We knew developers were excited about our latest BlackBerry® PlayBook™ offer for Android™ developers when we announced it two weeks ago. You asked that Native C/C++, HTML5, Adobe® AIR®, and Qt developers have a chance to participate and we answered by opening the offer to all developers.

Today was going to be the deadline for the offer – but due to the overwhelming interest in the offer, we’re extending it one more time. How much interest? There have been over 1,500 app submissions as of last Friday and over 6,600 new developers registered in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.  We have teams working around the clock to approve vendor registrations and app submissions.  Because of the high demand, approvals are taking longer than normal – we appreciate your patience.

To help speed up the approval process of your application, we strongly recommend the following:

• Before submitting your application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to remove all mention of the word “Android” from your application – both in the application description and the application itself.
• Please remove all links to Android Marketplace from within your application.
• When submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to select a minimum OS of 2.0.
• Please make sure your application is signed. For more information on code signing, please view the code signing documentation on the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps webpage.

If you’re not a registered BlackBerry App World vendor, you now have until 11:59 PM EST on February 15, 2012 to register at appworld.blackberry.com/isvportal.

All vendors (new and existing) now have until 11:59 PM EST on March 2, 2012 to submit your application to BlackBerry App World. Check out our offer FAQ and we’ll be updating the official terms & conditions later today.

Hello everyone, I’m Erik O. from the BlackBerry® Developer Relations team, making my blogging debut! I’m an Application Development Consultant and my primary focus is on Java® and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ development. I’ve been with Research In Motion® (RIM®) for just over two years now and have had some great opportunities to connect with developers in this time. I’m really excited about what BlackBerry WebWorks and HTML5 hold for the future of RIM. The open collaboration of web development really captures what I hope to see continue to grow in our developer community.

Are you working with jQuery wondering what you need to do to bring your app to the BlackBerry platform? Maybe you’re already a web developer considering BlackBerry, jQuery, or both. If you fall into any of these camps, head on over to our jQuery to WebWorks Fundamentals Guide for some pointers. Learn what you need to do in order to port your web solution to BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, what BlackBerry WebWorks can bring to your project, as well as considerations for leveraging jQuery. We discuss common topics such as UI considerations, debugging, and compatibility for the various in-market OS versions.

If there are any jQuery topics you’re still wondering about, be sure to leave some feedback and we’ll do our best to expand even further.

For those of you that already have a web project underway, this guide can show you how to bring your solution to BlackBerry platforms with relative ease – just in time for the free BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet offer!

Look for me in the BlackBerry Jam Zone (oros) and on our @BlackBerryDev Twitter® account – I post as ^EO. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback, or if you just want to say “Hello!”

Giddy-up! We just launched new microsites to better serve the BlackBerry® developer community and have given BlackBerry Jam Zone a facelift to make it easy to navigate to the tools you want.

We wanted to re-build the main page to bring you the answers you’re looking for:

• How do I make money?
• What are the development platform options and which one is right for me?
• How do I participate in the community and collaborate with others?

Now new sites have been introduced for Adobe® AIR® and BlackBerry Java. Oh, and a BlackBerry Theme Studio website is on the way as well, so stay tuned…

Starting back at DevCon Americas we launched Native C/C++, Android Runtime and HTML5/WebWorks microsites designed to bring a targeted experience for these development audiences. These were just the beginning steps in updating our online tools to help you build for BlackBerry and PlayBook.

We built these microsites to:

• Bring all of the documentation, samples, tutorials, downloads and API references into one convenient, integrated location
• Ensure that the information is presented and organized in a way that makes sense for the community who is using the technology
• Keep it simple! We’ve been working with the design groups from TAT to create a streamlined design to get you the information you’re looking for FAST!

These microsites will continually evolve based on your feedback, what’s important to you, and how you approach developing apps. You’ll see lots of improvements to all of our websites as we continue to focus on getting you the information you want, the way you want it. So, don’t be shy. Let us know what you would like to see.

