Last week we launched a Blackberry version of our mobile event app for the 13,000 doctors attending the ASCRS 2010 conference at the Boston Convention Center.

SwiftMobile’s CTO, David Willoughby, described the development process for Blackberry as “completely different from the iPhone. The biggest issue is that there are many different screen sizes and shapes for Blackberrys. The Blackberry has been around for a long time and there are still Blackberrys in use that have older features and capabilities. A developer needs to make the decision how far back you go and which devices you choose to support. Rather than sacrifice features, we made a cut off that supports 60 to 75% of devices.”

The Blackberry version of the app has the same core set of features as the iPhone but in order to accommodate the limitations of the Blackberry, Willoughby had to make changes to the design.  ”Our app for iPhone is very visual and takes advantage of the power and memory of an iphone.  The ability to swipe, pinch, and touch the screen doesn’t carry over, so we designed an interface that gives you access to the same information, but within the user experience of the Blackberry. ”

The iPhone version of the app has a high resolution map of the trade show floor.  But, according to Willoughby, “you can’t load the full high-resolution show floor on to the blackberry and you can’t pinch and scroll.  Instead, you start with a list with access to the visual map, but use menus to move around.”

Over 400 users downloaded the Blackberry app for the ASCRS 2010 conference.  The analytics and survey responses from these users will give SwiftMobile valuable information about how to enhance and add features to future releases.

Watch a demo of the ASCRS 2010 mobile app for Blackberry on YouTube.

Watch a demo of the ASCRS 2010 mobile app for iPhone on You Tube.

Download the ASCRS 2010 mobile app for iPhone.

Email us at support@imswift.com for instructions on how to download and demo ASCRS 2010 for Blackberry.

Here at SwiftMobile we are looking at expanding our mobile platform for conferences and trade shows into the live entertainment world.  The feature set we are developing can be adapted to all kinds of live events.  SwiftMobile uses the intelligence of the smart phone to create a sponsorship and social media platform for live events.  With SwiftMobile event producers can:

• Sell mobile sponsorships to events on dedicated native iPhone applications and mobile web sites
• Conduct e-commerce for events via dedicated mobile iPhone applications
• Run sponsored polls and contests
• Publish music videos, film trailers, and other rich media advertising
• Publish content (schedules, maps, directories)
• Publish directories of attendees, artists, speakers, and sponsors.
• Create social media networks (profiles, personalized schedules, trip reports) for events that are integrated with twitter and facebook
• Manage twitter tags and filters
• Manage ratings, notes, comments, and audience response
• Manage messaging among attendees/audience
• Build rich trip reports and event analytics based on user activity

This month we saw one of the first really interesting smart phone applications from Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.  Reznor realized that he could use the smart phone to create a channel for connection, communication, and publishing.  His iPhone application was initially rejected by Apple due to adult content.  It now appears in the iPhone App Store and is well worth a look:

The start page on NIN gives you information about this summer’s tour and access to news and user photos:

The main navigation includes tabs to media, gps location services to find nearby fans, messages, and the band’s thriving forums.

Media leads you to streaming music including playlists created by the band and by users; fan generated images and videos; wallpaper images formatted for the iphone and iPod Touch.

NIN for the iPhone uses the geo-location services of the iPhone to connect fans who are near one another.  You can see how it works on this You Tube Video:

I’ve never actually listened to Nine Inch Nails but there are a number of good lessons here for mobile applications for communities.