Blackberry Application for XIX Commonwealth Games

The Commonwealth Games were first held in 1930 as the British Empire Games in Hamilton, Canada. The event was renamed as the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, the British Commonwealth Games in 1970 and from 1978 are named as the Commonwealth Games. The  Games are held every four years in which all the member nations and territories of the Commonwealth of Nations participate in a multi-sport event which features competitions involving thousands of elite athletes. The Commonwealth Games are one of the world’s largest multi-sport events.
The vibrant city of New Delhi, home to 14 million people, will be hosting the XIX Commonwealth Games from 3 October 2010. This will be the first time India has hosted the Games and only the second time the event has been held in Asia (Kuala Lumpur in 1998 was the first).
The logo itself is in an invitation to every person across all divides – Indian and Commonwealth - to let go of themselves and participate in the Games to the best of their abilities, in the true sprit of the Games.

Come Out and Participate

With a vision to make this dream successful wherein every person is able to participate and Cheer for their respective countries and sportsperson, Endeavour – The Mobility Company, has developed “CWGames” Mobile Application to facilitate the sharing of experiences of Commonwealth Games 2010.

The solution would help visitors, fans and attendees of Commonwealth Games 2010 to keep themselves updated with the latest happenings in the Game Village comprising of

Medal History            

 Access to the details of records established in the previous CW Games sorted by Game, Sport, Event and Country. The user can also view the latest results from various sporting events during the XIX Commonwealth Games as it progresses.

Event Schedule

The application will provide detailed schedule of events along with information related to various games and map view feature to facilitate the visitors in locating the venue in Games Village.

Cheer My Country

The users will be able to cheer for their country by playing Cheer Sounds and voting for their respective nations. They can also save new and innovative sounds which would be then available to other users to use as Cheer Sounds.

Commonwealth Photos

The application allows the users to take pictures of their athletes as they perform share, upload and share their experiences with their friends and colleagues.  This ensures access to latest happenings around the Game Village even in cases when the user is not physically present.

In Summary, CWG Mobile application provides blackberry users to get all the latest updates on Commonwealth Games 2010 along with enriched interactivity such as cheer country with excellent sounds, upload/share CWG photos & messages which are Unique and Entertaining. This application provides details about the past history, guide maps to events venue, latest Medal standings and Event Schedules. The Voting for the Favorite message/sound of the day feature allows the user to Live Through the CWG Games. Stand a chance to win BlackBerry phones by simply uploading your photos and cheers! 

Rahul Aggarwal, MD, Endeavour Software Technologies, said the CWGames Blackberry application will mark a dramatic shift towards how people participate in the games and share their experiences with fellow members. According to him this application will provide a unique experience and set new standards for the Games to come. "We are excited about having this application available exclusively to Airtel BlackBerry customers and the value that it would bring to the visitors of Commonwealth Games," he said. 



Endeavour Software Technologies is a niche mobile solutions services company since 2002. The company offers Technology Solutions geared towards building Enterprise and Consumer Mobility Solutions for various verticals including Healthcare, Finance and Banking, Manufacturing and Supply Chain, Consumer Oriented Organizations as well as market research, publishing and PR firms.

Webinar on "Mobility in Healthcare" was well received

The Webinar held on July 28, 2010 on "Mobility in Healthcare" explored the immense increase of mobile technologies and it’s increasing use in healthcare covering the following aspects of the use mobility in healthcare:

• Mobile Evolution in Healthcare
• Mobile Healthcare Trends: Past, Present and Future
• Preventive Healthcare & Coach: Mobile Health Monitoring
• Contributors to Mobile Healthcare: patients, care providers and health care providersTo listen to the Webinar please click on the video below

Presentation Link

We would also like to thank the participants for their enormous interest. The positive feedback received from the participants confirms that the Webinar was well received.

JD Edwards Integration on BlackBerry

The customer: Leading Pharma Supply Chain, UAE

The largest pharmaceutical supply chain and distribution company in ME Region, was looking to mobile enable JD Edwards Order Capture - CRM process and business analytics, KPI their sales staff and senior executives. 

Endeavour’s Mandate: Recommend and Build a consolidated dashboard to real-time order management – CRM process and enable key business data on BlackBerry devices.

Endeavour’s Value Add:

• Unified BlackBerry Dashboard seamlessly integrates within corporate framework e.g. BES etc.
• Role Based Access
• Used by field staff for CRM , senior execs monitor business objects (KPI, regional closed/open sales etc).
• End to End Solution based on SOA Architecture

In case you want a demo or are interested in similar solution then please write to us at info@techendeavour.com

Endeavour Software Technologies is an expert in mobile technology and advises startups, SMBs and enterprises in defining the right mobile application, selecting appropriate technologies, wireless carriers’ relationship, and establish innovative roadmap for the continuous success as the future technologies changes over time. 

Constraint based innovation

As an iPhone application provider Endeavour Software Technologies has been developing applications for Appstore since its launch and we’re starting to see a trend that is evolving.  People want large number of small apps. That the iPhone dev market is getting highly commoditized and as a result the word going around in the US is that you can get an iPhone app developed in around 10 K $.

The developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get favorable placement in iTunes.

