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How to get a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet

posted under category: General on November 17, 2010 by Nathan

If there's one thing I know about programmers, it's that we love toys. Whether its Legos or smartphones, we love them. The next season's most promising toy that I've seen is the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet PC. Seriously, it's peppy and I want it. Mine is on preorder, and yes, I have a total bias because I'm getting it for free, but I don't want to be the only one. You can have it, too.

RIM currently has a giveaway program. It's simple: you make an app for the PlayBook and get it into their App World (aka the BB app store) by launch time, and they will send you the device. This developer promo is for real, so get started early. Here is the PlayBook dev overview page and the PlayBook developer resources page to get you going. I am starting with the webcasts from that last link.

Maybe it's a little ironic, you have to develop an application for a vaporware device, test it, deploy it and only then get the device, but I would argue that it is worth it. Having seen it in person, I will testify that is is a really nice toy, and I'm not above acting the shill because I really do want it to succeed.

Nathan is a software developer at The Boeing Company in Charleston, SC. He is essentially a big programming nerd. Really, you could say that makes him a nerd among nerds. Aside from making software for the web, he plays with tech toys and likes to think about programming's big picture while speaking at conferences and generally impressing people with massive nerdiness and straight-faced sarcastic humor. Nathan got his programming start writing batch files in DOS. It should go without saying, but these thought and opinions have nothing to do with Boeing in any way.
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