What is BBM apps Hackathon ?
Its a two day intensive and intimate program to exchange ideas, define, and build the next generation of app experiences with BBM (BlackBerry Messenger).
The hackathon started last year and covered the following cities. Waterloo, Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, Jakarta, Bangkok, Amsterdam, London UK. More info at http://bbmappshackathon.com/
BBM Apps Hackathon Bangalore - Jan 9,10 2012
Day 1: I was at Hotel Orchid by 8:30AM , and I realized I need to wait for an hour for the registrations to start. The shortlisting for the hackathon developers were done online. The applicant has to provide details on what kind of applications he/she intends to develop at the hackathon and also a paragraph describing the background of the developer in developing mobile applications.
After the registrations, all the participants got a folder containing the event agenda, a 4GB flash drive and a Parker pen. There were many sessions on getting started with BBM once in every two hours. Naresh from Research in Motion (RIM), Waterloo was the host and along with regular sessions, he even helped each one of us setup the Development environment. I somehow felt that the Blackberry environment setup was not as easy as I thought before. As a Mobile security analyst, I have worked on Android, iOS for a long time and recently I have started exploring the WP7 also but BB was completely new to me. Since it was another eclipse plugin and java development, I thought I can somehow manage.
As the day ended, I was ready with two BB6 9800 simulators running perfectly fine and it was even able to communicate with each other. It was a big relief that I can now chat between the two simulators. On reaching home, I went through the BBM SDK and the three sample demo which are provided for developers. By 2AM, I developed a simple application which can be sent to BB contacts asking to install the same on his/her phone. The recipient can chose to install the same or decline it. The error handling was also completed.
Day 2: Reached an hour late and missed the breakfast , and also a session. Now, I need to thank Bangalore traffic for this. It was a two hour drive in the car to travel 15kms. I decided that I need to build something based on the problem I faced today. Too many people using cars, too much traffic in Bangalore, and everyone has a smartphone. Oh yeah, our Bangalore Traffic Police (hitech city hitech maamas) also have Blackberry with them. I stuck with an idea and started building a basic prototype of the application.
Well, it was a Car Pooling application to pool the commuters. Blackberry makes uses of BBID concept, in which users can setup a trusted network of friends, and they can chat and interact with friends whenever they feel like. This is a nice concept, and it helps people to communicate in realtime. There are 100+ car pooling services available via the websites and none of them have been able to be helpful for commuters since it requires to login to website and then select some many options and finally nothing happens.
Carpooling (also known as Covoiturage) can be done in three ways. Let me quote what wikipedia says:
1. Slugging (form of ad-hoc, informal carpooling between strangers. No money changes hands, but a mutual benefit still exists between the driver and passengers making the practice worthwhile.)
2. Flexible Carpooling (expands the idea of ad-hoc carpooling by designating formal locations for travelers to join carpools.)
3. Realtime ridesharing (allows people to arrange ad-hoc rides on very short notice, through the use of smartphone applications or the internet. Passengers are simply picked up at their current location.)
Realtime ridesharing was what I was interested in and I felt it makes more sense. I did not have the time and energy to carry out more research on whether someone has already built any application making use of this concept, May be there exist some application which does exactly the same what I have thought or may not be. Till date, I have not found it, and if anyone else knows about such an app, please add a comment about the same.
It was lunch time and I had the entire design ready and started building the app. I was informed by Alan Wong (Playbook Developer Specialist from Hong Kong) that they are planning to have the application showcase event soon after the Lunch. None of them had completed the application by then, and they asked us to create a PowerPoint presentation containing 5-6 slides on what we are building and screenshots of the application. They were not very keen on seeing the entire application built within a day, what it mattered to them was an IDEA and how will that be an useful app using BBM.
During Lunch, I was approached by a Hindu Businessline journalist and I had to answer few questions on Blackberry event. Like the future of BBM apps, acceptance of Blackberry apps by the mobile user community in future over the already successful iOS an Android platform, and why I feel WP7 and BB are also good contenders in the mobile platform and what I feel as a TCS employee when it comes to BB app development.
