9.1. Hacks 94 100: IntroductionOver the last several months, an explosion of new BlackBerry applications has hit the market. If there was ever any doubt about the viability of the BlackBerry as a development platform, it has been reduced to a whimper. There are applications for getting real-time stock quotes [Hack #70], spellchecking [Hack #65], even a bartending program. If you speak a little Java, you can brew up your own application to communicate with web servers [Hack #94]. Best of all, there are no license fees to get started in fact, you don't even need to own a BlackBerry device [Hack #93]. RIM provides free access to the BlackBerry JDE, a development kit that includes an IDE, or integrated development environment. The other nice feature of the BlackBerry platform is there are a variety of ways [Hack #97] for your users to install your program, even over the air wherever they happen to be. Use the hacks in this chapter to get started. |