Tru talks tech to small businesses in London

This evening, we're attending an event organised by the Evening Standard in London which is addressing how emerging technologies are enabling SME's to thrive in these difficult times.

The event is part of a series of networking events called Business Connections which is attracting a lot of attention in the capital.

Tonight the focus is on how social media provides opportunites for smaller businesses with Edward Saatchi (CEO of National Field) and Tony Wang (General Manager of Twitter UK) both speaking from their experiences.

We're delighted to be invited to talk to small businesses about how global communications don't have to be an expensive activity - an essential factor in an environment which encourages international operations.

If you're attending, be sure to come and meet one of the team.

BlackBerry 10: The developers' advantage?

The key message from Orlando at this years BBWorld conference? BlackBerry 10 is real. It's coming soon. And over the course of the 3-day event, they unveiled the specifics of what it is. At Tru, we've been working with this new platform and the pre-alpha devices for a few weeks now, so I thought it'd be useful for some of you out there if we shared our experiences.

There are a bunch of questions about market, product positioning, and the developer ecosystem that I'll hold off talking about for now. I'll keep this post focussed at the technical level, because that is where it needs to start for BlackBerry 10. If it is not a platform that engages the engineers, then it falls at the first hurdle, in my opinion.

BlackBerry 10 is an evolution of the software that runs on the PlayBook product that has now been out for over a year. The core OS that underpins BB10, and the PlayBook OS, is QNX. This is a Unix variant that was originally built specifically to deliver highly efficient real-time systems. It is widely used in embedded systems, and runs on cars, oil tankers, and plenty of other places. My point here is that it is not untried or new to market.

Because this system is a POSIX compliant unix-like system, its actually pretty easy to get the majority of open source applications out there running on BB10, which is a huge deal. QCC, the QNX compiler, actually has a GCC-compliant mode. Think about that for a moment. All innovation these days is about building on the shoulders of giants, right? I'm sure you've all heard the statement that "there would be no Google without Linux". The fact that this platform has this level of compatibility, means you can really move quickly on this platform, unlike BlackBerry OS predecessors.

There also seems to have been a decision taken pretty early on in the design of BB10: If the OS has an API, the developers have access to it. No hidden APIs, giving the developer complete control. You can think of it as Android without the Dalvik runtime. The main difference being that BB10 OS has a micro-kernel architecture, which in theory offers some advantages in being able to dynamically change the OS without recompiling the kernel. Throw in the pure SMP design and you've got a platform here that gives you the most important ingredient that developers need in order to innovate: Control.

If I could pick one single thing that makes a system attractive to innovative software developers, it's control. Whether it's control over hardware, control in providing quality UIs, or anything in between, you don't want the OS to get in the way of what you're trying to do. At Tru, we've always had to wrestle with previous versions of BB OS, and so when we discovered that we can potentially put our full set of services out for the new platform and have a fairly easy time in porting it, we got really excited.

My background is in network and transport layer communications services, so I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most qualified person to comment on UI frameworks, but for the proof-of-concept application we built for the BlackBerry World conference, I had to roll my sleeves up and get involved.  

We worked with the new Cascades framework, and I must say it's an interesting choice from RIM. Cascades has merits in that it leverages common paradigms like C++ and the Qt/QML languages and frameworks, so developers will be fairly comfortable adapting to the platform, but its a big jump for some developers to move from the J2ME platform of previous versions of BB OS, and requires the highest cost of all the adoption pain-points in offering a service on BB10 that currently runs on existing versions of the platform.

RIM have also added a WebWorks toolkit for the platform however, so you don't need to step down to C++ if you don't need to, and shows the company are embracing HTML5 and associated standards to allow application development to be high quality, rich in features, and quick to develop on. With these Web technologies, on top of the OS-layer compatibility, you are also closer than ever to being able to maintain a single codebase across multiple platforms in your mobile offerings. 

As for Tru, we're delighted to be able to offer a complete feature set on BlackBerry for the first time, and we're committed to delivering a 1.0 application ready in time for the official BlackBerry 10 launch which, according to Thorsten Heins at BlackBerry World, is going to be sometime later this year.

 

The BlackBerry Jam in our donut

This week heralds the arrival of BlackBerry World 2012, RIM's annual conference for anybody who wants to know what BlackBerry have planned for the next 12 months and beyond.

This year, there is a lot of talk about BlackBerry 10 and the future of RIM – and a lot will be learnt over the next few days.

At Tru, we've got our excitement levels up higher than normal (which is pretty high!!) because we've been invited to discuss real-time communications through VoIP and how we've been able to take BB10 and create something very special.

If you're going to BlackBerry World and you’d like to see the nuts and bolts behind what we do (it will be very technical), including a seriously awesome demo, you should head over to:

Where: BC Salon X, Hilton Bonnet Creek

When: Wednesday at 9.30am.

We've also been invited onto a panel and into one of the keynote speeches.

If you have any questions throughout the event, either write a comment below or tweet #bbwctru and we'll get your questions answered by the experts.

We'll be updating you with much more information and cool stuff as the week develops, including a lot more detail about the Tru App.

Beating procrastination to ExCeL

Every organisation has similar challenges when it comes to actually making things happen. Lots of procrastination, meetings for meetings' sake, pointy finger dances (we love that term here!!). But then you've got the people who actually just get on with the job in hand.

Often the guys who aren't the loudest, most boisterous or noticeable are just critical if you have the desire to make things happen.

Without wishing to heap too much praise on my colleagues within Tru, but we have quite a few of these people and some are quite exceptional. One such person is Rob Simpson, Marketing Executive.

Let's set the scene. Eight weeks ago, Tru Racing didn't exist. Rob had also not organised hospitality events before.

Thanks to Rob's imagination and determination, Tru Racing is now a brand in its own right - it includes packages for our race days (binoculars, caps, coats, umbrellas, sexy little boxes to keep everything in, etc), a car at this week's TradeTech, a Facebook page with its own fans, and a growing reputation within British Motorsport.

If that isn't enough, Rob also set his mind to TradeTech, which is where we've been this week. TradeTech is the key event for technology in the UK financial trading sector held at ExCeL.

Rob hadn't created an exhibition stand before. So, he set himself up with Google Sketchup, created the design with all the physical and digital assets perfectly aligned and then combined this with the guest appearance of the GT Cup car, and an opportunity for delegates to win a day at the races.

The result? Our guests at each Touring Car race day have been overwhelmed by how great the days are by all accounts, our stand was one of the busiest throughout the TradeTech.

Sometimes, it's the people who don't get much recognition who deserve it the most.

Free calls this Easter - And the winning countries are...

After a nail biting week of voting, our beloved users have selected which countries are going to receive FREE calls this Easter. The lucky 10, as voted for by you, are:

 

1. Australia
2. Canada
3. China
4. France
5. Germany
6. Italy
7. Philippines
8. Spain
9. UK
10. USA

The free calls start at 00:01 (GMT) on Saturday 3rd April and finish at 23:59 (GMT) on Sunday 4th April. Check the timezone list on the right for your time.

Whether you're a new or existing Truphone customer, you don't need to make any changes to your account to take advantage of free calls this Easter.

Find out more about free calls this Easter.

Happy holidays!