The MIR PlayBook App Project: The journey begins

I’ve decided it’s high time we had a PlayBook application for Mobile Industry Review. I’ve been deliberating on this issue for far too long. I’ve made noises. I’ve written occasional tweets, but now I’ve decided to do it.

I really do like the PlayBook. I love it. It’s the right size, it’s super-super powerful. I very much enjoy the user interface. But…

You know what’s coming next. Apps. The app experience isn’t quite there yet. It’s certainly getting there. I’m pretty impressed with the (unofficial) DropBox app, BlueBox. I’m delighted to see PressDisplay’s PressReader there. InstaPhoto is pretty neat. I just need to see more. I want to see more. The platform is hugely capable.

So I thought I should put my money where my mouth is by building a Mobile Industry Review app. Just a simple newsreader — like I did for the iPhone platform a few years ago. I hired a nice chap called Pavel to sort it out.

Now then, I spent a whopping $440 on that application. I’m wondering if I can do similar for the PlayBook. I don’t know if that’s possible though. I’m not sure what the going rate is. There’s a chance the average PlayBook developer wouldn’t code the front screen for less than $500. We’ll see. I’ve set the budget to $500 and I’ve published an elance.com entry soliciting bids.

I wonder if the PlayBook developer marketplace is too small to support this kind of work? I don’t know.

Programming for the PlayBook definitely looks straight forward, especially if you use WebWorks. And I’m not asking the world — it’s a simple app I would like in the first instance. If I had more time I reckon I could definitely code an HTML5 app (that could be easily submitted to App World.

What kind of experience do you think I’m likely to have? Any predictions before we begin the journey?

Here’s a video introduction I made earlier…