This application will be available to UK and US Blackberry owners at the end of August. If you like the look of it you can find out all about the service here. But if you don’t like the look of it then I’d love to hear your thoughts for improvements. Registration is available through the application after you’ve installed it.
The video is of the trackball version running in an emulator. There will be another version for the Storm that has a UI more suitable for touchscreens/clickscreens… whatever RIM call them.
I almost forgot, the song in the video is Paralyzer by Finger Eleven and from their album Them vs. You vs. Me.
iPhone and Android have the better web browsers and better multimedia, but after using a Blackberry as my main phone for one month I’m already a convert.
Touchscreen keyboards are the hot air hand dryers that you find in public toilets.
Why? Aside from phoning people (no longer my top priority) I use my phone for emails and instant messaging and the occasional photo. Apple may consider the buttons on my Bold obsolete, but they help me type faster, more accurately and more comfortably. I really hope the Blackberry touchscreen line (aka the Storm) is only an alternative and that seems to be the case as the latest BB Tour is fitted with a keyboard. Touchscreen keyboards are the hot air hand dryers that you find in public toilets, great until you need to dry your hands with them every day. (Yes I’m also that person who takes extra toilet paper from the cubical to dry my hands)
Then there is the camera… The reason I use my phones camera is to quickly capture unexpected events, but the iPhone is so flippin sloooow. Its time from pocket to photo (TFPTP) is about 15 seconds, the Bold can do it in 3, and has a zoom so you don’t look like Mr Been extending and retracting your arm for focus.
And why cant the iPhone run background tasks? Android and Blackberry have managed it.
In short, the Blackberry is fantastic at all the things that would make me want to carry a phone around in my pocket and not so good at the things I can live without.
Coming from Android and iPhone I wasn’t expecting the need to do this. I found the documentation a little confusing and there were no quick answers on the web, so here it is.
I find Blackberry application development slightly annoying. I’m not talking about resizing images. RIM please give us an SDK that allows swapping code without a restart, and that will run on a Mac or Linux. It’s based on Java so why doesn’t it have the portability of Java?
public static EncodedImage resizeImage(EncodedImage image, int width, int height)
{
int scaleX = Fixed32.div(Fixed32.toFP(image.getWidth()), Fixed32.toFP(width));
int scaleY = Fixed32.div(Fixed32.toFP(image.getHeight()), Fixed32.toFP(height));
return image.scaleImage32(scaleX, scaleY);
}
iPhone and Android have the better web browsers and better multimedia, but after using a Blackberry as my main phone for one month I’m already a convert. 
Coming from Android and iPhone I wasn’t expecting the need to do this. I found the documentation a little confusing and there were no quick answers on the web, so here it is.