I’m here at BlackBerry DevCon Europe with with Remco van den Elzen from Distimo. BlackBerry® developers around the world know that name – it’s one of the best app store reporting services available. Remco, you were mentioning before that there are a lot of BlackBerry developers using Distimo now – every three in the top three hundred use your service. For those who don’t know, what do you offer developers?

We have a free analytics tool available to developers for BlackBerry App World™ and across all major app stores. We enable them to track applications across all those stores, but also in terms of advertising networks. So we allow them to track their own applications, to look at their rankings and see how they’re doing in each country and each store, and also look at what they’re making from each purchase and from advertising revenue.

You break it down into categories too, to see how they’re doing in each category?

Yes – so for example, they can look at the Business category or the top level of the Games category, so they can compare themselves against competitors. It makes it very relevant for them to see how they’re doing in each market.

Your service also supports Apple App Store, Google Android Market and other storefronts. For developers who build for multiple platforms, are they able to compare their data from across different storefronts if they’re selling or offering their app in those?

Yes. That’s also the added value – so they can have one chart, for example, stacking up revenue from Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Nokia. So, all the major stores we do support, and they can even integrate the ad revenue, so they can instantly see what kind of business models are working best for them.

Read more from Remco at DevCon Europe »

To wrap up the 2011 BlackBerry® Developer Challenge, Research In Motion® (RIM®) and the BlackBerry Partners Fund have announced the final round of Recognition Award winners at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Overall, we were very excited to see all the apps that were submitted to the developer challenge from around the world – they showcase the creativity of the BlackBerry developer community and your amazing talents. Keep these great apps coming in 2012 and remember to #BeBold!

Congratulations to these Recognition Award recipients! They receive a package with prizes consisting of tickets to the now sold-out BlackBerry DevCon Europe, a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, BlackBerry® smartphones and more.

• Best B2C app developed for a customer by an agency or ISV – Yemeksepeti by tmob
• Most useful enterprise application – MDC Mobile Data Collection by Gulliver
• Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform – Salzburger Nachrichten Mobil by Salzburger Nachrichten
• Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics – InStyle.de by ISEC7
• Top performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service – Bellshare
• Academic – Most compelling app created by a student or faculty member – Polar Slide by Dustyroom

For more information on the BlackBerry developer challenge and to read the press release visit: www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/challenge.

When the founders of Second Gear Games, Sergei Lapin and Melanie Dompierre, began developing mobile apps in 2009, they consciously decided to work with multiple platforms, in particular BlackBerry® and Android™. While a handful of Second Gear’s games began as BlackBerry apps, most were built for Android first. Regardless, applications needed to be transferable to each platform and the games coding process needed to be as efficient as possible. Sergei’s solution was to develop apps with a touch screen-only version first, and then add support for keyboard and trackball/trackpad afterward. Still, seamless integration was not always easy and in many cases it took significant time and effort.

This, however, all changed with the addition of BlackBerry® Runtime for Android apps on the new BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0. The process of porting Android apps has now become a few simple clicks.

Sergei talked to us about BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps, the benefit of working with the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse™, and why it has always been important for Second Gear Games to run apps on BlackBerry devices.

Read the interview with Sergei after the jump »

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

Anyone who’s ever done a presentation with a demonstration knows the fear that builds as you take the stage. You’ve rehearsed, you’ve quadruple checked the demo, the Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®, everything – and then POOF, your demo goes off the tracks in front of 2,000 people.

Our own Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio EMEA, had this happen today during the keynote at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Vivek was going to demo the new “Open On…” feature of BlackBerry® Bridge™ 2.0 when taking a photo. “Open On…” allows you to open a photo or other document from your BlackBerry smartphone onto your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet with one click. The demo didn’t go off as planned. This is one of Vivek’s favorite new features, so we grabbed our video production crew to tape a follow up of the demo – watch it above!

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