Great news, all! Blaq for PlayBook v1.1 is now available in App World! This one’s a biggie, adding multi-account support, lists, search and much, much more. Check the full press release after the jump for the full changelog!

All the best, and All. Blaq. Everything.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLAQ FOR PLAYBOOK™ V1.1 SUBMITTED TO BLACKBERRY® APP WORLD™, BRINGING SEARCH, LISTS, MULTI-ACCOUNT SUPPORT AND MORE

NEW YORK/PITTSBURGH (July 8, 2011) — Blaq for PlayBook™, the first full-featured Twitter client for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, just got a whole lot more interesting.

On Thursday, July 7th, Kisai Labs and Baselime submitted a version 1.1 update of Blaq for PlayBook™ for review and entry into BlackBerry® App World™.

When Blaq for PlayBook™ first launched on May 30th, 2011, it did so without a ton of fanfare or pageantry. There was no feature in App World™, no extensive coverage with major online tech publications and for the first 48 hours or so after approval, Blaq wasn’t even attainable in the Social Networking section of App World™.

However, in the first 5 hours after launch, Blaq for PlayBook™ was already the top paid tablet app in the store. Within the first 24 hours, it sat atop all other paid apps in all of BlackBerry® App World™, PlayBook™ and BlackBerry® smartphone apps included.

In its initial 1.0 release, Blaq was the first app for the PlayBook™ to offer even a moderately full Twitter experience with photo upload capability, in-app web and media previews, real-time streaming and more, but it was still far from its full potential. It was released when it was to finally give PlayBook™ users a suitable alternative to resorting to the mobile web for Twitter.

Now, things are getting serious. The competition is heating up, and its time for Blaq for PlayBook™ to turn that heat up even higher once again.

With Blaq for PlayBook™ v1.1, users can now add multiple accounts and switch between them effortlessly. With just a swipe of a finger from the top bezel, users are presented with a menu (soon to contain a plethora of customization and settings options) where they can tap their avatar and select from any of their added Twitter accounts quickly and easily.

Version 1.1 also brings trending topics, list functionality and a robust search capability on par with the best of the best in mobile Twitter clients.

Take all that, together with a brand-new in-app notification system and countless other cosmetic changes, and Blaq for PlayBook™ stands to sit comfortably at the top perch in BlackBerry® tablet Twitter experience for a while to come.

The v1.1 update should be available in BlackBerry® App World™ as soon as today, Friday, July 8th, pending approval.

As always, Blaq for PlayBook™ is just $1.99 for new users and can be found in App World™ here.

Here is the full changelog for v1.1:

FIXED: Mentions show as new on refresh

FIXED: “Remove Photo” stays after tweeting a picture

FIXED: Composed tweet runs behind avatar

FIXED: Cannot send a tweet with special characters

FIXED: Fix composed tweet with … turning into shortened URL

FIXED: Real-time streaming fails after upgrading to OS 1.0.6

FIXED: User can only retweet once then only old-style RTs afterwards

FIXED: Keyboard doesn’t show up on reply or compose

ADDED: Scroll to top by double tapping respective icon

ADDED: Show lock when account is protected

ADDED: Maximize Web view

ADDED: Delete tweet

ADDED: Pull-down Options Menu (non-functional)

ADDED: Search

ADDED: Trending topics

ADDED: Link hashtags to search

ADDED: Better support for non-english languages when displaying tweets

ADDED: Progress bar for image upload

ADDED: New reply icon

ADDED: In-app notification system

ADDED: Link @ mentions to profile card

ADDED: Lists

ADDED: Multi-account

ADDED: New search icon to toolbar

REMOVED: Compose icon from toolbar

ADDTL: Minor cosmetic changes and performance improvements

About Blaq for PlayBook™

Blaq for PlayBook™ is a premium Twitter client for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet from Kisai Labs and Baselime Ltd. Kisai Labs provides applications for mobile devices based on creative ideas from people like you. It aims to provide quality applications and exceptional customer service. For the last two years, Kisai Labs has delivered innovative applications such as Show Me the Images and Mancala Multiplayer (the first commercial application to utilize BlackBerry® Messenger™). Learn more about Kisai Lab’s other popular top-tier BlackBerry® applications and services at kisailabs.com. Baselime Ltd. features the design of Ryan Hamrick, specializing in branding/identity and user interface and experience design. Learn more about Baselime and get your project rolling today at baselime.com.

Follow the latest updates on Blaq at twitter.com/Blaq.

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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.

If there’s one question I’ve been asked more than any other since the launch of Blaq, it would have to be — “When will the touch/OS6 version be available?”

