Watch Colbert Report

Could Stephen Colbert Take Texas on Super Tuesday?

After announcing his “exploratory committee for president of the United States of South Carolina” Thursday night, Stephen Colbert’s mock campaign snapped into action, buying $7,600 in ad time on a Charleston television station. His super PAC, which he passed off to Jon Stewart and renamed the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC, followed suit, making a $10,000 buy.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/14/could-stephen-colbert-take-texas-on-super-tuesday.html

PhoneGap Build demo

Learn how to use the CANVAS element in HTML5 to create a compelling kid's themed mobile painting app based on the Kids Musical Jamboree.

Mobile Application Development In The Cloud For Beginners

Learn how to use the cloud and Open Web technologies to create compelling cross platform mobile applications for iPhones, BlackBerry, Android and more.

Mobile Application Development in the Cloud For Beginners

Mobile Application Development in the Cloud For Beginners

The last few years have seen a sharp increase in the adoption rate of Smart Phones and tablet devices. We all know of Apple’s market share dominance with the iPhone and the iPad, but we can’t lose sight that Google, Amazon, RIM, and Microsoft all have key roles to play and offer their own breed of competitive mobile products.

RIM’s share price surely has taken a nose dive in 2011 but they have an existing customer base within the corporate landscape that is now permitting Android apps to enter their platform. Amazon has unveiled the Kindle Fire in late 2011 and will it prove to be a lower price point competitor to the iPad? Will Microsoft’s strategic partnerships provide them with a developer eco-system that will grow into a viable concern for the Android Market or App Store? Only time will tell the future direction of the mobile market but there are some common fundamentals that we can focus on as people interested in mobile application development.

The maturity of the HTML5 specification may be the great equalizer for mobile application developers. It can provide developers with the ability to develop and test code within a local browser that supports the WebKit framework such as Google Chrome or Apple’s Safari. Adobe has announced in late 2011 that they will be focusing on HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash.

Mobile application developers can also benefit from the current trend where cross platform providers such as PhoneGap or RhoMobile are providing cloud access to their tools. RhoMobile goes so far as even providing a cloud based IDE for its developer base.

What would happen if we combined open source tools, web development experience and the cloud for mobile application development needs? Well, we would have an effective method to create dynamic cross platform mobile applications.

This book will provide you with an easy to understand approach to develop cross platform mobile applications in the cloud. You don’t need to have any prior mobile application development experience and the best part is that you can get started without having to purchase any additional software. You can keep your credit card in your pocket and take it out only when you want to take a coffee break.

If you’re tired of trying to determine how to get started with developing mobile applications then why don’t you get started by reading the first chapter “The 5W’s”?

What this book covers

Chapter 1: The 5W’s…Who, What, Where, When and Why? This chapter provides you with an easy to use framework for understanding the basics of cross platform mobile application development.

Chapter 2: HTML5…You will explore free online sources to help you identify what HTML5 can offer you as a developer.

Chapter 3: Cloud Computing 101…This chapter will introduce you to the basic concepts of what cloud computing means and how it can provide you with tremendous flexibility as a mobile application developer.

Chapter 4: JavaScript…If you’re new to JavaScript then this chapter will provide you with an introductory overview of the key concepts along with some working examples.

Chapter 5: CSS3…You will learn how to maintain the look and feel of your mobile application through cascading style sheets.

Chapter 6: Cross Platform Mobile Application Development….This chapter will introduce you to the benefits of creating a mobile application that can be run on multiple platforms instead of having to code individual mobile applications for each distinct make such as iPhone, BlackBerry or Android.

Chapter 7: PhoneGap:Build…PhoneGap has been a player in the cross platform mobile development space for several years and they have launched cloud services for their developers. This chapter will get you started with PhoneGap:Build.

Chapter 8: Painting With The Kid’s Musical Jamboree …This chapter will now take the knowledge that you have learned in the previous chapters to work. You will create a working cross platform mobile application prototype based upon The Kid’s Musical Jamboree BlackBerry application that is available in BlackBerry App World. You will learn how to develop, build and sign your mobile application.

Chapter 9: Testing your app…This chapter will introduce you to testing your work directly in a browser or locally on a native simulator.

Chapter 10: Building your app…You will walk through the steps that are required to have your mobile application built within PhoneGap:Build.

Chapter 11: Deploying your app…PhoneGap Build provides you with two methods to deploy your app to customers and we’ll walk you through both options.

Chapter 12: Mobile Design Considerations…screen size, accessibility, orientation, hand gestures can all impact your design. This chapter will provide you with some tips on how to plan for development before writing any code.

Chapter 13: Global Village…You will find free options to translate your material in order to reach a global market place.

Chapter 14: Managing Your Projects…This chapter will discuss the software development life cycle when developing mobile applications.

