Thread: BlackBerryOS Brings you BBM Hackathon

It is 9:30am EST on August 11th, and BlackBerryOS is at BBM Hackathon. Mike Kirup is on scene and we plan to interview him later today. For now we want to just let you know that there will be many great things coming from the BlackBerryOS blog and twitter feed. Make sure you have BBOS set up via RSS feeder and make sure you are following our Twitter Account.

After check in we were brought into the BBM conference room, where we were given a press area to hang out in. From this corner of the room we will be observing and reporting everything to our beloved BBOS users.

There are many developers here and we will be talking to as many of them as we can. Some today and some tomorrow, we will be bringing all the news. When we arrived in the room we noticed all the dev tables set out in 5 groups, all representing the 5 boroughs of NYC. Each table has 6 seats for devs and they are working hard to develop great apps for all BlackBerry users.

We will check back later.

We are here at BBM Hackathon and we will be working hard to get you the latest and greatest info. Check back soon, as we will be featuring interviews from Mike Kirup, iSpeech and other developers working at this event.

Nice guys, you are lookin sharp! I hope they are feeding you guys well.

Lucky bums got Grey Goose in the loft.

Originally Posted by Joe Jerde

Nice guys, you are lookin sharp! I hope they are feeding you guys well.

Joe, the polo shirts ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, here we go guys, the interviews are going to start pouring in today and tomorrow from the BBM Hackathon NYC event. First off the block, we have our interview with Mike Kirkup, Sr Director of Development Relations at Research in Motion.

AgentBlackBerry and I got to talk with Mike Kirup about a lot of things yesterday including BBM SDK's, BBM features, BlackBerry 7 Apps and BlackBerry 7 Theme Builder. Here are some of the questions we got to ask him on video.

• Enjoy the video and give us tons of feedback.
• Keep an eye on the Blog and our Twitter Account for more news and developer interviews.

One of the first interviews from yesterday was with Tyler Auten from iSpeech. He talked with us a bit about the new iSpeech SDK and all the cool stuff it brings to integration. Honestly we were super excited to hear that a company like iSpeech is making this available for developers to use in a easy and quick way.

• Check out the video above for more info on the iSpeech SDK
• Let us know what you think about the new iSpeech SDK!

We are back with another great interview from BBM Hackathon. Rory from Glasspear Designs, shows off his Recipe Book for BlackBerry devices and PlayBook.

Dont forget to let us know what you think about Rory's ideas.

If you are a ski enthusiast you are going to really like Manoj's app, GPS Ski Maps. Check out our interview with Manoj and let us know your thoughts on this app here

Shaheen Georgee, developer of GoBe, was kind enough to talk to us about his app and how it's been influenced by the BBM hackathon today. GoBe focuses on three main points: What do, where to do it and who to do it?

• Check out the video above and let us know what you think.
• Also visit his website Inkrypt Technologies Corporation

BBM Hackathon is over :-(, but we still have a bunch of interviews to share with you. Here we have an interview with one of the developers, Frank, on Picture Puzzler.

This app is pretty cool. You can currently get it in App World, however it uses an email system. Frank explains that, with RIM's assistance at BBM Hackathon, he will be added the BBM Connect options. This will allow you to share your Puzzled pictures with your BBM contacts. You can even race, to see who can decrypt the picture first. Amazing App!

Download Picture Puzzler from App World today!

Jrod & agentblackberry, you guys did a hell of a great job at the Hackathon. You two were so lucky to live close enough to put yourselves through the traveling, plus having free time to have all that fun.
Great job on the interviews, all of them, and showing the rest of those at hack just how awesome, legit, and a force to be reckoned with BBOS really is. You looked very professional and I'm sure that those interviewed went to their devices afterwards to find out who we are.
Very impressive guys, thanks for the fantastic effort.

We'll continue rolling out interviews from BBM Hackathon all day today and we start off with Kathryn Lahrs with PowWow. PowWow is a pretty cool app which will help BBM contacts find out who's available and coordinate different types of events in a simple and quick fashion. Check out the video above to get a rundown from the developer herself and stay tuned to BBOS as we'll keep you in the loop for the release of this and every other app in BBM Hackathon.

We talked for a bit with Dan Brannon about his app "Switch." Again, this another app that we can really see taking off and becoming somewhat of a need for different people as it offers such a simple yet useful function like sharing tasks among a team. For small business owners, or even BES users, this app will definitely help simply certain things that maybe they currently do over email and will now be able to do more instantly over BBM.

• Check out the video above and let us know what you think!

Here's another video for you guys. This interview is with Jerome Carty, President of Kisai Labs. For those that do not know, Kisai Labs developed the well known app Blaq. You can find Blaq in App World for a great price.

Back to the interview and the amazing app that Jerome has previewed for us. Unfortunately, the app has no name yet, however we can see that it is a Connect Four like App. As you watch the video you can see just how smooth the game is and how quick it moves from phone to phone. The app is barebones and will have a tons of other features add, such as: Avatar, Names, Who's Turn, Score... All of these will show up in the right bar.

This app will be featured in Sunday Funday game review as soon as BlackBerryOS gets an official copy. As soon as we know more about a name and launch date we will let you know. This app is going to be a great one! If you are excited about this game as much as I am, make sure to sound off in the forums.

Poynt is considered a top app in the BlackBerry universe. Being one of the first apps to really introduce a fluid UI and be so user friendly, Poynt has gained the reputation of being BlackBerry Super app. Some of the coolest features of Poynt include the ability to search for restaurant listings, movie times, events, yellow and white pages, be able to contact whatever you're searching for, map it, and even save information. Check out their own description of what makes Poynt great.

• Deep device integration means never having to exit the app to add contacts, invite friends to meetings, map your route or dinner and movie reservations.
• Integrated Search for OS 6.0 lets you type any search term from your homescreen, then view results in Poynt (BlackBerry Torch only)

• Download Poynt for your BlackBerry
• Do you use Poynt? If so, how do you use it and what features would you like to see next?

They really have come a long way as one of the first innovators of BBM integration. I use Poynt, but it's a bit hard when you are living in a smaller town. As goes for all search based apps.

As we wind down to the last of our BBM Hackathon interviews we meet up with Sheamus. Sheamus was at BBM Hackathon working on a turn based football app. This game sounds sick! unfortunately, it is still in the early stages and we were unable to see much of anything as a demo. We did get a great explanation of the app and Sheamus' thoughts on the event. Check out the video and let us know what you think of his app.

So may not be ready for this year's season.