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A surprise guest showed up at the DEVCON 2010 party – Riz.  You all know him for his hit song “Ping Me Baby” which attracted many of you BlackBerry users out there.  Here’s the video of his whole performance above.  Look for Mac and Ehab in the video!

-by Otoniel Bruno

This was PocketBerry’s first year at the annual BlackBerry Developer Conference and I have to admit it was definitely well worth it with all the coverage and updated news we put out to all you readers.  The BlackBerry Developer Conference (DEVCON) is targeted towards application developers who seek to network with others who build applications as well, attend development based sessions, and more.  We went there to cover the event live to show what exactly went on, the announcements that were made, and a taste of application development.  So here’s our full “general specifics overview” of our experience at DEVCON.

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So for all of you out there who missed out on the keynote two days ago, you can go ahead to this link to stream it all online.  For those who haven’t been following up, Mike Lazaridis announced and showed off the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet which had been rumored for a while as to whether or not it was going to be announced at DEVCON.  Other big announcements included advertising for application developers and BlackBerry Messenger opening up to third party application developers as well.

• Stream the keynote >>

-by Mac Jadalhack

Gaming is an art form where players wear their achievements on a badge of pride. Some will have the burden of attaining a high score, with the sad truth that no one else will know. Some will brag to their friends who may or may not take them for their word. If someone beats my high score, I will refuse to look at their BlackBerry until I beat theirs.

Yesterday at the Community Connection here at DEVCON, we got a chance to speak with Dan Crawford from Pretzil – an API that enables game developers to create more value for their customers. Dan Crawford is highly enthusiastic about Pretzil’s product and took me on a quick tour of its ins and outs.

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Kobo is known for bringing books to you mobile device and they have an enhanced plan in the works for a BlackBerry Super App. Dan Leibu (CTO of Kobo) was kind enough to shed some light on it here at DEVCON yesterday.

The hardest thing about reading, other than finding time, is picking the right book. There are millions upon millions of books out there to choose from. Some are excellent works of art that I would never get my hands on, unless someone told me they existed by recommending it. It’s those books that are recommended by a close friend of colleague that I enjoy the most. It’s usually because they know what I’d like and it also leads to excellent conversations about the pertinent subject.

Kobo’s new project for the BlackBerry will integrate a social feel that will take the solitude out of reading and open you up to an array of excellent works. With a seamless integration to BBM, it will become the first e-reader to work with this messaging platform. That means social reading in real time.

Hit the jump for more info, press release, and video demonstration from yesterday’s general session here at DEVCON.

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Back at WES 2010, we checked out Widality’s Momentem application which targets businesses that need to tag calls, activities, and expenses.  Even before that, they came out with the free Call Time Tracker app.  We were happy to see Widality here at DEVCON introducing some new features to its highly successful Momentem Application, adding Super App capabilities.  For those of you who don’t know, Momentem helps its customers keep track of billable time spent on the phone accomplishing tasks for a specific project and/or client. Before this app, most businesses would have a hard time reporting this data and gauging the effect it may have on performance. How can you assess the effectiveness of a technique without the data showing the amount of work done to secure a client or complete a task?

As a Super App, it is always running in the background and proactively activates itself when you receive an important call or email. It will then allow the user to tag the call to an associated project or contact once the end button is pushed. When it is time to check the billable history for a project for a contact, an organization will have the tools to determine the billable time, recovery costs, time sheet activities, and recording follow-up actions.

More after the jump along with the full press release and some screenshots of Momentem.

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For all you developers following up with DEVCON and couldn’t make it out here in San Francisco, you should definitely check out the BlackBerry PlayBook software developer kit.  It isn’t officially out now, but you can sign up to be one of the first to check it out to start developing.  There will of course be emulators available to make sure the applications work properly, but of course you’ll want to eventually try it out on the tablet itself once launched.

• Register and be the first to try out the BlackBerry PlayBook SDK >>
  

-by Mac Jadalhack

Peter Werry, JAVA mobile lead at Poynt joined us at Devcon today to explain the plethora of revenue opportunities available for location based applications and services. If you don’t already know, Poynt is an application that literally points the way to countless locations when you don’t know where to go. Need to find a local theater, or an AT&T store to upgrade to a BlackBerry Torch? If you are, you’ll be able to find it on Poynt.  That’s just one of many examples – one of which that caters to the latest and greatest device from RIM.

To encourage other developers here at Devcon 2010, Werry presents Poynt’s advertisement based business model to a room full of eager and excited developers. In a digital world where mass marketing has been on the decline and ready to croak, advertisers are looking for ways to maximize their marketing efforts. Because Poynt uses your GPS to select locations near you, it gives them an opportunity to provide these solutions to new age marketers.

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Something we noticed in the video was that an eBook reader of some sort was displayed for a few seconds.  I wasn’t sure if this was the Kindle, or something else that RIM had developed but we just got the word from Kobo that it was their application feature.  So along with the Kindle application, we’ll be seeing Kobo hitting the streets with the BlackBerry PlayBook as well.  We are very familiar with Kobo, formerly known as Shortcovers since it’s been on the BlackBerry platform for years.

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A really nice example we saw was from Henry Belmont who is the user interface architect for MLB.com (Major League Baseball).  Some exciting stuff we got to see was how seamless it was to access MLB.com via WebKit on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 along with the application with the potential of being a Super App.

The first cool feature was real time scores updating right there live within the browser.  In the past we would of refreshed the website over and over to see what the live score or play is.  Also you can see strike zone views play by play.   The coolest feature was being able to import your favorite team’s schedule into your BlackBerry calendar.  All you have to do is select the team within the website and then hit the BlackBerry menu button to have it sync into the BlackBerry calendar.

Since this baseball season is almost over, Henry tells us that new and improved MLB app will not be available until next seasons.