind the program but as it stands now it certainly kind of looks like that. Not good PR if you ask me.

[QuiteSimple]

I don't understand why BFB is not like the SuperApp challenge few years ago. There was a list with specific requirements, once your app fulfills the criteria, it is a SuperApp. And then there was a challenge to choose the best SuperApps. Plain and simple. Every app that follows BB10 UI guidelines and implements required services should receive BFB certificate. After that BlackBerry could make a competition and choose the best among all BFB apps and give them additional candies. This worked in the past, why is so broken nowadays?

[Alec_Saunders]

Hey Everyone, 

First, thank you to Marco for continuing to speak up about the program.  We are listening, and re-evaluating what we're trying to accomplish with Built for BlackBerry.  I'm particularly concerned that some of our best and most loyal developer supporters are getting frustrated.  

We've had a couple of meetings as a team.  And we'll be talking through this again tomorrow.  I hope to have some more details for you on what we plan next very shortly.  We will make changes, though, to address the satisfaction issues that the program is creating.  

Stay tuned, and thank you for your patience. 

Alec. 

[TheMarco]

Thanks Alec! Glad to hear you are working on this!

And for what it's worth, my app has already improved in the process

[BBSJdev]

Alec,

Thanks for responding, as a suggestion in your meeting you might like to consider decoupling B4B from the 10k commitment. They clearly have different goals from BlackBerries perspective and vastly different emotive feelings from the developers.

The 10k program was a promise from you to us the developers that we could trust in your brand, to make it now seem like a potentially futile carrot on a stick for us to guess what is needed to qualify with no assurance we can ever attain it seems like a backdown on that commitment.

The B4B program from your perspective is a showcase for what BB10 can do, for us developers its a way to potentially market our apps better (some published statistics on this would be nice BTW). For those that have put time and effort already in to their application it should be a personal choice on whether they persue this criteria and the associated costs that go along with that decision.

Thanks.

[Alec_Saunders]

B4B and 10K were only ever loosely coupled to begin with.  The goal of B4B is to drive the creation of applications that are designed for BlackBerry.  The goal of the 10k commitment was to reward developers who chose to focus on designing great BlackBerry apps.  We always said that we would only offer the 10K commitment to folks that were specifically targeting the platform -- not simple ports from other platforms that didn't take advantage of the features of BlackBerry 10.  If you have seen my keynote speeches, you will have seen me make statements like "applications that take advantage of the BlackBerry 10 platform are an instantiation of the brand promise of BlackBerry 10", and so on. 

I think the issue is not that the 10K commitment and B4B are linked.  It's that we've done a lousy job of communication, and that we've probably been overzealous on some of the criteria -- for example, the prohibition on simple apps.  "Simple" can mean many things.  We intended to deny B4B to fart apps and the like.  But when I looked at Marco's RPN calculator, I was surprised that we had decided that that was a simple app. Clearly we have work to do in clarifying for our own teams what "simple" means.  So we're looking at tweaking the criteria around utility as opposed to simplicity, and trying to find ways to remove the subjective elements from the program.  

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback.  

A