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152 Part I — Customizing the BlackBerry Nowadays there are many electronic alternatives to paper and pencil for keeping track of your golf strokes. Golf scorecard software and golfing are a great match. Many players already have their BlackBerry with them on the course anyway, and golf is an inherently mobile game. Add in the obsessive factor, which touches so many of those who play, and you have an excellent opportunity to put a useful accessory in the hands of the golfer. Benefits of Scorecard Programs Being a casual golfer myself, I can testify that there are many benefits to using an electronic scorecard instead of the old paper-based method. An electronic scorecard can automatically do the math that shows you how much under (or in my case, well over) par you are at any given moment. And if you are willing to enter a little more information, these programs can total your putts, track the accuracy of your shots, and even automatically track the results of a variety of “friendly wagers” you might be playing with your foursome. Best of all, if you use a scorecard program over the course of many rounds, you can view statistics and graphs that show you your progress (let’s hope!) in different areas of your game. mScorecard Several scorecard programs are out there for golfers, including Links Scorecast by Concrete Software ( www.concretesoftware.com). One of the best scorecard programs I’ve seen for BlackBerry handhelds is mScorecard, by Velocor ( www.mscorecard.com). mScorecard is a very user-friendly program that at its most basic provides an electronic version of the paper- based scorecard you would normally use. But that’s where the similarity ends. mScorecard goes far beyond what a paper scorecard gives you, and lets you track more details about your strokes, such as the number of putts, whether you hit the fairway or were left, right, short or long, up and down or sand saves, penalties, and club selection. Along the way, it tells you your total score so far and where you stand vs. par. You can score for just yourself, or for everyone in your foursome, and if your group is so inclined, you can even use mScorecard to keep score of a number of different “sidegame” variations. Even more impressive, mScorecard helps you share completed scorecards by letting you send completed rounds to yourself or your friends via e-mail. Velocor also offers a website to regis- tered mScorecard customers where you can electronically post your rounds, review your history, track your handicap, and view statistics about your play. Using mScorecard to Score a Golf Round Getting started with mScorecard is pretty simple. The software program installs on your BlackBerry and appears as a standard BlackBerry application icon on your device. When you run the program for the first time, you will need to first select the course you will be playing and enter the players in your group. Velocor offers a web page with downloadable course scorecards on its website, but that page is available only to users who have purchased the program. If you are just trying out the program, you can alternatively take a minute or two and access the Courses menu to manually enter the par, handicap, yardage, and other information for each of the holes on the course you will be playing, as shown in Figure 10-8. 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 152 153 Chapter 10 — Beyond BrickBreaker F IGURE 10-8: Manually entering course information in mScorecard Once you have entered (or downloaded) the course you will be playing, it appears in the course selection screen whenever you start a new round. Figure 10-9 shows mScorecard’s course selec- tion screen after entering a course scorecard for Crystal Springs. F IGURE 10-9: Selecting a course to play Once you have selected a course, you need to select the players you wish to score in this round. You can add as little or as much information about your partners as you wish. Once a player has been entered, you don’t need to keep adding them for future rounds, as their profiles are stored in the mScorecard database. Figure 10-10 shows the player selection screen in action. You are now ready to tee off! mScorecard starts by presenting you with a scoring form for the first hole, as shown in Figure 10-11, and thereafter moves from hole to hole as you progress through your round. Entering scores is simple. Just use the trackwheel to navigate to the cell entry where you wish to record information and either type in a value or choose a value from the menu. You can always go back and view or even revise your scores at any time during the round, which is nice. 