This is the first in hopefully many interviews in what I'm calling the BBHub BlackBerry Developer Interview Series. This series will put a face to many of the software programs you know and love. Developers are often power users who have unique perspectives on the industry. Many are entrepreneurs with colorful careers in technology. This series will give you a glimpse into their worlds and their outlook on the future of the BlackBerry.

The first interviewee is Andrew Zimmer, the creator of what I think is a brilliantly simple and useful GPS enabled application for the BlackBerry: Naggie. Andrew has agreed to answer questions in the comments of this post, so if something's on your mind, feel free to ask away!

If you are a BlackBerry software developer and think you'd make a good candidate for the interview series, drop me a line at davemabe at gmail dot com.

Dave: Tell us a little about yourself, Andrew.

Andrew: I'm a software engineer at an MIT lab which does high-throughput genome sequencing and analysis. The group I work with produced a massive amount of the raw data for the Human Genome Project. I've been at it for about 7 years, ever since I got my computer science degree. It seems about as far away from programming Blackberries as you can get, but in both worlds you really have to make sure your code is 100% accurate.

Dave: What BlackBerry do you use now and what PDAs have you used in the past?

Andrew: I'm using the 7520 and 7100i right now, although I can't wait to get my hands on an 8703e. I'm really hoping that the 8703e has solved some of the GPS hardware issues that I see in the 7520 and 7100i, in particular the power consumption. In the past I've used Palms, and I even dabbled in Palm programming for a while in the late 90's but it was really cumbersome and very buggy (at least for Java).

Dave: Why do you think the BlackBerry is a good platform to develop on?

Andrew: Every time I talk to my RIM contacts I tell them what a pleasure it is to write applications for the Blackberry. One reason is that the development environment takes care of a lot of the deployment nightmares that you find on other platforms. Another reason is that RIM supports standard Java APIs (JSR's, as Sun calls them), which means it's easier to port applications to other devices. At the same time, though - and this is what drew me to the platform - Blackberries have all the same basic capabilities of your standard desktop, at least as far as a developer is concerned. Other platforms make developers think in really narrow terms and force you to change your thinking to fit the hardware. But you really don't have this problem with Blackberries, so you can innovate very quickly.

I was actually about to start building Naggie by strapping a laptop to my back and stapling a GPS receiver to my head, but then Blackberry came out with models that had embedded GPS. What's more, they (along with Nextel) actually opened up the device so that third party developers could access the GPS data. On any other handheld, there are major hurdles to accessing GPS information, but this isn't the case for Nextel Blackberries.

Lastly, the security is incredible. There's a reason that DoD relies on Blackberries. Consumers often don't think much about security, but developers really have to, and Blackberry provides a very rich set of security options.

Dave: Other than your own, name your three favorite applications for the BlackBerry and what's your favorite trick or feature that you use on your BlackBerry?

Andrew: I wish I had more time to use my Blackberry for other things, but to be honest I have been totally focused on building Naggie, so I haven't really learned many tips-and-tricks for my Blackberry. Other than Naggie and my email, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't use my Blackberry for anything else!

Dave: What's the most important feature that the BlackBerry lacks?

Andrew: If I could make any changes to the hardware side of a Blackberry, I'd make a model with GPS and a camera.

Dave: Where do you see the focus of third party programs for the BlackBerry going over the next few months?

Andrew: Given the buzz about media support on the Pearl, I would expect that third party developers are going to start producing some really cool music and camera features. Portable music, movies, and TV are all things I've never gotten into. My wife loves her iPod, but I just don't get it. But it does seem to be very lucrative. When you combine GPS with this media, though, you can really start doing some powerful things, especially for the service sector. Imagine how much faster companies like Comcast could be if all of their techs could snap a picture of a junction box and upload it to headquarters along with its GPS coordinates and street address. This technology has been around for a while, but it has required toaster-size hardware to operate. Shrinking all of that into a Star-Trek like communicator is going to enable some really cool applications.