The second most popular inquiry would have to be from people curious as to what the differences are between the free and paid versions of Blaq, aside from the presence of ads. The features that didn’t make it into BlaqLite are explicitly listed in the “Features” section of the BlaqLite MobiHand page, but let’s take a closer look at what those are exactly, and what they mean for the overall Blaq experience.

Quick Tweet

This is one that especially confuses people, because both versions have Quick Tweet. However, there is a major key difference in what Quick Tweet offers the user between versions. In BlaqLite, a “Quick Tweet” option is in the BlackBerry menu from every screen in the OS, with the exception of one — the homescreen. With Blaq, you have the same capability, but in addition, you can download what we call the Quick Tweet plug-in. This is actually a separate, super-lightweight (10kb) application available from within the settings screen of Blaq. This plug-in then gives you the ability to set Quick Tweet as a convenience key, set it up with the very popular QuickLaunch application, or even build custom shortcuts to its module from your BlackBerry themes. One of the coolest things about this functionality is, if you’re one of many people who always come back to their homescreen, you can tweet from right there, never leaving home. Also, if you’re the battery-saving type, get this — Blaq doesn’t even have to be running to use Quick Tweet.

Individual Timeline Refreshing

Another big difference between Blaq and BlaqLite is the depth at which a user can customize his or her auto-refresh settings. In Blaq, like we showed you in our post, Blaq Introduction Series: Account Control, you can individually set the refresh rate for each of your three main timelines — Home (all friends), Mentions and Direct Messages. This gives you fantastic control of how much battery life you want to consume. In BlaqLite, however, you’ll just find the same type of setting found in all other BlackBerry Twitter apps — one setting for all of them.

Cross-account Posting

Multi-account support in Blaq is like no other Twitter client available on the BlackBerry platform. Not only can you set up multiple accounts simultaneously in the app (I have 4 set up currently), but with Blaq, you can actually update your status from any or all of them at the same time without ever having to type the same message more than once. There’s an account picker that lets you check a box next to each account that you want the tweet to be sent from. That’s right, you don’t even have to be “logged-in” to the other accounts, they just need to be authorized and in your accounts list!

In BlaqLite, however, while multiple account support is still included, posting from more than one account at the same time is not an option in the compose screen.

If those stand-out features weren’t enough to push you over the edge, don’t forget that you will get free updates for life.

Let us know in the comments if you have any more questions about what buying Blaq can do for you.

All the best, and All. Blaq. Everything.

While we haven’t forgotten about you, this update isn’t accompanied by touch or Bold 9000 support just yet. We really wanted to get the other versions out within a week of the original ones, but opening up to users around the globe hipped us to a fun new little round of errors and bugs that we’ve been working night and day to try and fix.

The good news is, this update is a very important step in getting to those versions. I’ve explained to many of you individually on Twitter over the past week that the main reason we’ve delayed the other versions is to avoid the carrying over of the same issues early users experienced to everyone else. Now that we feel like we’ve reached a point of real solidarity, we can now move on to making all other versions as awesome as you deserve them to be.

But for now, we bring you version 1.01.2. Find the links below, immediately followed by the changelog.

As always, let us know what you think and if you have any problems, use the “Send Feedback” option in the menu and reach out to us! Anyone who has thus far should tell you that we’ve done our very best to provide quick, helpful responses, and we take everyone’s feedback to heart. We want Blaq to be the best app for you, and if it’s not, we’d love to have to opportunity to try and make it that way.

BlaqLite (FREE)

Blaq ($4.99)

New Additions:

- Profile editing
- Avatar updating
- New “G” shortcut for Go to User Profile
- “Connection” setting in Settings screen
- “Animate Timeline” has been changed to “Swipe to Switch”
- “Get more” in user timeline and list timeline

Fixes:

- Fixed BIS support
- Fixed TwitLonger support
- Fixed manager.insert error
- Fixed local timeout error
- Many optimizations for increased speed

The @Blaq Twitter account has added a substantial number of followers even just since we launched last Friday. We love it and we’re so grateful for the continued support and to all of you for spreading the word.

However, a lot of our more recent followers weren’t around for things like the Blaq Introduction Series, where we broke down virtually every feature of the application and showed where almost everything is. So, we figured it might be incredibly helpful for a lot of our early adopters to give a friendly nudge in the direction of some pretty thorough help.

Some of you who have been around have been asking questions answered within the Blaq Introduction Series, too (it’s okay, we know there’s some pretty unique things going on where you might need a refresher as to how they work ).

So if you need a little help, take a look back at the BIS for some feature details and tips.

All the best, and All. Blaq. Everything.

