Blaq for PlayBook Has Landed
- May 31st, 2011
- Posted in News . Updates
- By Hamrick
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We couldn’t be more pleased to be announcing that Blaq is officially available for your BlackBerry PlayBook in App World!
Seeing as how the PlayBook scene has thus-far been devoid of any real fuller-featured Twitter apps, we wanted to make sure that we got Blaq to market as quickly as possible. Therefore, the app you see in App World today is far from the extent of our goals for its development.
In fact, thanks in large part to Adobe’s AIR platform (and in larger part to the awesome development skills of our dev Jerome Carty), we were able to move from initial concept to App World in a matter of about a month.
We still have a lot of work to do, but PlayBook users finally have an app that they can truly experience Twitter with. Here are a few cool features you’ll find in Blaq today:
- Gestures: swipe the tweet card down to access the composing box, or swipe it off to the right to get rid of it all together
- Tap and hold: hold the reply button to choose whether to reply or reply all, holding the RT button will allow you to edit your retweets before sending them
- Embed.ly support baked in: load a whole mess of links from hundreds of different services, ranging from all your standard photo sharing services and YouTube, to more exotic content from sites like SoundForge and Dribbble
We have tons of additional features planned for Blaq, too. We’ll be updating the app as quickly as possible until all of our planned features are in place. Some of these include but are absolutely not limited to:
- List support: Yeah, sorry guys…it being in the features list was an accident, but it will be present in the first update!
- More advanced notifications: there are still some limitations regarding native notifications on the PlayBook platform, but we’re working on some stellar solutions
- Multi-account support: we wanted to make sure you had a solid app to use one account with first, but multi-account support is a major focus for us — just requires more testing
- Customization: since one of the bigger benefits of our original BlackBerry app was extensive customization, expect deep menus with lots of fun options in a near-future update
Stay tuned to this blog, the @Blaq Twitter account, @Hamrick (designer) and @jcarty (developer) for all the latest updates!
All the best, and all. Blaq. Everything.
loving the app, however for me
Gestures: swipe the tweet card down to access the composing box, or swipe it off to the right to get rid of it all together
this doesn’t work for me, any suggestions?
nevermind, thought the swipe was for the ‘tweet box’ rather than the tweet card. love this
Never mind the playbook app……
BLOODY update your BlackBerry app!!!
Congrats on the big release. I had high hopes for the app and was indeed impressed. Looking forward to seeing how the app evolves.
One suggestion/request, when new tweets come in on the real-time stream it would be better if they loaded above and not pushed the timeline down when you are not at the top of the timeline. Currently it is frustrating when reading the timeline and it moves away from my spot.
Thanks for the excellent app!
Love the app! Absolutely the best Twitter client on the Playbook so far, in my opinion.
One suggestion is get rid of some of that blank space below each tweet in the list. Right now you’re only getting about 5 tweets in a screen, but I think with some cleanup on the empty space in the tweet list you could easily get 8 or 10. Better viewing that way!
Keep up the excellent work, guys! Thanks!
LOVE this app. As a tweeter freak promoting his book, this app has come at the right time. was tired of getting out my old iphone to send a decent tweet. look forward to awesome updated.
help does not swipe down – LIST’s does not work
I purchased this app on Playbook and am really enjoying using it.
Here’s my initial feedback:
1. Post a walk through video on your blog.
2. Create a basic help file that describes what each icon does. A few screenshots with some arrows and text should do it.
3. It would be nice if the app worked when changing the orientation of the device to Portrait (showing more tweets).
4. It is very nice that you load the site in a frame when I click on a tweet in my feed that has a link. However, that frame is SMALL and actually reading the page is challenging (especially since I have lousy vision). Maybe you can include an icon below the preview window that would pop-up a window over the UI to show me a bigger view of the page. It would perhaps be nice to open it in the browser as well.
4. I know you already mentioned customization. I’d like to have the ability to make the width of the tweet list wider and make the fonts larger so that they are easier to read.
Thanks for producing a great Playbook App.
First app I ever paid for, and I don’t regret it at all. Awesome presentation, looking forward to updates with the planned features mentioned in the blog!
Can you explain how the refresh icon on the bottom right is intended to work?
The refresh icon is intended to reconnect you to real-time updates on disconnect.
However, if updates are real-time, the refresh icon won’t do much.
I love the fact that there is a twitter app for the playbook.
I was wondering is there any chance that there will be try before you buy version.
i purchased the app yesterday and it does not load on my playbook – it will install but i cannot open it past the “blaq” splash screen. any help would be appreciated! thanks.
i just downloaded and installed th Blaq on my BB Playbook. but when i run it, it seems like its stuck with a white screen apearing only.. please help fix the issue
thanks
still can’t buy from appworld. this is suxx
yea is the blackberry smartphone app project dead? no updates there at all?
http://hamrick.posterous.com/blaq-for-blackberry-smartphones
This stinks, Blackberry needs a tweetdeck style platform where I can access my Facebook and cross post. Also, it needs to get with the times and provide a Kindle app!
TWITLONGER SUPPORT NOW DAMMIT