Chapter 15: Designing Accessible Apps…Introduces some of the key aspects related to UI design, navigation, text and colors that you need to know before submitting a commercial application.

Chapter 16: Make Your Apps Stand Out…How can your app be unique when compared to other mobile apps?

Chapter 17: Growing Your App Business…If you’re not just dabbling in mobile development for personal fun then you will need to have a game plan in order to grow your new business.

Chapter 18: Conclusion…A quick summary of the key concepts learned in the previous chapters.

Chapter 19: Bonus: Create An E-Book…We will leave you with an additional example to use as a starting point for your mobile application development learning.

How to make money selling $0.99 cent BlackBerry Apps!

Thanks for helping to make us the #1 Kindle ebook on December 16th!

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,575 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Computers & Internet > Programming
  •  
  • Get your copy now!
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  • http://www.amazon.com/make-money-selling-BlackBerry-ebook/dp/B005XRPKKU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324082307&sr=1-1 

Canada Border Services Agency Most Wanted List - Criminality

These individuals are inadmissible to Canada and are the subject of an active Canada-wide warrant for removal.
These individuals have failed to comply with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and have criminal convictions in Canada.

Take no action to apprehend these persons yourself. Report any information to the Border Watch Line at 1-888-502-9060. 

BlackBerry Children's Book as an app

Aside from having a good story and a good BlackBerry children's book app developer, you'll need some interactive elements in order to self publish and get your children's book approved as an app. If not, you'll be told to publish your book as an ebook. Besides, the BlackBerry can do so much more for your children's book than just plain text and pictures. With that in mind, there are some key elements that you'll need to work on in order to give your BlackBerry children's book developer a clearer idea of how you want your BlackBerry children's book app to appear and function.

The steps outlined below will provide a solid foundation for you to work with an BlackBerry children's book app developer to complete your app. You should be able to do quite a bit of the work on your own using a graphics program such as PhotoShop, PhotoPaint, etc., a text file editor such as Wordpad or MS Word, and a spreadsheet program such as MS Excel.

For each file you create for your BlackBerry children's book app, it's important to begin with, and stick with, a good file naming structure. For example, if your app is called "MyApp", and you have an image of a rabbit on page 3, then you'll want to name that file something like "MyApp_rabbit_1_page3_xxyyzz.png", where xxyyzz is month/day/year. This becomes even more important when you have many images, or many revisions of images to work with. Otherwise it's very difficult for everyone involved to be sure they're working with the correct image.

1) Create a text file containing the text for your story, broken down into sections for each individual page of your app. This can also a good place to add notes for each page to help your BlackBerry children's book developer during development. You can choose to add your notes to this text file, or a better method is to create a separate Excel spreadsheet that details each page in your BlackBerry children's book app.

2) Create a rough storyboard for each page in your BlackBerry children's book app. These pages would include the startup splash screen, title page, index page, help page, story pages, etc. Each page should be a rough pencil sketch of the background art, characters, objects, and text. The purpose is to get a rough idea of how everything is going to fit on the page, and how the pages will flow together. The background images should be 1024x768 pixels in size, PNG format, enough to fill the BlackBerry screen.

3) Once you have your first storyboard pages completed, identify elements, characters, etc. that you'd like to be interactive or animated. These items will need to be drawn as separate images later to be able to animate them. For example, you may want to be able to touch a ball and have it bounce across the screen. To do this, the ball needs to be drawn as a separate image with a transparent background so your BlackBerry children's book app developer can animate the ball. The typical file format for these images are PNG, and the size should generally be the size that you need on the BlackBerry screen ( relative to the 1024x768 background image ). Sometimes you may want items created in a larger scale, if you for example want to be able to make the item larger when touching it, etc. Having your BlackBerry children's book app developer working with you at this stage is ideal, as they can help you identify the best ways to animate and interact with your BlackBerry children's book app.

4) Once you've worked out all the items you'd like to interact with or animate, now it's time to complete the color background images for each page in your BlackBerry children's book app. This will also help you to choose the color and placement of text, characters, and other elements that you'll use in your BlackBerry children's book app.

5) Now that your background images are ready, it's time to work on the characters and other items in your BlackBerry children's book app. These items are placed on the BlackBerry screen in layers. So think of your background image as layer 1, and then your other items are added in layers on top of that layer. For example, for a character to sit on a chair and have both animated, the chair and character would need to be seperate images. The background image is placed on layer 1, the chair on layer 2, and the character on layer 3. That way the character is in the foreground, and the chair is behind it. You can use as many layers as you need.

6) Now that you have color background images, text, characters and items created, it's time to place this all together into a new set of storyboard pages similar to those in step 2.

