BlackBerry App Generator: Create a BlackBerry App in ten Minutes for FREE
Positives
Negatives
Pre-requisites
Although the app claims that you can create an app in ten minutes, there are a couple of things that you really need prior to starting.
Graphics
You need to create two graphic icons, if you don’t aready have them.
The graphics can be in PNG, GIF or JPG format but PNG is really recommended. Both images can be larger than the sizes below as you can resize and crop larger images after you upload them.
- The first graphic should be 480 x 480 pixels. This icon is used to display your app on the device. i.e. the icon you click to run your app.
- The second graphic should be 480 x 120 pixels. This graphic is used a banner at the very top of your application.
I’ve included two images of the correct sizes in the images section that you can you use as a template and edit.
BlackBerry Vendor Portal Account
This is technically not required to design your app but it is required to publish your app to BlackBerry AppWorld. If you don’t already have one, I recommend you create one now, as it can take 3 to 4 days to be approved.
Content
The app generator use RSS feeds and other similar channels to create the content for your app. The app is really suited towards blog and news content but you can use tumblr, facebook pages, etc. A full list is in our tutorial.
Review
The BlackBerry App Generator is a web application that allows you to create an app that runs on BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry PlayBook.
The app is targeted at users with no developer skills and no real technical skills.
Ease of Use
The application is so easy to use. Everything is done on-screen and there is a live image on the right-hand side of your screen that shows you every change that you make in real-time. This makes it so easy to see the affect that any change you make will have and change it accordingly. Read our tutorial for a step by step guide.
Creating your Application.
Once you have an account created, you simply login online and start to design your app.
Its as simple as choosing your content sources (up to four can be used), designing the colours etc of your app, providing a good description of your app and whether you want to add adverts to your app or not (if you have a BlackBerry Advertising Service account).
Normally, I would go into more detail in this creation process but we have previously created a tutorial “Ten Minutes with BlackBerry App Generator“, which explains the step by step process.
Submit your Application
Once you have finished editing your application, you can edit it as many times as you wish until you have it perfect. When you are totally happy with your app, simply submit it to BlackBerry AppWorld via the BlackBerry Vendor Portal. It will then be checked by the Vendor Portal team and assuming that there are no issues with Vendor Portal Guidlines or your content, your app will shortly appear in AppWorld for your users to download.
Value
The app is completely free and lets you publish an app in BlackBerry AppWorld in literally less than ten minutes.
There is no need to hire expensive developers, graphic designers and there is no need for any great deal of technical knowledge.
Hire a developer for this kind of app and it will cost you in the region of £10,000 (on average) and usually take about 4 weeks, if not longer.
This app saves you that money and produces an app in a tiny fraction of that timescale. You can’t get better value than that.
Features
The finished app looks great but it is a little basic. However, it does the job.
It displays your last 20 items from your content, whether this be articles, photos, videos etc and it is updated in real-time. There are options for how frequently you want to update your content and whether you want to save content locally and whether you want to be notified whenever there is no new content.
Every article can be shared via BBM, Facebook, Twitter and Email but this is where the app really lets itself down.
With any app of this type you expect there to be branding. Branding lets users know who created the app, in this case Mippin. The “About” section of the app tells you who created the app, a little about it and a link to the BlackBerry App Generator page. That is great and totally expected for a free app.
Unfortunately, Mippin decided to integrate their branding in the article sharing part of the app. So when you share an article, the link to the article is not to your own original article but to a version of your article on the Mippin web site. That really lets the app down and in fact, stopped us from using the sharing feature from within the app.
You can download the Rapid Portal app that we created specifically for our tutorial, which will let you see what a finished app looks like and how it runs.
Support
Due to the ease of use in creating an app, you really shouldn’t need any support on it. However, after you have submitted an app to the Vendor Portal, this is where support can be an issue. I’m not going into the issues of the Vendor Portal Support in this review as it is really a seperate entity and outwith the control of Mippin and the BlackBerry App Generator itself.
What I will say, is that if you do have any support issues, you will find the team at Mippin extremely prompt to look at your issue and will keep you informed of what is going on.
Images
Have a look at our tutorial to see the graphics during each stage of the process. The following two images are included as templates that can be edited, should you require them.
- 480×480 icon
- 480×120 icon
Example App
We created an app when we were putting together our tutorial on the BlackBerry App Generator. We created the app in under ten minutes and it is now available to download from Blackberry AppWorld.
This app will let you see just what the app generator produces as a finished, published app.
Keep up to date with all the BlackBerry news and info directly from your BlackBerry Smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook with the free Rapid Portal app for BlackBerry Smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook.
Rapid Portal QR Code
Keep in touch with everything happening on the Rapid Berry site.
Keep in touch with everything happening on the Rapid Berry Facebook page.
Every time that we publish a new article, receive notification directly on your BlackBerry SmartPhone or BlackBerry PlayBook.
The app is BBM connected enabling you to share:
- Chat with BBM friends within the app
- Select BBM contacts right from the app. Invite them to read the latest article or download the app.
- Share app activities on your BBM profile
Rapid Berry is your UK resource for all things BlackBerry. News, Information, resources, source code, developer information and a whole lot more, all updated in real-time.
Make the most of your BlackBerry Smartphone or Tablet with the Rapid Portal.There’s no need to keep checking the site for updates and new articles as the app will notify you automatically every time we publish a new article.
Want to try the BlackBerry App Generator for yourself now? We still have spaces available. Get an account here.
