Download the Official BerryManiacs App on your PlayBook

Last month, a day before the end of the free PlayBook offer, I sat down to write a simple app to display the content from this site in a touch-friendly format for the PlayBook.  Was it a quick ploy to get a free PlayBook?  Partly, I’ll admit that, but I also wanted to see just how easy it was to make an app using the WebWorks SDK.  Considering that I already know a lot of HTML and CSS, all I really had to learn was more JavaScript to make everything work.  As of 10 minutes ago, “Maniacs Reader” is now available in the App World.  With the help of some 3rd-party JavaScript libraries to help with the RSS feed, I was able to write up this whole app in 6 hours.  Originally it was called “BerryManiacs Reader” but RIM takes issue with apps with “Berry” in the title (unless your app is about berries), so they sent it back to me to sign and update the title.  I did that a week ago, and it is now available for download.

The app itself is pretty simple so far, you open it up and it shows you all of the top stories on the left side.  When you click on a story, it will open the full article on the right side of the screen so you can read it.  The whole thing is touch-friendly and you can scroll through everything pretty smoothly.  I still have some features to add, like offline caching so you don’t need to be on Wi-Fi to read the articles and a version for handhelds, but it’s pretty decent for now.  As I learn more features, I’ll add them into the app.  You can download it on your PlayBook by searching for “Maniacs Reader” in the App World or by clicking on the link below.

Download Maniacs Reader from the BlackBerry App World >>

Did anybody else make an app for the PlayBook?  Let me know and I’ll showcase it here.

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