E. J. Bantz

Sorry for the delay in posting updates, you know how that goes.

A major milestone was made today… a working demo exists of the product.    Let me know if you want to be a tester.

There were many obstacles to over come.   During the next week will be providing source code samples, which I think will help many people start writing their own programs.

Here are some of the things I had to do:

• Make an eBay API call via an HTTPS POST.
• Hook into the Messages menu items.
• Get the raw text of the email message.
• Embed a web browser in the app to walk through the Auth process.
• Make an Icon

I’m sure there will be other areas to explain too.

It looks like we are on schedule though to have the real deal ready by the end of April 2010.

Now that I have the demo version on my phone, there are already many ideas of features to add.     For now though, being able to quickly answer a buyers question directly from the phone, without having to navigate through eBay website, is a big time saver.

Today I learned how to avoid a recompile, package, and distribute.

You have to setup a web server on your local computer.   Then change the content.xml to load index.html from http://localhost/index.html.

So not all of the pages need to be packaged and deployed… they can be loaded externally.   This lets you quickly modify and test without having to waste time with all the steps.

BlackBerry Widget SDK is the direction.

Next is to setup a better development process and then to test out making some eBay API calls.

I have the BlackBerry Widget SDK running now.   The SDK needs Windows to run, so I could not do this on my netbook running Ubuntu Linux.

I then made a simple Hello World using RIM’s “WidgetTutorial_How-to-set-up-Eclipse-with-Widget-Packager.pdf” documentation.   It was very easy to follow.

Here is the application installed on my real phone.  When it runs it tells me denied because it is not signed.   It was still neat to see the icon show up though.

Here it is running in the simulator.

I’ve looked at the BlackBerry Widget API and it looks pretty cool… and simple… which makes it way cool.

A widget is pretty much just a set of HTML, JavaScript, and Images that you package up and send to the phone to run. This lets the person use the software without having a live Internet connection. It pretty much the same as building a web site, but since all of the pages are on the phone they load really fast.

They have java classes you can access via the client side scripts to get at the phones features.

There is a BlackBerry Widget SDK which gives you a simulator to test your program without sending it to a real phone.

To make it work on a real phone, the package needs to be signed… which involves paying BlackBerry $20 to get setup.

The next step is to apply for code signing (the $20) and put together a simple Hello World.

For the My Messages app, it should be pretty straight forward to call the eBay API from within the client JavaScript to post the message.

I’m also thinking I should be able to parse the eBay User ID and Transaction from the email message ebay sends to your SMTP mail, which will be received by the phone.

The work flow would be something like…

1. Buyer sends a message to the seller.
2. eBay sends a copy of the message to the seller’s gmail account.
3. Gmail pushes the message to the BlackBerry phone.
4. Seller opens the message on the phone in the normal messages view.
5. While viewing the message, Seller selects Menu/Reply via eBay.
6. Phone slides over to the My Messages/Compose a Message view and the buyers userid is automatically populated.
7. Seller types in the message and presses Menu/Send.
8. Phone displays a Processing images while the post is being made and then Message Sent when completed.

I think it will be very similar to the Facebook app.

Your opinion on the work flow is appreciated.

What I’ve learned so far is that designing the BlackBerry app is important and is very different than a desktop program.

You have to be careful about pushing too much information to the phone.

Don’t rely on the user to initiate the request for data. Instead, push it to the phone as it become available and only push as much as you need to.

For our My Messages for BlackBerry, we won’t want a “Download New Messages” button. Instead, new message should be pushed when available.

I’ll probably need to setup a server that manages when to push the items to the phone. It’s an added layer of complexity, and an ongoing expense to maintain. That might need to be a premium service.

Maybe for now I just focus on Sending a message through eBay My Messages and let the user get notified via their normal email account.

The next step is to learn how to make a hello world program that runs on the BlackBerry device.

I just signed up for the developer program, which is free.

If I find this is too difficult I need to come up with a plan B… maybe just switch back to a desktop program, Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile.

For those people who have been kicked off of Adsense for what ever reason, I am researching ways to sell ad space on a website or within an application.

This will allow us to develop a program we can give to users for free and still be able to cover the cost of developing and maintaining the the software.

I have found there to be many alternatives.

AdBrite seems to work well. You do need to supply either your SSN, or Tax ID when enrolling. I used my Tax ID.

You can immediately start creating banners, but after placing them on my website I found a message that says it takes about 3 hours. I will see if it is working in the morning.

Keep following me as I continue to walk you through step by step the process of earning money through software development.

This is the launching point for development of eBay My Messages for BlackBerry. We’ll probably need to come up with a different product title.

I want to make an easy way to reply to a buyer’s question via eBay My Messages via the BlackBerry.

Here’s the idea… I am going to show you step by step how to develop an eBay application. That is a program that can display data from your eBay selling account, such as sales, listings, and messages.

The goal is to help people to write there own apps so we can see lots of cool development happening for the eBay platform.

Please send me your ideas for what type of app we should create.

Yeah I know… don’t drive and video blog… I’m a risk taker though and driven to take action immediately. It’s actually much easier than it looks.

Have fun all!