10 Questions With Pootermobile – MyBBOTA

Jul 11, 2012 by Pootermobile    No Comments    Posted under: Blackberry

10 Questions with Pootermobile is back! This time our guest is Devan the owner of MyBBOTA, a site that offers an awesome service to the BlackBerry community. You will see what MyBBOTA is all about below in the Q&A but when it comes to Devan he has always helped out The World Of Pootermobile with various projects. Like I have said before 10 Questions With Pootermobile is a great way to get to know people from the BlackBerry community, not only developers but people that are active within the community in one way or another. And Devan is a perfect example of how diverse and engaging the BlackBerry community is. Click the jump to get to those questions and answers!

Q: 1. I’m sure many people in the BlackBerry community know what MyBBOTA is, but for those that don’t, what is MyBBOTA?

A: We’re your friendly OTA host! We offer free OTA hosting to any developers who want to share their theme but without the hassle of running their own server. We’ll host premium themes as well, and our pricing is reasonable.

Q: 2. With your obvious love and support for BlackBerry themes do you remember the first theme you installed on your BlackBerry?

A: I don’t remember the name of my first theme, but it all started on my Curve 8310. I remember I had a red theme on there and had colored my trackball LED to match.

Q: 3. What was your first BlackBerry?

A: It was the BlackBerry Curve 8310. Crimson Red in color, on the ATT network.

Q: 4. What phone did you have before having a BlackBerry?

A: I had quite a few before the BlackBerry. I went through several feature phones before landing on a Windows Phone (HTC Wizard) which is the last phone I had before the Curve.

Q: 5. I can’t help but think about themes and their soon demise with BlackBerry 10. By the looks of it MyBBOTA might be affected as well, do you have any plans to adapt to the change BlackBerry 10 will bring with OTA downloads?

A: We’ll work with what we have Looking at our stats and who visits the site, our biggest traffic numbers actually come from 85XX users, despite the more current devices that are on the market. That being said, don’t count your chicks before they hatch. Not everyone will have the latest and greatest. When BlackBerry 10 actually drops, we’ll see where that road leads and we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Q: 6. Will you be getting a BlackBerry 10 device next year?

A: Does a bear sh!t in the woods?

Q: 7. All touchscreen or keyboard BlackBerry 10?

A: Keyboard. I’ve had a serious dislike for on screen keyboards, but RIM did it right on the PlayBook and I see that commitment to quality is being carried over to BlackBerry 10. That’s not to say I won’t grab a full touchscreen as soon as I can get my hands on one, as they’re launching first, but my daily driver will have a keyboard.

Q: 8. Battlefield or Call Of Duty?

A: Neither. I know, I’ll get a lot of flak for this, but I don’t own a gaming console nor do I play computer games. I try and fill my spare time with development, not horseplay. :p

Q: 9. Do you mind sharing with us how many downloads MyBBOTA has had so far?

A: We’ve soared past 6 million cumulative downloads on the site recently. I know, compare that to the official stores and it’s a small piece of the pie, but it’s all by word of mouth. We don’t get a shortcut pre-installed on your BlackBerry out of the box.

Q: 10. I’m personally grateful for your service and I know many people are as well. Any words to devs and/or users?

A: First off, I’d like to give equal thanks to the developers and the users of the site. It is because of them that we’re here.

We’re always working on making the site bigger and better and welcome suggestions, opinions, and even hate mail. There are always new features and tweaks in the works to make both the user. And the developer experience better.

A few personal shoutouts, if I could. First, @rezn. I remember way back. I mean waaaaay back when this all started. He got a hold of me on twitter, then BBM. He was a little hot under the collar about what was happening with premium themes being shared. Needless to say, he prompted a serious overhaul of the site and the implementation of the approval process we still use to this day. Thanks, Ryan.
I have to give a hand to @QBall45 and @Andres516 for helping out behind the scenes. These guys make it easier for me to focus on functionality of the site by helping with handling approvals and watching out for those pirates.

Big thanks to Devan for patiently waiting for the questions and for answering them quickly! If you’ve ever downloaded a theme from MyBBOTA or have themes hosted there leave a thank you in the comments section. For your BlackBerry theme hosting, or downloading needs, make sure you check out MyBBOTA at the link below

Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!