7) Once your color storyboards are ready, it's time to start thinking about sounds. You may want background music, narration, and sound effects for certain items in your BlackBerry children's book app. Audio files can increase the size of your app significantly, so it's best to keep sound effects to a few seconds or less, and keep background music to short loops to save space. The typical file format for your audio files would be either mp3, caf, or wav.

8) Now it's time to start working on the icons for your BlackBerry children's book app. It's important to think of your icons as one of the first things people see about your app. It's a first impression, and also tells people something about your app. It's also important to think of how your icon will look in the different sizes requried. For example, your main icon as seen on App World is 512x512 pixels, and the icon seen on the BlackBerry main screen is 114x114 pixels. These 2 icons need to be the same image, but different scales. There are other sizes required, but these are primary icon sizes that you should consider in this first pass. Typically you only need to give your BlackBerry children's book app developer the 512x512 pixel icon image and they will create all of the other icons from that image.

9) Now that most of the foundation details for your BlackBerry children's book app are ready, it's time to sign up as an BlackBerry developer. To do this, go to the RIM developer website ( http://blackberry.com) and sign up as an BlackBerry Developer. The current fee is waived per year, and that fee is for as many apps as you want to self publish. Once you've completed the sign up process, contracts, and banking information, you'll be ready to register your first app for submission. Even though your app may not be ready for submission, you can still register the name for your app which can hold the name for you for 90 days.

To prepare your BlackBerry children's book app for submission, you'll also need to write a description for your app for App World, and use the 512x512 icon and some of the color storyboard images as temporary screenshots. It's also a good idea to have a basic website setup to promote your children's book app for BlackBerry, as well as a support email address where customers can reach support.

For what I call stage 1 of app discovery, for your app description, focus on the first 3 sentences as viewed on an BlackBerry, and first 2 sentences as viewed on App World via a PC. These both work out to be the first 214 characters and are the text that people see before they click on anything further.

Also think carefully about your app description keywords. These are added in a separate line when you prepare to submit your app, and are used for App Store SEO to drive customers to see your app in the App Store. A good test is to use an iPhone and BlackBerry device and search for your keywords in App World and see what apps come up.

10) Once you've completed all of the steps above, if you haven't already, it's time to bring in your BlackBerry children's book app developer to review and work on helping you build and guide you through the rest of the process of how to self publish your children's book app for BlackBerry.

Hope this helps!

WT Paige
blackberryspecial@gmail.com
BlackBerry Children's Book Developer
http://mobile.miiduu.com

BlackBerry Payment Service

The Payment Service enables developers to leverage a range of business models through the sale of digital goods within their applications. The Payment Service is simple and easy to implement for developers and provides end users with a fast, consistent and secure purchase experience.
The Payment Service now supports BlackBerry WebWorks for Tablet OS applications in addition to BlackBerry smartphone Java® applications. Learn about the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK for Tablet OS

The SDK has been updated as of Sep. 19, 2011.
The update allows developers to offer a subscription license model which is auto-renewing. Additionally, flexible renewal periods with a free or reduced first period provide developers greater flexibility.
Download the Payment Service SDK v1.5
View the Payment Service SDK documentation

How to make money selling $0.99 cent BlackBerry Apps! - blackberry,rim,apps

How to make money selling $0.99 cent BlackBerry Apps! - blackberry,rim,apps

New Press Release:

Apps. You can't seem to go a day without hearing about how a new app or how Angry Birds has made billions. Would you like to start making money by selling $0.99 cent apps?

Kid's Musical Jamboree

Politicians Above The Law

Politicians Above The Law has been added to BlackBerry App World and is available for purchase at http://mobile.miiduu.com.

Fairy Tales and Short Stories for Children

Enjoy reading Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs and much more with the updated Fairy Tales and Short Stories for Children BlackBerry app. 

ebooks and publishing

Original and classic author titles plus publishing services.

Shopping Diva

Watch out before your credit card is canceled!  Shopping Diva has you taking on Rodeo Drive and shopping for diamonds and designer shoes.  Make your payments before your credit is gone.

http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/52518?lang=en

HOW TO WASH A PUDDLE (awaiting approval in BB APP WORLD)

Watch for this new BlackBerry App in the App World.  Every action, no matter how small, affects  our world in some way, and a child’s actions and reactions are the first ‘ripples’ in life’s puddle.

Edie Batstone’s first book of story-poems invites us to jump into a child’s world of wonder and possibility, just as a child jumps into a puddle - knowing only that it seems like a good idea at the time! Join her on this journey of discovery, one “ripple” at a time. 

Kid's Musical Jamboree

UPDATE:  get it now in BlackBerry App World!

Kid's Musical Jamboree is the new BlackBerry children's app awaiting approval for inclusion into the BlackBerry App Store.





