This is the fourth interview in the BBHub BlackBerry Developer Interview Series. This series will put a face to many of the software programs you know and love. Developers are often power users who have unique perspectives on the industry. Many are entrepreneurs with colorful careers in technology. This series will give you a glimpse into their worlds and their outlook on the future of the BlackBerry.

The third interviewee is Morgan Slain from SplashData. SplashData makes some cool software for the BlackBerry. Feel free to pose questions to Morgan in the comments of this post and he'll answer them.

Do you think you would make a good interviewee? Drop me a line at davemabe [ at ] gmail dot com.

Dave: Tell us a little about yourself, Morgan.

Morgan: I've been working with various forms of software since I began my career with Lucasfilm Games and then The Walt Disney Company back in the early 1990's. I've been focusing exclusively on mobile software since I joined Palm in early 2000. Now, as president of SplashData, my focus is on bringing great productivity applications to everyone who uses a smartphones. At SplashData, we're known for easy to use but very capable applications like SplashID and SplashPhoto that allow you to manage information and media on both your phone and your desktop. I live near our company's offices in Los Gatos, California, which is a small town on the edge of Silicon Valley. My wife and I are best known in the community for raising and training puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and you'll often see us walking downtown alongside Labradors in little green vests!

Dave: What BlackBerry do you use now and what PDAs have you used in the past?

Morgan: I'm using a BlackBerry 8700c from Cingular at the moment. I think I've owned just about every popular smartphone and PDA that's been released since the days of the US Robotics Palm Pilots. I'm just that much of a handheld geek!

Dave: Why is the BlackBerry a good platform to develop on?

Morgan: We love the ease of working with Java, and RIM has a great team and program in place for supporting developers.

Dave: Other than your own, name your three favorite applications for the BlackBerry.

Morgan: Lately I've been using IM+, eOffice, and Solitaire Buddy regularly.

Dave: What's your favorite trick or feature that you use on your BlackBerry?

Morgan: I'm a scroll wheel demon. After using a Treo for years, it's a nice change to be able to scroll through emails and lists in SplashID quickly.

Dave: What's the most important feature that the BlackBerry lacks?

Morgan: I have to admit I still miss having a touch screen. I'd also love GPS and wi-fi.

Dave: Where do you see the focus of third party programs for the BlackBerry going over the next few months?

Morgan: You'll see more sophisticated wireless applications from us and others as well as more subscription-based applications.

Dave: Thanks, Morgan!

Morgan: Sure, Dave.

Previous interviews in the BBHub Developer Interview Series:

• Patrick Kosiol from Skylab-Mobilesystems
• Paul Dumais from Idokorro
• Andrew Zimmer of Naggie

This is the second interview in the BBHub BlackBerry Developer Interview Series. This series will put a face to many of the software programs you know and love. Developers are often power users who have unique perspectives on the industry. Many are entrepreneurs with colorful careers in technology. This series will give you a glimpse into their worlds and their outlook on the future of the BlackBerry.

The second interviewee is Patrick Kosiol from Skylab-Mobilesystems. Patrick's company makes Spot for the BlackBerry, a piece of software that turns your BlackBerry into full-fledged GPS device that you can even Geocache with. Feel free to pose questions to Patrick in the comments of this post and he'll answer them.

Dave: Tell us a little about yourself, Patrick.

Patrick: I'm Patrick Kosiol a German living and working in China. I'm responsible for the actual development of our current and future products. That includes direct access to customer feedback for bringing more features, products and services our customers want.

What BlackBerry do you use now and what PDAs have you used in the past?

Patrick: Actually I'm not as handheld addicted as I should be. I never owned a BlackBerry or PDA privately as there are enough at work and I have to "play" with them quite often. Anyway, I'm currently impressed by the Pearl which has a lot of features but still lacks of built-in GPS support.

Dave: Why is the BlackBerry a good platform to develop on?

Patrick: The BlackBerry's well established system architecture enables us to develop comprehensive applications for the BlackBerry platform. There are less incompatibilities between different versions, a good security system you can rely on and well experienced users who know what they want. So this is a very good base to build high quality products for the BlackBerry market.

Dave: Other than your own, name your three favorite applications for the BlackBerry.

Patrick: Sudoku (great for lunch time), PocketDay, and MyFlashlight.

Just found this video clip-with audio- on our (i.e. AOL) unCut video site.

Seems that MediaMogirl was experiencing trouble with her BlackBerry- so she decides to call customer service.

We hear the "please hold messages" coming thru her cell as we watch her pass the time.

Let's grab some frames to see what she was doing during those 137 minutes. I know the opening screen says 74 minutes, but further grabs will show the 137...

Ready?

This is the second interview in the BBHub BlackBerry Developer Interview Series. This series will put a face to many of the software programs you know and love. Developers are often power users who have unique perspectives on the industry. Many are entrepreneurs with colorful careers in technology. This series will give you a glimpse into their worlds and their outlook on the future of the BlackBerry.

