Developers have began warming up to BlackBerry. So much that more than 60 developers on Wednesday 20th March 2013 attended a BlackBerry® Jam Session for Kenyan Universities at Nairobi-based Mocca Hotel. This event follows that series of BlackBerry Jam Sessions that were held in Africa in 2012 and around the world as well with the largest being in Amsterdam, Holland in Feb 2013. The African event did however attract over 300 developers in JHB – South Africa, Lagos – Nigeria and Nairobi Kenya last year.

The Jam Session was an intense 10 hour programming session where developers in groups of 2-4 worked on transforming a social or business idea into a working App. At the end of the session, developers presented their apps to a panel of judges for a chance to win a BlackBerry® PlayBook™. Participants came from the following universities:

1. Inoorero
2. Strathmore
3. Jomo Kenyatta University
4. Kenyatta University
5. Mount Kenya University

All these participants are now expected to use the knowledge acquired from the hackatho Read more »

The Blackberry Z10 is the latest entry into the smartphone market by Canadian firm RIM, who now also renamed itself into Blackberry, the name of its core brand.

In recent years, RIM fell behind Apple, Nokia, Samsung and Google in the smartphone production market. Truth is, RIM has been struggling to regain its market share because of some late-to-market strategies that some would call ‘slow’ and unfortunately, the products did not succeed as much as we would all have liked in the cut throat market, like the Blackberry Playbook.

However, BlackBerry seems to have made their comeback with the BlackBerry 10. This is a new OS that powers their new flagship device, the Z10, a brand new phone with a completely redesigned exterior and running the Blackberry 10 OS, made specifically for the next generation of handsets. So what’s new? A device that has some fairly compelling features along with additional business Read more »

Mobile Web East Africa 2013, the third East African edition of the most progressive and interactive mobile industry events in Sub-Saharan Africa, returns to the Southern Sun Mayfair Nairobi, Kenya on February 19th through 21st. The highly business-focused event’s primary goal is to facilitate the growth of the mobile ecosystem in the region through interaction and relationship building.

The conference features a bevy of top-notch speakers from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Qatar, Canada, the UK and the US. Industry leaders from organisations including Safaricom, iHub Research, DHL, iROKO Partners, Buni TV, FrontlineSMS, BuzzCity, BlackBerry and Airtel have already confirmed their attendance at this senior-level and progressive conference.

Read more »

Goal.com, the world’s largest football website owned by sports media group PERFORM, recently announced that Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry® smartphones and BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, will be promoting the company’s products across the Goal.com web and mobile sites in the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

The Goal.com sites reach over 14 million football fans across the MEA region, including specific local editions for the Nigerian, Ghanaian and Kenyan markets, as well as an Arabic edition for the Middle East and North Africa. The deal will cover the Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Egyptian, South African, Qatar, UAE and Jordanian markets, in the first pan-regional marketing partnership for Goal.com in these territories. Read more »

Health information is the backbone of any society. When you have bad health, it doesn’t matter what else you have because you might as well have little or nothing. Health is a vital component to increase in its members’ productivity for economical, political or social gain for any country or community.

Enter iAfya. 

iAfya is a health information application available to all mobile and fixed internet users which targets to become Africa’s main source of verified quality health information and related services.

Both the web-app and mobile versions offer a suite of reliable information that users will find simple to read, understand and implement. The platforms offers health information to consumers Read more »

These are the points that will be tested to award the winner of the 17^th November 2012 BlackBerry Hackathon:

• The Business Model – 25%
• Design Quality – 25%
• Originality of Idea – 25%
• Functionality – 25%

Each team should comprise of no more than 6 team members (You can 1 guy or 6 guys max)

Everything you present on the App has got to have been done in the room. Do not bring your previous work to this event. All has to be done here.

End of coding is at 6.30pm and each team Read more »

Look at this image to the left of this text very carefully. Look at what the guys are holding. Look very carefully. Those are BlackBerry Smartphones. Golden BlackBerry Smartphones.

On the left is Samuel Muchai Kimani. He is a Gold medalist in the recently concluded Olympics and he participated in the Paralympics men’s (T 11) 1500m competition where he represented Kenya and won. T 11 is a category for visually impaired athletes.

Right next to him is another exemplary Olympian, Abraham Tarbei, who won gold in the Paralympics men’s 1500 m race category T 46.

That would mean that BlackBerry recently got up to some very golden activities things. And I do mean some actual Golden activity. *PUN intended*  Read more »

BlackBerry wants your App: Yes they Do. And you will get good rewards from it.

Do you think you have what it takes? Are you ready to show us what you got? It is quite simple really. Just create a BlackBerry® 10 app and get it approved through the Built for BlackBerry® program. If you earn a minimum of 1,000 USD from your app over 12 months on the BlackBerry AppWorld and you comply with the 10k Developer Commitment Terms and Conditions.

Some of the criteria for your App are:

Submission – Applications submitted to the Built for BlackBerry® program will be subject to a range of tests and evaluations which they must pass before receiving the Built for BlackBerry designation.

The Built for BlackBerry evaluation process begins after your app has successfully passed the BlackBerry App World™ Vendor Guidelines. Once submitted for Built for BlackBerry approval, your app will be reviewed by a testing team under the following criteria: User Benefits, User Experience, Performance and Security. Read more »

Blackberry really needs the next best thing. And BB10 OS could very well be it. We thought it was BBX sometime back, LOL. BBX. I actually thought it was *Bee Bee Eex*

Developer Tech reported on their blog that market analysts Vision Mobile, had found BlackBerry developers would earned more per app than iOS and Android developers, with the BlackBerry dev taking home on average $3,853 per month compared to $3,693 for iOS and $2,735 for Android. How true it is, no one really knows.

RIM has granted an opportunity to Kenyan developers to wow them by hosting a Blackberry 10 Developer Jam this Friday, 17^th August 2012 at the Ole Sereni Hotel on Mombasa Road. The registrations for the BB Jam are currently ongoing on the BB10 Kenya Jam site. The event is expected to run from 10am to 5pm with those seven hours focused on teaching and informing developers on how BB 10 feels and plays on devices. Issues that will be discussed in this event include:

1. The anatomy of a Blackberry 10 App
2. Cascades Fundamentals
3. Blackberry 10 Cascades samples
4. Developing a Blackberry 10 application using the BB 10 NDK
5. Advanced tooling on the Native SDK for the Blackberry PlayBook Tablet Read more »

Image courtesy; Crackberry.com

My BBM contacts @ninanjira and @ahendaa always used to ask me how to get radio on their BlackBerry smartphones. I didn’t know how to answer these questions so I always avoided both their BBM until the realized I didn’t want to admit regular BBs didn’t have FM Radio. Well, ladies, you can now have a BB that comes with FM Radio pre-installed. This is the new Curve 9320. 

This new BlackBerry® Curve™ 9320 smartphone features all the core BlackBerry Messaging and social-centric features and offers global 3G connectivity backed by long battery life to allow users to make the most of their day. The emphasis here is on long battery life; a first from BB that even I want to try out now. Read more »