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 153 154 Part I — Customizing the BlackBerry F IGURE 10-10: Selecting the players in your group F IGURE 10-11: Entering scores for the first hole When you have completed your round, mScorecard shows you your completed scorecard as shown in Figure 10-12. You can scroll up or down to see your overall scoring over the 18 holes, as well as the total against par at the bottom. You can also use the trackwheel to show a variety of statistics (see Figure 10-13) for the round, including net score vs. handicap, holes won, num- ber of putts, eagles, birdies, pars, bogeys, and more. Think of how much arguing mScorecard will save you and your buddies as you review a just-played round at the “19th hole”! F IGURE 10-12: The final scorecard for our round 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 154 155 Chapter 10 — Beyond BrickBreaker F IGURE 10-13: The mScorecard Statistics screen Sharing Rounds with mScorecard As I mentioned earlier, one of the great added-value features of mScorecard is the ability to send your scorecards from your BlackBerry to yourself, your friends, and even to the mScorecast website where they will be stored along with other rounds you play. After you have completed a round, simply choose the Send command from the trackwheel menu, and you can choose to send the round either to the mScorecard website or to one or more e-mail recipients. If you choose to send the round to the mScorecard website, the website will automatically recalculate and update the handicaps for any players you have entered. mScorecard is a great accessory for BlackBerry-carrying golfers, and as I can attest, once you start using an electronic scoring program, the ability to view and analyze your play is so addic- tive, there is no turning back! mScorecard is available from www.handango.com or directly from www.mscorecard.com. A free trial is available for download, and the program can be purchased for $19.95. Playing Golf on the BlackBerry For me, things don’t get much better than a beautiful summer day on one of my favorite golf courses. But life does not always cooperate with my golfing plans. If you are itching to play a round of golf but can’t get out to the course, why not play a round on your BlackBerry? With add-on software programs such as Par 3 Golf from RESETgame ( www.resetgame.com) you can play a full round of arcade-style golf, complete with surprisingly realistic graphics, right on your BlackBerry handheld. Best of all, in contrast to the real game, you can play a round in minutes vs. hours, in the middle of winter, at night, whenever and wherever the mood strikes you! Par 3 Golf is a golf “simulation” game that installs and runs on your BlackBerry device. If you have ever played one of the popular golf arcade machines or one of the many PC or game sys- tem golf simulations, Par 3 Golf should be fairly familiar to you. Just like those other golf sim- ulations, Par 3 Golf delivers reasonable 3D graphics showing hills, water, fairways, sand traps, and greens. Wind and other factors are taken into account to determine ball direction and behav- ior. When preparing your shot, you can even choose between the standard view (from behind the golfer) or an overhead view with zoom in and zoom out as well as panning functionality. Game play commences just like in real golf, at the first hole, pictured in Figure 10-14. 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 155 156 Part I — Customizing the BlackBerry F IGURE 10-14: Teeing up on the first hole of Par 3 Golf You are given a default club selection that is appropriate for your distance, but you can change the club selection if you wish to experiment. Based on wind conditions or the slope of the green, you can also adjust your aim to the left or right of the target, or keep it centered right at the target. Prior to each shot, the yardage, club selection and wind speed/direction are dis- played at the upper right. To make a shot, Par 3 Golf uses the familiar golf arcade technique of displaying a vertical bar that represents how much of a backswing you wish to use, which affects how far the ball will travel. To start your swing, press the spacebar once (alternatively, you can click the trackwheel menu and choose Swing). You will see the vertical meter begin rising higher, representing a gradually increasing backswing. If you let the meter rise to the top, you are taking a full back- swing. If you wish to use a shorter backswing for more control, press the spacebar at the point in the meter where you want to stop, and the golf swing will change from a backswing to a forward swing, striking the ball and following through. Figure 10-15 illustrates the golf swing process in Par 3 Golf. F IGURE 10-15: The golf swing meter on Par 