The second interviewee is Paul Dumais from Idokorro. Idokorro has produced some very popular and quite useful BlackBerry applications including Mobile SSH (this one comes in handy for me quite frequently!), Mobile Desktop, Mobile Admin, and most recently Idokorro's Mobile File Manager. Paul also was a contributor to my book, BlackBerry Hacks.

Paul has agreed to answer questions in the comments of this post, so if something's on your mind, feel free to ask away!

If you are a BlackBerry software developer and think you'd make a good candidate for the interview series, drop me a line at davemabe at gmail dot com.

Dave: Tell us a little about yourself, Paul.

Paul: I'm Paul Dumais and live in Ottawa Canada. I'm the co-founder and VP of Software Development at Idokorro. I'm responsible for the technical and strategic direction of our products, establishing our roadmap and conceiving new products.

Dave: What BlackBerry do you use now and what PDAs have you used in the past?

Paul: Right now I'm using a BlackBerry 8100 Pearl. Personally, I prefer using BlackBerry devices with a full QWERTY keyboard, but the Pearl has such amazing new features that are not available yet on other devices. My first PDA was a Newton, followed by a Palm V which I received at the JavaOne Conference. Palm gave out a Software Development Kit along with the device to encourage people to develop applications for it – which I thought was a brilliant idea.

This is the first in hopefully many interviews in what I'm calling the BBHub BlackBerry Developer Interview Series. This series will put a face to many of the software programs you know and love. Developers are often power users who have unique perspectives on the industry. Many are entrepreneurs with colorful careers in technology. This series will give you a glimpse into their worlds and their outlook on the future of the BlackBerry.

The first interviewee is Andrew Zimmer, the creator of what I think is a brilliantly simple and useful GPS enabled application for the BlackBerry: Naggie. Andrew has agreed to answer questions in the comments of this post, so if something's on your mind, feel free to ask away!

If you are a BlackBerry software developer and think you'd make a good candidate for the interview series, drop me a line at davemabe at gmail dot com.

Dave: Tell us a little about yourself, Andrew.

Andrew: I'm a software engineer at an MIT lab which does high-throughput genome sequencing and analysis. The group I work with produced a massive amount of the raw data for the Human Genome Project. I've been at it for about 7 years, ever since I got my computer science degree. It seems about as far away from programming Blackberries as you can get, but in both worlds you really have to make sure your code is 100% accurate.

Dave: What BlackBerry do you use now and what PDAs have you used in the past?

Andrew: I'm using the 7520 and 7100i right now, although I can't wait to get my hands on an 8703e. I'm really hoping that the 8703e has solved some of the GPS hardware issues that I see in the 7520 and 7100i, in particular the power consumption. In the past I've used Palms, and I even dabbled in Palm programming for a while in the late 90's but it was really cumbersome and very buggy (at least for Java).

Dave: Why do you think the BlackBerry is a good platform to develop on?

Andrew: Every time I talk to my RIM contacts I tell them what a pleasure it is to write applications for the Blackberry. One reason is that the development environment takes care of a lot of the deployment nightmares that you find on other platforms. Another reason is that RIM supports standard Java APIs (JSR's, as Sun calls them), which means it's easier to port applications to other devices. At the same time, though - and this is what drew me to the platform - Blackberries have all the same basic capabilities of your standard desktop, at least as far as a developer is concerned. Other platforms make developers think in really narrow terms and force you to change your thinking to fit the hardware. But you really don't have this problem with Blackberries, so you can innovate very quickly.

I was actually about to start building Naggie by strapping a laptop to my back and stapling a GPS receiver to my head, but then Blackberry came out with models that had embedded GPS. What's more, they (along with Nextel) actually opened up the device so that third party developers could access the GPS data. On any other handheld, there are major hurdles to accessing GPS information, but this isn't the case for Nextel Blackberries.

Lastly, the security is incredible. There's a reason that DoD relies on Blackberries. Consumers often don't think much about security, but developers really have to, and Blackberry provides a very rich set of security options.

Dave: Other than your own, name your three favorite applications for the BlackBerry and what's your favorite trick or feature that you use on your BlackBerry?

Andrew: I wish I had more time to use my Blackberry for other things, but to be honest I have been totally focused on building Naggie, so I haven't really learned many tips-and-tricks for my Blackberry. Other than Naggie and my email, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't use my Blackberry for anything else!

Dave: What's the most important feature that the BlackBerry lacks?

Andrew: If I could make any changes to the hardware side of a Blackberry, I'd make a model with GPS and a camera.

Dave: Where do you see the focus of third party programs for the BlackBerry going over the next few months?

Andrew: Given the buzz about media support on the Pearl, I would expect that third party developers are going to start producing some really cool music and camera features. Portable music, movies, and TV are all things I've never gotten into. My wife loves her iPod, but I just don't get it. But it does seem to be very lucrative. When you combine GPS with this media, though, you can really start doing some powerful things, especially for the service sector. Imagine how much faster companies like Comcast could be if all of their techs could snap a picture of a junction box and upload it to headquarters along with its GPS coordinates and street address. This technology has been around for a while, but it has required toaster-size hardware to operate. Shrinking all of that into a Star-Trek like communicator is going to enable some really cool applications.