The Blaq Introduction Series: UI Overview

The Blaq Introduction Series: Integration

The Blaq Introduction Series: Account Control

The Blaq Introduction Series: Next-Level Features

PS – Click on the picture above  for a nice 1440 x 1080 wallpaper (the full-size design version of the Blaq companion theme’s wallpaper).

Quick update here to let you know that version 1.01 has been uploaded to mobihand and is available for your download. Only a few fixes here but important ones for some people.

People who had issues with BIS only will now be able to login and use the app.
Incorrect Signature error when tweeting special characters (i.e. accented characters) has been fixed.
Send feedback menu fixed.

Before you go crazy, we will indeed be launching today! The App World links may be a bit behind, but our MobiHand link should be available very soon.

Now here’s the deal. In order to meet this #BlaqFriday and not have to make it next week, we simply weren’t able to get to a point that we were happy with on the touch and BlackBerry 6-compatible versions. But not to worry, we’re close, and we will be right back in the coming days with the rest of the versions.

Today, we’ll be bringing you the 480 x 360 resolution (9700, 96xx and 89xx) and the 320 x 240 resolution (93xx, 85xx and 83xx) in both the full, paid version for $4.99, and also BlaqLite, our free version.

Which brings us to the last thing we wanted to mention before we go. Blaq updates and upgrades will be free…for life.

With all that said, bear with us and keep your eyes peeled. Believe us, if we could’ve given you Blaq at Midnight last night we would have. We’re just at the mercy of others now. If your phone isn’t supported today, it won’t be long at all, we promise. We wanted to give you what we have now, instead of making everyone wait. We love you all and appreciate your support and patience.

All the best, and All. Blaq. Everything.

There have been countless comments and questions on Twitter lately from people wondering when Blaq will be available to the masses. So much so that we just can’t keep up with replying to everyone every time, no matter how much we’d love to.

So instead, I figured I’d post some details here to give everyone an update and let you all know where things stand.

We were originally planning on trying to have everything done by September 6th, the last day for submissions to the Super App Developer Challenge. However, as more details developed about the challenge, and we discovered that submitted apps don’t have to actually be live, available apps in App World to be eligible, we shifted our focus toward making our main submission version as solid as possible.

Now, having been a Storm user for some time myself, I know all too well what it feels like when an application launches without proper touchscreen support from day one. It sucks. That said, we want to make sure that when Blaq is available, it’s available to everyone. After all, it’s a BlackBerry app, not a BlackBerry Bold app.

As of Friday morning, Blaq was submitted to both App World and the Super App Dev Challenge as well. Assuming everything with the App World approval goes smoothly, our plan is to take this week and finish readying all other versions so that all possible models can be supported.

As far as a launch date, we’re looking TENTATIVELY at next Friday, September 10th — Blaq Friday.

Did I say TENTATIVELY? We would love to launch today if we could, but how well this package is prepared is very important to not only the application’s success, but ultimately your satisfaction, and we can’t risk rushing that. We will be doing everything we can to make sure this timeframe sticks, but since it’s TENTATIVE, please don’t hate us if we don’t feel that it’s perfect enough for you by then.

Here’s hoping we see you again in about five or six days when Blaq Friday comes a bit early this year…

All the best, and All. Blaq. Everything.

I’ve spoken several times before about how we started this project with the main goal being to create a visually stunning Twitter client for the BlackBerry community so desperately in need of new, great-looking apps. Little did I know, I would eventually come across an absolute rockstar developer who shared a lot of the same passions and goals as I did for breathing a little new life into an arguably stale platform. Together we set out to build a Twitter app that could hold it’s own feature-wise, but look darn good doing it. But at some point in development, things suddenly took a turn from good-looking and good enough, to good-looking and — groundbreaking.

As development progressed, things were going so smoothly, and we ran into so few issues trying to get the basics down, we gradually shifted to a mindset of, “What can we do to really set Blaq apart and make it something no one’s ever seen before?” We focused on this question throughout most of the 3 months since Blaq’s humble beginnings as a half-decent design on my computer. Keeping that new goal of turning an ordinary idea into an extraordinary product in the forefront of our minds eventually led us to the conception of two very special features that we couldn’t be more proud of.

Quick Tweet

The first of those features is Quick Tweet. This feature started out rather small, and gradually grew into something substantially more useful, and way cooler. From anywhere in the OS, simply open your BlackBerry menu, and at the top of the list (or near it, depending on what else you have installed on your device) is a “Quick Tweet” option. Selecting it will launch a Quick Tweet box over whatever you’re currently doing, and let you post tweets without ever opening the app. Blaq doesn’t even need to be running for this functionality to work. To take it a step further, we’ve designed a Quick Tweet plug-in that can be downloaded from the Settings menu. Once the super-lightweight 10KB add-on is installed, things really get convenient. You can then set Quick Tweet as one of your convenience key or Quick Launch shortcuts, giving you the ability to send fast, painless updates, even right from your BlackBerry homescreen.