Many of the responses to Craig’s post focus on the need for marketing vs. depending on the App Store for sales. I do agree with the need for marketing, but if we are talking of low cost apps then marketing activity which involves additional cost is adding to the cost. There are methods which are cost effective such as working with press or getting featured by Apple but they are incredibly hard to guarantee.

What will it take to succeed?

I see that in order to make profits and sustain in this market companies need emphasize on a flawless, streamlined process where there are GUERILLA teams which churn our code quickly. By Guerilla I mean the ability to move in and move out of customers and their applications quickly, be able to get a very robust configuration, build and release mechanism to handle large volumes and a robust project and cost management oversight, which is led by a senior level executive.

The profits have to come out of the efficiencies by the way we build those apps. In the "app store" world we have seen that smaller players want to build an app quickly and inexpensively because for them the profit comes from launching many apps with small time to live, not with a single, large time to market application. Companies must therefore understand this trend and adapt.

Similarly, we know that BlackBerry app store is getting launched shortly. This will give rise to the need for the publishers to make their iPhone offerings available for the BB store as well. Here again the, short time to launch, high volume, low price app laws will hold. And here again we must tailor our offerings accordingly.

As of day there are over 10,000 applications on the iPhone Appstore and growing. In order to get a significant chunk of this one has to get the right price to drive volumes. This however is a million dollar question and begs some research. It is important t know the price point in which we get a customer to say YES? Is it $10,000, $8000 or $15000?

At the same time one has to think of innovative ways to bring down the cost such as Annuity based pricing? Are we willing to do development for a one-time cost of say $7000 and the rest in revenue per seat sold by our customer. For example, customer pays $7000 per application and then promises 25 cents per download on the Appstore.

Companies need to focus on agile development which has elements of

• REUSE
• Process steps are well defined, streamlined and efficient
• Rework is a minimum
• Self Motivated and Independent teams

This concept though is not new and similar concept is also developed by Mobile Distillery for other java enabled devices. They proclaim reducing 30% of development time. This tells me that that software development for the mobility world has to change dramatically over standard s/w development where speed and portability becomes key.

Companies need to come up with automated development and test frameworks for rapid application development. The efficiency will be the key. I have seen Barclays using such frameworks for building complex trading tickets by designing widgets (GUI controls embedded with behaviour) and then by just putting these together for building the application. This worked very well. These widgets were individually tested to save time and finally the overall picture needed to be tested.

In all this one must keep in mind the three main issues with mobile applications

Porting:- Not a tough job as such, we just have only one SDK to develop the application for

Distribution:- Appstore is all about distribution and as easy as downloading music via iTunes

Discovery:- This is something that isn't sorted out yet & needs further elaboration

Approach to beat the market

1. Focus on Agile development and be able to change concept of software development for changing face of software that is needed for the mobile platform.
   
2. Need for a dedicated testing team connected to each application. We can offer it as a service for Appstore developers and publishers
   
3. Need to practice for each horizontal platform such as iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android Market, etc. This can also be extended to vertical elements as we go on.
   

Conclusion

Well, its true that in crowded market prices is driven down but is only true of products and services where the barrier to entry is low. Indeed in a globalized and open playing field only those who provide a differentiated offering and able to educate their target audience will be able to command a better price.

Such barriers though are the very seeding point for creativity that will be born out of very constraints that are now seen as barriers. Constraint based innovation as C.K. Prahlad would say.

If one market place, say Appstore, does not offer what the customers want over a period of time then again market will shift in a direction to create quality. The move from the red ocean to blue ocean.

Never in human history have we been held back because the space for selling is crowded. Markets always find a way and mobility is still at its infancy...

Enterprise users: Blackberry vs iPhone

The first generation iPhone is admittedly a beautiful object but it is rare to find one in a business traveller’s pocket.

I'd love an iPhone, but there are two simple reasons why it won't squash my BlackBerry: the BlackBerry keyboard enables me to type long emails efficiently; and I can copy/cut and paste between applications, which I can't do on the iPhone.

The iPhone's screen is gorgeous, its interface and ability to access the web in all its glory is second to none but few road warriors have chosen it as their device of choice. Even though Apple would have forged a tieup with it's earstwhile competitor Microsoft and if you take a look at the website for the new iPhone, it is the huge Microsoft Exchange logo that jumps out at you. Microsoft Exchange is the engine behind the email, contacts and calendar applications of a vast number of companies.

By adding support for this to the iPhone, which will allow easy access to your corporate as well as your personal email, Apple is aiming the second generation iPhone directly at the BlackBerry.

But as long as the iPhone lacks a physical keyboard it will never "squash" BlackBerry let's get real. People with BlackBerry's have them because they need to respond to emails and they're not always short. A real keybaord is why BB is on top.

Also BlackBerry has a huge following - 14 million people worldwide had one at the end of last year - the iPhone’s desirability coupled with industrial-strength push email will still find it tough to end this dominance.

BlackBerry OS Roadmap (and 0S 4.5 features!)

It looks like BlackBerry is set to launch new features and functionality for BlackBerrys this summer! OS 4.5 is set to hit this summer for all BlackBerrys except the 8707. Another interesting note is that OS 4.6 (i.e. the BlackBerry Bold’s OS) is set for the second half of this year.

Blackberry Cool has made a post with the OS Road Map. The only thing is that Blackberry Releases the OS to the carriers for them to distribute to their customers. So depending on your Wireless Carrier is when you would actually get the newer Blackberry OS.