Are you a Blackberry developer twiddling your thumbs?

Then we need you! Or rather the Blackberry social networking scene does.

You see there is this great web 2.0 mashup-thingamy-bob called Brightkite which I've mentioned elswhere on my blog which is best used mobile. It's kind of like Twitter only goes one step further and allows you to create a really neat micro-blog site.

You can post photos and detail your location too. You can see other people who are at or near your location, or even those who have visited in the past. Have a look at the website if your not too sure about it.

So, how does this involve you the Blackberry developer with some time on your hands. Well what's missing is a nice sexy application for our Blackberry's that allows us to update, view, post pictures etc right from our phone.
The iPhone has such an application, or will have very soon, it's just about to come out of beta and be relasead proper but our beloved Blackberry has none.

So if you are up to the challenge there are details of the API here, though they may be a little sparse at the moment.

There is a free download here of the Blackberry JDE development environment. This allows you to develop the application and run it on a Blackberry emulator, so no need for a real Blackberry even :)

If you do wish to load the code on to a Blackberry you will need a special 'key' to sign your application. This costs $20 and you can order it here.

There is a page here which you should sign up to that will show that we need such an application for Blackberry (in case you don't want to develop one yourself!) .

There has been a start on a version of Brightkite for the Blackberry but not a lot of recent activity, have a look here.

There is a small Blackberry application here which will do simple checkins for you.

There is a screenshot here , here and here of what part of the iPhone Brightkite app looks like as a reference.

16/10/08 A newly released video is here of the iPhone application in use.

10/12/08 Just noticed this video on youtube which gives a little more detail on how the app works.

And that's about all the details I have. If you feel like helping or also would like to see a version of Brightkite for our Blackberry's then I'd love to see your comments below, thanks!