BlaqOps

Out of everything great that Blaq does, the thing we’re probably the most excited to share with you is what we’ve done with BlaqOps. Quite different from the next Call of Duty title, our BlaqOps is aimed more at connecting people in new ways — ones that don’t include guns. There are several different “operations” you can perform from within the application. If you see that another user is tweeting from Blaq and therefore has it installed on his or her BlackBerry, head to the user’s profile page. If he or she follows you, there will be a BlaqOps icon in the upper-right corner of the page. This is where things get fun…

Selecting the BlaqOps icon brings you to a pop-up menu asking you what you want to request. Depending on what item you select, Blaq will pull the corresponding information from your device and send a direct message to the selected user with a special code (e.g. #blaqBBM) and your information (in this case, your device’s PIN). When the recipient pulls the DM in with Blaq, instead of the application notifying them of a direct message, they will instead see a pop-up on their screen (regardless of where they are in the OS) with a message saying, “So-and-so wants you to contact them via BBM  pin:XXXXXXXX”. You can then click on the PIN and with just one more click, you have formed a new connection with a friend from Twitter that you might not otherwise have made.

And all the other BlaqOps options work the exact same way, too. What started as just a neat novelty feature has blossomed into a whole new social experience. Get to know your friends on Twitter in whole new ways. The option of whether to further connect with people is still completely in your control. Just because someone sends their information to you, that doesn’t mean you have to do anything with it, and none of your info will ever leave your phone unless you initiate.

We want users to have more options for developing friendships, and we think BlaqOps is a cool and unique step in an awesome direction.

And with that, we conclude our Blaq Introduction Series. We hope to have left you more informed and even more excited about our project. We can’t wait to share it with you all!

If we didn’t cover something that you want to know more about, drop us a line in the comments and let us know what you’re still interested in learning more about, and perhaps we can either discuss is elsewhere or, if warranted, we can write another spotlight post to talk about it!

Thanks for taking this week-long walk-through with us. It won’t be long now before everyone will have the opportunity to play.

Until then…

All the best, and All. Blaq. Everything.

For the third installment of the Blaq Introduction Series, we’re talking all about account control.

Now when I say account control, I don’t just mean Twitter accounts that you own and manage. We’re also talking other users’ Twitter accounts, too.

Multi-account Support

This past Monday, in part one of our series, I hinted at multi-account support in Blaq when we were taking a look at the new tweet screen. Let’s take a closer look at the full scope of this feature’s capabilities.

Being able to set up multiple accounts in a mobile Twitter client is nothing new, really. Several other apps support it, and as Twitter becomes a more and more common tool for so many things, this kind of functionality becomes necessary for more an more people.

In Blaq, you can set up all your accounts simultaneously, making one your default account. Sure, you can switch between accounts if you want, but the real fun lies elsewhere.

When composing a new tweet, Blaq lets you pick your posting account on the fly. Just scroll down and select the “Accounts” icon. A checkbox will pop up, listing all of the accounts you have created. Simply go through, and check the ones you want to post to. Blaq takes care of the rest and posts your status update to each of your selected accounts simultaneously without missing a beat or slowing down one bit. But that’s not all.

There are other mobile Twitter clients for BlackBerry that allow this sort of cross-account posting, but what about retweets? If you decide you want to use the new Twitter-style retweet for whatever reason, typically there’s zero editing or custom-posting allowed. In Blaq, however, after selecting the new style retweet, your familiar account picker pops up, allowing to select which/all of your accounts to perform a Twitter retweet from.

Pretty cool, huh?

BlaqOut

We also hinted at the BlaqOut feature earlier in the series. If you hadn’t guessed, BlaqOut is Blaq’s name for filters, or “muting”.

You can select either users or phrases that you want to Blaq out, and completely eliminate them from your timeline. You can also easily add users to your BlaqOut list by simply opening the BlackBerry menu with a tweet from the user being Blaq’d out highlighted, and selecting “BlaqOut User”.

Future functionality will even allow for individual timeline filtering. Meaning, if you have a particular user on your BlaqOut list because you don’t want to see everything they have to say, but you want to be able to see and respond to any mentions from them, you can block that person’s general tweets from your home timeline only. Again, the idea is having total control over your personal Twitter experience.

After all, that’s what Twitter’s supposed to be all about, right? Making it what you want it to be? Blaq allows you start breaking free from the typical confines of everyday Twitter applications, and reclaim your experience.