Will Robertson's Blog

The Financial Post regularly republishes Bloomberg news articles on their website. For some reason they deem it necessary to change the headline. In this case, where Bloomberg has a positive story about RIM with a positive headline, Financial Post finds the single negative line in the article and uses it as the headline.

Bloomberg: BlackBerry Fans Cite Reliability as They Snub Competitors

Financial Post: BlackBerry fans fret about their phone’s future

The article goes on to quote several BlackBerry users, all of which are praising the devices and explaining how much they like them.

“As long as I stay involved in this type of job, I’ll need a BlackBerry,” said John Yester, who has been a firefighter outside of Pittsburgh for the past 15 years.

“I’m able to keep in contact faster with clients, and we can actually have real conversation,” said Berry

In Venezuela, where the device is ubiquitous on the streets of Caracas, President Chavez has dubbed his BlackBerry and Twitter account his “secret weapon.”

I wonder why Financial Post had to turn the headline negative?

My new PlayBook app has just been released on BlackBerry App World. Introducing Many Notes, a fun and powerful note pad application. Check it out on App World here: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/86915

App Description

Many Notes is the fun, flexible, and powerful app for making and storing notes. Enables quick note taking and a visual way to organize your notes. A beautiful hybrid of a classic notes application and the flexibility of real sticky notes.

Features:
- Auto-save & Fast Entry
- Drag & Drop organization
- Copy & Paste
- Predictive-text & Spellcheck
- Portait & Landscape
- Expansive canvas
- Add & Delete notes
- Make notes wider and longer
- No titles, tagging, manual saving, or anything else to slow you down!

More features are planned in future updates. Get it on App World: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/86915

It is taking RIM a little longer to approve my new PlayBook app than first anticipated. They got swamped with submissions leading up to the PlayBook 2.0 launch. Here is a fresh teaser shot of my new app, Many Notes!

I have designed Many Notes to be the perfect note taking companion to the new PlayBook OS 2.0 productivity apps. It is a hybrid between a traditional (boring!) note pad app with the fun and power of sticky notes.

I expect RIM will approve the app for App World by the end of the week, so keep an eye out for it!

I made my first PlayBook app, Temp Notes, back before the PlayBook was released. It has had more downloads than I had expected, but I have always intended to follow it up with more… functional apps.

The time has finally come, my second PlayBook app is done, tested, and submitted to App World! It was not the app I intended to do next, but a time crunch and some difficulty implementing Twitter’s OAuth login led to a change of course.

My new app Many Notes is the perfect follow up to Temp Notes. I’ll hold off revealing what the app is all about for when RIM approves it for sale on App World.

While I wait for Many Notes to be approved on App World I am going to keep working on the other PlayBook app ideas I have. Many Notes and my future apps have been made possible thanks to Codecademy and Nettuts+. I have been learning JavaScript, JQuery, and some new HTML5 thanks to these two great websites, all of which make it extremely easy to write PlayBook apps using BlackBerry WebWorks.

Hopefully by Monday I’ll be announcing Many Notes’ availability on App World!

Back in December I took a quick drive down to New York City for a BlackBerry party with a few friends. Turns out RIM liked what we had to say at the party because we made it into the video recapping the night.

Even better than a trip down to New York or the new BlackBerry Bold 9900s that we picked up there, thanks to the party my girlfriend finally switched to a BlackBerry. I predict my monthly sent text messages to drop to zero now that she is on BBM.

Checkout my previous post about the BBM Party in NY and the BlackBerry Blog’s recap of the night. Also thanks to RIM’s Luke Reimer for interviewing us and the Edelman crew for putting together such a great contest/event.

After reading Ebscer’s blog post about the majority of Pixelated’s downloads being from Canada, I was curious to know whether the same would be true for my app, Temp Notes.

Using the App World download reports, I found that my stats are similar to Ebscer’s, though with a smaller proportion of downloads in Canada.

32% of Temp Notes downloads were in Canada, 22% in the United States, 9% in Mexico, 6% in the UK, 2% in India, 2% in UAE, and 83 other countries each with less than 1% of downloads.

(based on 3327 downloads from App World)

I have found a new obsession: BBM Music. When I first tested out BBM Music I thought the service was a bit stupid: “You want me to pay monthly to access a limited number of songs?!” But I decided to give it a go anyway. Little did I know, BBM Music was actually the perfect music product for me.

Before I explain further, I should probably explain how I typically listen to music. I listen to a small number of songs (typically less than 10) on repeat for days on end. Repeatedly. Until I am completely sick of the songs, then move on to the next crop of songs. My sister can attest to this. I subjected her to the same three songs while driving from Toronto to Montreal, and back.

So BBM Music is kind of perfect for me. I pay a small monthly fee to listen to a few songs over and over, then dump them for a few more songs when I get sick of them. Now when I hear a great song on the radio or from a friend simply I fire up BBM Music, add it to my list, and am listening to it instantly.

Before when I liked a song I would check it out on iTunes/7digital, and try to decide whether I wanted to own it or not. While not a big purchase decision, it certainly took more brain power than adding the song to my BBM Music.

Making BBM Music even better is my new Jawbone JAMBOX. The JAMBOX is the portable wireless speaker that connects to devices over bluetooth. With it, I can listen to my songs from BBM Music out loud with the JAMBOX’s fantastic sound quality and keep my BlackBerry on me (rather than stuck in a speaker-dock). It is a perfect solution for me.

Check out Jawbone’s JAMBOX and RIM’s BBM promo videos below:

Even better: the JAMBOX works with my PlayBook. Hopefully BBM Music makes its way over to the PlayBook someday soon!