3 Golf 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 156 157 Chapter 10 — Beyond BrickBreaker Precise swing control can be tricky, but once you get the hang of it, you can really start to con- trol how hard you hit the ball, and thus the distance. Once you’ve hit your first shot, play proceeds as you would expect. You can see how your shot unfolds as the ball arcs to its landing spot. The screen then updates so you can set up to take your next shot, whether it landed in the fairway, the rough, a sand trap, or (ugh!) a water haz- ard. Figure 10-16 uses the overhead view to show the results of one of my better shots. F IGURE 10-16: I’m on the green! As you complete each hole, Par 3 Golf displays your score, as shown in Figure 10-17. Play then advances to the next tee. F IGURE 10-17: Darn it! Another three-putt. Although you can get around the course in far less time than it takes to play the real thing, game play includes the ability to pause a game and resume it later on. Par 3 Golf is an entertaining golf arcade game and is available for purchase from www.resetgame . com or www.handango.com for $9.95. A free trial version that unlocks only the first hole for play is also available. (Once you purchase the full version, the remaining 17 holes are unlocked.) 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 157 158 Part I — Customizing the BlackBerry Board Games Board games may seem like an odd fit for a tiny handheld like a BlackBerry, but surprisingly enough, many of the most popular board games have been successfully adapted for handhelds. Monopoly, Scrabble, and Yahtzee have seen successful representations for Palm and Windows Mobile handsets. Unfortunately, no adaptations of these board games exist yet for BlackBerry, but I am sure someone is working on it. Besides commercial board games, easily the most popular board game for handhelds is chess. The ability to play solo against a computer opponent or even wirelessly against a remote player makes chess an excellent game for BlackBerry, and indeed several chess games are now available. Medieval Kings Chess Magmic is a leader in wireless games and offers a slew of great games for BlackBerry users, including Medieval Kings Chess. Medieval Kings is a handsome, stylishly graphical take on the classic chess board game, optimized for the BlackBerry handheld. Medieval Kings runs as a standard BlackBerry application on your device. Upon launching and selecting a new game, you are presented with the New Game screen, shown in Figure 10-18. F IGURE 10-18: New Game options in Medieval Kings On the New Game screen, you can choose to play against either a real human (sharing your BlackBerry between the two of you) or a computer opponent at various skill levels. You can also choose the visual style for both the board as well as the playing pieces. You can also choose to play over the network against another BlackBerry user by choosing Network Play for up to 15 active games at once. In Network Play, each move made by you or your opponent is sent over the wireless network and reflected in each player’s screen. When you are happy with your game settings, scroll down and choose Begin Game, which displays the chess board and pieces in the standard starting position, white vs. black, as shown in Figure 10-19. 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 158 159 Chapter 10 — Beyond BrickBreaker Making moves in Medieval Kings is pretty straightforward. Scrolling the trackwheel moves a piece selector around the board. When you are on the square with the chess piece you wish to move, press the trackwheel (or the spacebar), and then use the trackwheel to scroll to the square where you wish to move to the piece. Medieval Kings is smart enough to show you only valid spaces where your piece can move. If you change your mind, press the Back button to cancel the move and select a different piece. F IGURE 10-19: The Medieval Kings game board, ready to play If you are playing against the computer, the opponent quickly makes a move right after you have completed yours. The game proceeds as fast or as slow as you wish, until ultimately you (or in my case, the computer!) finally put your opponent in checkmate. (Take a look at Figure 10-20 for an example of my poor performance against the Medieval Kings computer!) F IGURE 10-20: Beaten again! At any time you can save a game in progress and recall it at a later point to continue playing. Medieval Kings is available for only $8.95 from www.handango.com or directly from Magmic at www.magmic.com. A trial version is available that lets you play for a couple of days before buying. It is a great chess game for your BlackBerry and is perhaps the most compact way ever to take the wonderful game of chess with you anywhere you go! 