Kid's Musical Jamboree provides you with classic children's music hits such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Bah Bah Black Sheep, Itsy Bitsy Spider and many more classic hits.  All of the songs are sung by vocally trained children ranging in age from 5-12 years old.

Your children can also enjoy other exciting features such as trying numerous Tongue Twisters, Sing-A-Long, Instrument identification in both English and French and more.

Download the app today and watch as your kid's start singing along and having fun!

BlackBerry e-books

We have partnered with a publishing company and will be providing a series of BlackBerry e-book apps in the coming months.

Watch for e-book apps that cover children books, cooking, politics and non-fiction.

We will be targeting both the Kindle reader and MobiPocket Reader.

Fairy Tales BlackBerry App

RAPUNZEL

There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. At length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire. These people had a little window at the back of their house from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and asked: 'What ails you, dear wife?' 'Ah,' she replied, 'if I can't eat some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.' The man, who loved her, thought: 'Sooner than let your wife die, bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.' At twilight, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his wife. She at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It tasted so good to her—so very good, that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before. If he was to have any rest, her husband must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of evening therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him. 'How can you dare,' said she with angry look, 'descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!' 'Ah,' answered he, 'let mercy take the place of justice, I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the window, and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some to eat.' Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and said to him: 'If the case be as you say, I will allow you to take away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one condition, you must give me the child which your wife will bring into the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for it like a mother.' The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.

Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower, which lay in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath it and cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
  Let down your hair to me.'

Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

After a year or two, it came to pass that the king's son rode through the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened. This was Rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king's son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower, but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and listened to it. Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
 Let down your hair to me.'

Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her. 'If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,' said he, and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
  Let down your hair to me.'

Immediately the hair fell down and the king's son climbed up.

At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her; but the king's son began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought: 'He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does'; and she said yes, and laid her hand in his. She said: 'I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.' They agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until once Rapunzel said to her: 'Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king's son—he is with me in a moment.' 'Ah! you wicked child,' cried the enchantress. 'What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me!' In her anger she clutched Rapunzel's beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the king's son came and cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
  Let down your hair to me.'

she let the hair down. The king's son ascended, but instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.' The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.

BlackBerry Playbook

http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/

BlackBerry Advertising SDK

On Some BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry Device Software 5.0, ads did not display correctly and a ClassCastException appeared in the event log

Please note: Developing for different versions has been slightly modified. Please refer to the steps below.

Full documentation for the BlackBerry Advertising Service can be found here or within the SDK zip file.

The new BlackBerry Advertising SDK can be found here

Have an older version of the Advertising Service SDK already integrated into your application? Here are the steps for replacing it with the newest version.

1)      In Eclipse, in the Package Explorer view, right-click your project.

2)      Click Build Path > Configure Build Path.

3)      On the Libraries tab, select net_rim_bbapi_adv_appXXXXX.jar and click Remove to remove the old library.

4)     

Click Add External JARs.

5)      Navigate to where you extracted the updated SDK, and select the appropriate .jar file. As with previous versions, the version of the library that you select must match the version of device software that your application is designed to run on.

6)      On the Order and Export tab, select the net_rim_bbapi_adv_app.jar check box. Selecting this check box ensures that the Advertising Service library is packaged with your application when you load it onto a device or simulator. No more loading a separate .cod file!

7)      You’ll also need to change your import statements in your source files. In previous versions of the SDK, the import statement contained a unique identifier for your version of the SDK. This is no long required. Replace the old import statement with this:

import net.rimlib.blackberry.api.advertising.app.Banner;

Now that you’ve integrated the new SDK, you’ll notice some changes with how you run your application. You no longer need to load a library .cod file onto the simulator or device for your application to work correctly. In Eclipse, just click Run and your application will launch in the simulator.

Developing for different software versions

The Advertising Service SDK contains a separate .jar file specific to each BlackBerry® Device Software version. To permit your application to run on multiple software versions, you must ensure that you use the correct .jar file with each version of your application. The Advertising Service SDK contains the following .jar file versions:

·         6.0: Required for applications that run on BlackBerry® 6.

·         4.7-5.0: Required for applications that run on BlackBerry Device Software 4.7 to BlackBerry Device Software 5.0.

·         Pre-4.7: Required for applications that run on a software version earlier than 4.7.

Should you require assistance with the BlackBerry Advertising Service Portal, please visit the BlackBerry Advertising Service Developer Support Forums or Knowledge Base. 

If you need further assistance , please contact AdvertisingService@BlackBerry.com

Best Regards,

BlackBerry Advertising Service Team

PS: Don’t forget that you can report, track and view BlackBerry Advertising SDK related issues via the Research In Motion Developer Issue Tracker.