There were totally 50+ people for the event, around 15 hacks registered to showcase their work on stage. Few were a team of 3-4 developers, though the rest of them were individual developers.
Car Pooling Application:
All the BB users will install this application on their phones via the Blackberry App World. The BB friends who own this application can also send you a request to install this application. Once the application is setup on all the devices, any user with the car starts the session and his GPS is tracked every 3 minutes and the exact location of the car is displayed on the map at regular intervals. The commuter who wants to pool can check how far the car is via the application and initiate the request for 'PICK UP'. All the users in the session will be notified of each other pickup points including the car driver.
The advantage of realtime ridesharing is that decisions can be made in realtime. Imagine thousands of cars getting carpooled at any point of the day, and people can choose which car to choose, which car is empty and check if there are any of their best buddies are getting pooled in that car. Or the extreme cases, think of every vehicle on this earth getting pooled. A Biker is ready for pooling, he starts the session and sets the destination, so is the Bus driver or even a lorry or a truck driver :).
I am not sure on Sachin Tendulkar (God of Cricket) scoring his 100th century but am pretty sure of petrol prices kissing 100 per liter in next four years. This carpooling approach will definitely cut down on fuel on a very large scale, also also is a way of 'going green'.
The Blackberry Messenger has been used by millions of people every day, and is a really nice application to stay in touch. This Car pooling app was integrated with the BBM so that users in the car and users who will be getting into the car in future pickup points can chat among themselves. Say, there is a traffic jam and any person in the car can send a chat to others saying, "I think we are caught in a Jam for next 45 minutes" and the commuter can take another car or spend sometime time on completing his pending work. In countries like United States, the Google Maps shown even the traffic situation on the map, using red and green lines. Unfortunately, in India we lack the same. BBM helps to achieve the same using people as the source of information.
Another concern addressed was the security during car pooling. Though BB network is considered a trusted network, over a period of time the network grows and it becomes tough to trust the people in it. Hence, commuters (specially women) may have security concerns relating to identity. To address this, the applications comes with a TRACK ME feature, and the commuter can set the destination path on the map. The GPS information of this commuter is now tracked on regular intervals and can be accessed by the commuter's parents and friends. Any deviation in the route map, an alert can be sent to the blackberry device of the traffic police of that area and further investigation can be carried out on the change of route using BBM chat with the commuter.
RIM's Hackathon theme was on building a social app using BBM platform, so I also proposed a design on sharing the Car pooling information on Facebook and Twitter. Jack, Jill and 20 others did a car pooling today and saved 5 litres of fuel. Also a route map on which they car pooled. This would bring an interest among Jack's friends in taking up Car pooling. This could also be a viral marketing methodology to promote the app.
After the tea break, the winners were announced by Alan Wong. I won the BBM Apps Hackathon. The detail of the winners and a small description was put up on Blackberry India Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/notes/blackberry-india/bangalore-winners-bbm-apps-hackathon-2012/10150485176029032).
All the developers who submitted the hack will be getting a Blackberry 7 device. The Three winners will be getting a Blackberry Playbook. I have no idea on what configuration is that Blackberry 7 device and Playbook. The RIM had logistics issue as they did not have a office in India, and I was told it will be shipped from Canada to my home address. I have been waiting for the same now :)
The event was a big hit. Just the perfect crowd for the event. Unlike the Yahoo Hack Days, where they invite 400 developers and arrange the hotel for 200 people and everything goes for a mess. The Hotel management folks and the event management folks at the reception were extremely helpful on both the days. Big thanks to RIM developers, Naresh and Alan Wong for all the help. Overall a great event and I am looking forward for more hacking on BBM platform in future. Till then, let me complete this Carpooling application with proper testing and launch it on the BB app world. :)