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 159 160 Part I — Customizing the BlackBerry Puzzle Games Puzzle games are more popular than ever. Crossword puzzles continue to be a mainstay in the daily newspaper. Word games and memory games are fun for kids and grownups alike. But the most recent boost to the popularity of puzzle games is the Sudoku phenomenon. Mobile Sudoku According to some, the puzzle game called Sudoku has origins as far back as the eighth century, when it was derived from a similar game called Magic Squares played by the Chinese and passed to the Arab and European world. Although it has been played for hundreds of years around the world, the first puzzle wasn’t published in New York until 1979. Even then, Sudoku became a daily fixture in daily newspapers and the general media only when the London Times started publishing Sudoku puzzles in 2004. From there it was picked up by other papers and eventually spread across the Atlantic to the United States, where it now enjoys tremendous popularity, spawning websites, clubs, books, and videos. The rules for playing Sudoku are pretty simple. The usual configuration of the puzzle grid is that of a 9 × 9 grid of squares, forming 9 rows and 9 columns. In addition, the grid is subdivided into nine 3 × 3 subgrids. Grids come with selected cells already filled in for you, and the object of the game is for you to fill in the missing cells of the grid using only the digits 1 through 9, such that each number appears only once in each row and column. So, for example, the number 4 can appear only once in any given row or column (meaning it will have exactly 9 appearances in the overall puzzle when completed). Further, each digit can appear only once in the smaller 3 × 3 subgrids. Traditionally, there is only one possible solution for any given puzzle. The last time I checked, I counted more than ten Sudoku games on www.handango.com,evi- dence that the availability of Sudoku on handheld devices has helped fuel its growing popular- ity. In this section you look at Mobile Sudoku by Icenta, Inc. ( www.icenta.com/mobile). Mobile Sudoku enables you to play Sudoku games on your BlackBerry handheld. Game grids can be downloaded wirelessly or entered manually by you. Four new puzzles are made available for download each day as part of the application. Downloading a new game is as simple as choosing Get New Game from the main menu. It takes only a second or two to download. Mobile Sudoku presents a new game, complete with a set of already-entered values, to get you started. Your job is to fill in the remaining cells so that only one of each of the digits 1–9 appears in each row. Figure 10-21 shows a new Sudoku game, ready to play. To move around the grid, use the trackwheel. When you want to enter a value, just use the BlackBerry numeric keyboard. If you need to clear a cell value, use the 0 key. There are (as expected) endless websites and other resources dedicated to discussing Sudoku puzzles and strategies for solving. Two basic strategies are: Ⅲ Look at the rows and columns, and fill in the blanks by looking at the numbers that are already present in a given row or column. If only one blank cell remains in a given row or column, then just fill in the one and only number that can satisfy the row or column. If 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 160 161 Chapter 10 — Beyond BrickBreaker there are two or three missing cells, try a couple of different combinations until you get one that works. Ⅲ Look at the 3 × 3 boxes and you can eliminate many possibilities because a given digit can appear only once in each 3 × 3 box. F IGURE 10-21: A new Mobile Sudoku game, ready to play. Using each of these strategies (as well as in combination) doesn’t necessarily quickly solve the puzzle, but it at least gives you a starting point. Naturally, as you start filling in the cells, some of the other rows and columns in the puzzle can become easier to solve because fewer valid digit choices will remain that will fit. For example, in Figure 10-21, I start by looking at the sixth column because it has only three empty cells. I can tell that the remaining three cell values cannot be a 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, or 4, because those digits are already present in the sixth column. Focusing on the top-most empty cell, I also can see that the top-center 3 × 3 grid already has a 2 and a 3 in it. So for this cell, there is only one possible value, 1, which I enter in Figure 10-22. Whew, only 49 more cells to go! F IGURE 10-22: I’ve figured out that 1 is the only possible value in the top-most cell of the fifth column 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 161 [...]