Despite the looming rumors of RIM putting
thousands of rank and file workers out of a job, it seems the Waterloo based company is still in the hiring business.
David Balmer, a former product manager, engineer and evangelist in the webOS Developer Relations team for Palm/HP left the company after only two years to become the Senior BlackBerry Developer Evangelist for Research In Motion.
This is definitely good news given Dave's specialty is in HTML5, part of RIM's current strategy in getting back in the mobile arena. Possibly behind this move is Balmer's development of his "highly efficient cross platform app framework based on HTML5." He is mentioned as the sole developer in his
LinkedIn profile and mentions that it has been developed with webkit in mind in his spare time. Interestingly enough it promises to be able to create mobile websites and native apps (using PhoneGap) for iOS, Android, webOS, Chrome, Safari, BlackBerry and more. Surely it won't be long before RIM adds this open source framework to the already long list of open source technologies available to developers through the BlackBerry 10 SDK.
What we do know for sure, is that Dave agrees with the recent
positive press RIM has
been getting. In a blog post on his personal site today, he lists three reasons behind the move.
- WebOS went from being a leader in HTML5 to being a "distant follower."
- RIM has shown that "web developers can and should be equal citizens with native developers.
- In his own words: "BB10 itself is damn awesome. It has some of goodies I liked from webOS, iOS and even Win7; but all streamlined and more functional. Plus, there are even more unique features and slick interactions which help put it way over the top in my book…. and it’s not even released yet."
Welcome Dave to #TeamBlackberry by leaving a comment on his
Blog or sending him a tweet
@balmer.
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