Tip ‘em! – the best tip calculator for the BlackBerry Storm – is now available for the entire BlackBerry platform, including the BlackBerry Curve, the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Pearl. Tip ‘em! helps you quickly and accurately calculate the tip on a check and split the bill between multiple diners. It makes it easy to exclude items from the tip calculation, such as drinks and tax, and includes built-in tip suggestions for over 20 countries.

Tip ‘em! is available now from BlackBerry App World.

BlackBerry App Developers

Tip ‘em! raises the bar on both application development functionality and design, showing that BlackBerry apps can look just as good as any iPhone app. ArcTouch’s San Francisco BlackBerry app developers combined a custom background graphic (a retro “diner” check complete with a coffee stain) with a built-in handwriting font and seamlessly blended in the native user interface controls of the BlackBerry for the numeric  entry and lists for tip amount, rounding and split amount.

Key Features Of Tip ‘em! Tip Calculator For BlackBerry

• Easily enter the total bill using the numeric keypad
• Select a tip amount between 0% and 30%
• Split the check between 2 and 10 people (optional)
• Exclude tax and drinks from the tip calculation (optional)
• Round the tip or the total to make splitting the bill easier (optional)
• Includes recommended “Tip Suggestions” for over 20 countries
• Rich graphical interface and easy to use touch controls, or track pad, or track ball
• Designed, developed and programmed for the BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Pearl, and BlackBerry Storm

Have an app idea? ArcTouch offers complete custom mobile app development and programming services.

Contact us today to see how we can help you with your BlackBerry development needs.

TechCrunch reports a story of a top iPhone app developer that was losing $2,000 a day in ad revenue for their app because they made a simple software programming mistake that could have easily been caught by basic testing.

Test Driven Development

Our programmers use test driven development to ensure the highest quality code in our iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Pre apps. They create automated unit tests that define the expected results of the application functionality BEFORE writing any software code.

Test driven development follows a simple process:

1. Write the tests. Tests are written before the functionality being tested. This helps ensure that the application is written for testability, since developers must consider how to test the application from the outset, rather than worrying about it later. It also ensures that tests for every feature will be written. Other developers using traditional development methods choose to code the features first, but then inevitably under time pressure to work on the next feature neglect testing entirely. Don’t let your apps fall into that trap – demand that any app developer you hire uses test driven development.
2. Fail the tests. All tests fail first because no software code has been written by the programmer. This ensures that the test has been written correctly. Once this is shown, the underlying functionality can be implemented.
3. Write some code and rerun the tests. The next step is to write some code that will cause the test to pass. Now the code can be cleaned up as necessary and re-run against the tests, a process known as refactoring.

Test-driven development constantly repeats the process of adding test cases that fail, passing them, and refactoring. Passing the tests confirms correct application functionality as developers evolve and refactor the code. Our programmers use automated test frameworks to re-run the complete set of tests whenever new code is introduced, ensuring that the previously completed code is still fully functional without bugs.

Test Driven Development Benefits

Studies have shown that test driven development has numerous benefits and leads to better software.

• Programmers are better able to focus and are more productive.
• By writing tests before coding, developers show they clearly understand the feature’s specifications and requirements.
• Errors introduced during the development cycle are discovered earlier and easier to rectify.
• Software is designed simpler and is more modularlized, flexible and extensible.
• No code is written beyond what is needed to pass a test.
• Finished software has better quality and is more stable.

ArcTouch Bug Free Guarantee

We’re so confident that our Quantum Development process and our test driven development results in superior quality apps that we offer a bug free guarantee. If you discover a problem anytime after we’ve delivered your app to you we’ll fix it for free. Guaranteed.

If you’re considering hiring an iPhone developer, an Android developer, a BlackBerry developer, or a Pre developer, make sure they use test driven development and offer you a bug free guarantee. If not, their mistakes may cost you far more than your original cost to develop the mobile app in the first place.

After you’ve gotten done reading all the material in the new Palm Pre SDK and the information in the iPhone 3.0 SDK, you may want to add some additional items to your summer reading list. The IDEs, simulators and development kits make it easy to rapidly develop apps for mobile phones, but it’s important not to jump right in without laying a solid foundation for stable, scaleable applications.

We highly recommend the following books for mobile app developers. They cover the fundamentals and “best practices” for software development and are key resources for all software programmers to learn from. These books will teach you how to develop code that is better quality, easier to maintain, and reusable in your other apps.

Throw them in the backpack before you head to the beach… you are getting to the beach this summer aren’t you?

Must-Read Development Books

• Developer Reading: The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (if you only have time for 1 book – this should be it)
• Object Oriented Design and Programming Reference: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (put this on your bookshelf and refer to it any time you need to design anything)
  
• Development Process & Best Practices: Test Driven Development: By Example

Other Books To Make You A Rock Star Mobile App Programmer

• Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• The Object Primer: Agile Model-Driven Development with UML 2.0

We’re pleased to announce Tip ‘em! – a new tip calculator for the BlackBerry Storm we designed & developed for Azoombi. Tip ‘em! helps you quickly and accurately determine the tip amount on a check and split the bill between multiple diners. It makes it easy to exclude items from the tip calculation, such as drinks and tax, and includes built-in tip suggestions for over 20 countries.

Tip ‘em! is available now in the MobiHand store.

BlackBerry Storm App That Looks Like An iPhone App

Tip calculators in general are nothing new, but this one raises the bar on both functionality and design, showing that BlackBerry apps can look just as good as any iPhone app. ArcTouch developed this BlackBerry app in Java. We combined a custom background graphic (a retro “diner” check complete with a coffee stain) with the built-in handwriting font (which our engineers figured out how to write at an angle for realism – no small feat!) and seamlessly blended in the native touch controls of the Storm for the numeric keypad entry and “picker” lists for tip amount, rounding and split amount.

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Key Features Of Tip ‘em! Tip Calculator For BlackBerry

• Easily enter the total bill using the touch numeric keypad
• Select a tip amount between 0% and 30%
• Split the check between 2 and 10 people (optional)
• Exclude tax and drinks from the tip calculation (optional)
• Round the tip or the total to make splitting the bill easier (optional)
• Includes recommended “Tip Suggestions” for over 20 countries
• Rich graphical interface and easy to use touch controls
• Designed exclusively for the Storm

We can take your company’s app from raw idea through launch in the app store, and we offer complete custom development services, including architecture, engineering, user experience design and product management. Our San Francisco based team has been together for over 15 years working at a diverse set of Silicon Valley technology companies. We’ve had long term engagements providing custom development on a variety of devices and platforms for many clients, including Apple, IBM, HP, and Adobe to name a few. We work as an extension of your team

• Have an idea that you need turned into an app?
• Wondering what sort of app your company’s products or services should have?

Contact us and we can help.