... software developers on RIM’s BlackBerry website To find the developer tools, go to www .blackberry. com/developers, and then follow these steps to download the JDE: 1 Choose Downloads in the menu on the left side of your screen 2 Choose BlackBerry Java Development Environment ( JDE) 171 93043c11.qxd 172 9/26/06 8:49 PM Page 172 Part II — Advanced BlackBerry Hacks System Requirements The BlackBerry JDE is intended... look when a BlackBerry project is open This project (named HelloBlackBerry) is about the simplest BlackBerry program possible, but it illustrates nicely how the IDE works Later in this chapter, I use HelloBlackBerry as an example of how to create a simple BlackBerry application and how to work with projects within the BlackBerry IDE FIGURE 11-2: The HelloBlackBerry project, shown in the BlackBerry IDE... point, the IDE main screen should show your workspace and your first project in the Workspace panel, as shown in Figure 11-5 177 93043c11.qxd 178 9/26/06 8:49 PM Page 178 Part II — Advanced BlackBerry Hacks FIGURE 11-5: The HelloBlackBerry project, shown as part of the HackingBlackBerry workspace Reviewing Your Project Properties Before you begin coding your project, you need to review the project properties:... For this reason, I am using HackingBlackBerry as my workspace name 3 Now choose a location to store your workspace file 175 93043c11.qxd 176 9/26/06 8:49 PM Page 176 Part II — Advanced BlackBerry Hacks FIGURE 11-3: The Create workspace dialog box By default, the IDE suggests the folder where you installed the JDE (typically a path like C:\Program Files\Research In Motion \BlackBerry JDE\) I strongly... the BlackBerry software store at www .blackberry. com After a slow start, the BlackBerry add-on software selection is now growing rapidly, so it’s a safe bet you will find many programs that match your interests! 93043c11.qxd 9/26/06 8:49 PM Page 1 67 Advanced BlackBerry Hacks: Put Your BlackBerry to Fun and Wacky Uses with Creative Software Projects part in this part Chapter 11 Developing Your Own BlackBerry. .. just on BlackBerry but also on other mobile devices that support the Java platform and the MIDP 2.0 Java profile The BlackBerry Application Program Interfaces Despite the versatility of the Blackberry s platform, many of your Blackberry s most interesting capabilities are specific to the BlackBerry device In fact, in order for your program to take full advantage of the fact that it is running on a BlackBerry, ... BlackBerry, you need to use BlackBerry- specific application program interfaces (APIs) when writing the program The BlackBerry APIs give you functions that allow you to interact with the BlackBerry device itself These include user interface, BlackBerry networking, menus, file storage, notifications, and built-in BlackBerry applications such as e-mail, contacts, and the web browser Because the BlackBerry APIs are... discuss projects and workspaces in the next section.) This panel works much like a folder system on your computer and serves to organize your work FIGURE 11-1: The BlackBerry IDE 173 93043c11.qxd 174 9/26/06 8:49 PM Page 174 Part II — Advanced BlackBerry Hacks Ⅲ Source Editor: Located in the upper-right corner of the IDE screen, this panel contains one or more open source files within your project You... topics at developer.sun.com/ techtopics/mobility The BlackBerry Java Development Environment The official toolset for creating BlackBerry programs is the Java Development Environment for BlackBerry, commonly referred to as the JDE The JDE includes the tools and APIs used to develop a software application that will run on a BlackBerry handheld device The BlackBerry Java Development Environment is available... PM Page 175 Chapter 11 — Developing Your Own BlackBerry Applications Setting Up Your Project The BlackBerry IDE lets you organize your BlackBerry development into projects and workspaces Ⅲ A project is a set of source code and other files that are used to create a single target (for example, an executable program) Think of a project as a recipe containing instructions for the creation of a BlackBerry . remaining 17 holes are unlocked.) 93043c10.qxd 9/26/06 8:48 PM Page 1 57 158 Part I — Customizing the BlackBerry Board Games Board games may seem like an odd fit for a tiny handheld like a BlackBerry, . MIDP stand an excellent chance of running well on a BlackBerry device. 93043c11.qxd 9/26/06 8:49 PM Page 170 171 Chapter 11 — Developing Your Own BlackBerry Applications As a software programmer,. find these programs is at Handango at www.handango.com or the BlackBerry software store at www .blackberry. com. After a slow start, the BlackBerry add-on software selection is now growing rapidly,