I’m super excited to be presenting three sessions at BlackBerry Jam 2013 in Orlando next week! As a former 3^rd party developer I’ve had the chance to attend several BlackBerry events over the past couple of years. Now that I’m working on the Developer Relations team I’ve got the opportunity to not only attend these awesome events, but also present some killer content to my developer friends!

Here’s what I’ll be doing next week:

Are you building an app which requires a solid database of venues, and an amazingly easy API to interact with? Myself, Erin Rahnenfuehrer, and Kyle Fowler of Foursquare will be presenting JAM37, “Building context-aware applications by leveraging the power of Foursquare APIs”.

Looking to make to most out of your app by connecting it with all the big name social networks like Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn? Again, myself, Erin Rahnenfuehrer, and Kyle Fowler will be presenting JAM52, “Get Social: Connecting your app to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and more!”.

Are you trying to make the most out of your BlackBerry World app reports? Jerome Carty, the creator of Blaq, and I will present an in-depth look at how to measure the success of your app using BlackBerry World Reports, and enhancing them with Distimo Analytics.

Which sessions are you looking forward to the most?  Let me know on Twitter (@chadtatro), and I’ll see you in Orlando!

What is the aspect ratio?

Is it taken in landscape or portrait?

What orientation is the photo saved in?

Luckily I came across a great library to help you handle these photos a lot easier. JavaScript EXIF Reader by Jacob Seidelin is an extremely powerful library, which lets you read the EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) from photos.

So why is this important?  Well, as you may be aware of, photos taken on your BlackBerry 10 device are actually stored sideways.  How this affects you, as a developer, is that if you need to use that user-taken photo in your app it will appear sideways unless

So you’re thinking, that’s great, I’ll just rotate every photo and problem solved.  NO!

Why not? Photos taken from the front, and rear cameras are both stored sideways, rear camera photos appear “right-side up” (with an EXIF.orientation value of 6) while photos from the front camera are store “left-side up” (EXIF.orientation 8).  As you can see, you need to be able to detect not only if a photo is stored sideways, but also which orientation it’s stored with so you can rotate it accordingly.

This is where the EXIF Reader library helps out.  By calling one method, you’re able to fetch not only the orientation data of a photo, but all of its EXIF data.  This could include  the photo’s dimensions, device make and model, or right down to very specific properties of the photo like what exposure was used, or whther the flash went off or not.

I wrote a quick sample app which demonstrates how a developer would handle a photo taken from the camera within their application. When the user takes a photo the EXIF data is read, the photo’s orientation is determined, and the photo is rotated on a HTML5 Canvas so that it appears “top-side up”. The developer is then left with a handy Base64 string which can be saved, uploaded, etc.

Check out the EXIF Data Reader sample on our GitHub Repository.

If you find this sample useful, have any questions, or just want to keep up-to-date on the world of BlackBerry WebWorks and HTML5, follow me on Twitter!

So what is a Built for BlackBerry app? In a nutshell, a BFB app is an application which is designed from start-to-finish to be awesome in performance, looks, and functionality. Apps which apply for, and pass, the Built For BlackBerry program tell users that this app meets BlackBerry’s high standards for quality and performance.

My latest sample app was created to give you a head start in achieving the BFB designation, allowing you to focus more of your time on the functionality of your app, rather than the actual UI and setup. It’s simply a starting point/blank slate for you to work with and customize.

I’ve incorporated all of the features we look for in a Built For BlackBerry app. Right out of the box you’ll have an application that meets the BlackBerry 10 UI guidelines, connects to BlackBerry Messenger and to the Share Framework. There are also several other features including: App Menu (swipe down), Toasts, Window Covers, and device specific Splash Screens. I’ve even included CSS media queries to show you how to style your app on a Z10 vs. Q10 with CSS!. This will allow you to quickly customize this “boiler-plate” to meet your own needs and focus on the content of your app rather than getting the “right” look.

Check-out the application over at GitHub.

If you find this sample useful, have any questions, or just want to keep up-to-date on the world of BlackBerry WebWorks and HTML5, follow me on Twitter!

Single Sign On (SSO) Card

The Foursquare Single Sign On card (SSO) makes it extremely UI-friendly for customers to authenticate, and authorize your app to connect with Foursquare. Before the SSO card was created it was up to the developer to open up a web-view, wait for the user to authenticate, close the web-view, and handle all the associated callbacks which would eventually return an OAuth token. It was both a lot of work to implement, and could be a very cryptic and confusing process. SSO eliminates the need for all of that jazz.

To authenticate a user with Foursquare and obtain an OAuth token (used to make authorized requests to their API) you simply invoke the SSO card, wait for the card to close, then grab the returned OAuth token. That’s it. Seriously.

Place Picker Card

The Place Picker card, as the name suggests, is a seamless way to prompt the user to select a near-by location, and instantly provides you, the developer, with a contextually aware application. Just like the SSO card, all of the legwork is handled by the Foursquare SDK. By simply invoking the card, and listening for the onChildCardClosed event, you’re able to handle the returned JSON object any way you see fit in your application.

The Sample App

Again, making use of these new features is incredibly easy. I created a small sample app to show you how to authorize your app with Foursquare via the SSO card, pick a near-by venue with the Place Picker card, and lastly check-in to the selected venue.

As always, the sample app is open sourced, well documented, and hosted on GitHub. Head on over, and check it out!

If you find this sample useful, have any questions, or just want to keep up-to-date on the world of BlackBerry WebWorks and HTML5, follow me on Twitter!

I came across an amazing JavaScript library called Hammer.js which makes it super easy to incorporate gestures into your application with only a few lines of code. The library is extremely lightweight, running ~2KB minified, and handles all of the legwork for you.

Hammer.js supports quite a few gestures too:

• Tap
• Double Tap
• Hold
• Swipe
• Drag
• Transform (Pinching)

Of course, what would touch events be without the actual Event data? When a user interacts with the screen, Hammer.js reports back to you with all of the information related to the touch. You can find out how long somebody touched the screen, where they touched, which direction they were swiping or dragging, the momentum of the swipe, and so on

So, why would you want use Hammer.js in your projects?

It’s lightweight

Sure, there are other libraries out there that handle gestures, but it’s important to think about resources when creating mobile apps. Hammer.js runs about 2kb (minified) and leaves a very tiny footprint.

Simple to use

The syntax is incredibly easy to both use and understand. There’s even a jQuery plugin available if you’re like me and like to take shortcuts in your code.

Plays nice with others

Hammer.js works well alongside other libraries and frameworks. Whether you’re using jQuery, bbUI.js, Backbone.js, or others, you should have no worries that Hammer.js will interfere. It performs very well, and doesn’t get in the way.

Check out my sample app!

I worked very hard for what seemed like minutes, creating an awesome sample app to show how easy it is to use the Hammer.js library. Check it out in our GitHub repo – there’s even a special appearance by the one-and-only Jesse Ariss!

If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to hit me up on Twitter. I like the attention. @chadtatro

Luckily for them, sharing content from your BlackBerry WebWorks app just got super easy.

While browsing through our ever-growing catalogue of Sample Apps on GitHub, I realized we were missing some crucial Invocation samples for Facebook and Twitter! “Blasphemy,” you say?! I agree, so here is some quick info about how you can share data to Facebook and Twitter from your app.

With only a few lines of JavaScript, you can invoke these two lovely cards.

…and here’s the code:

function invokeTwitter() {
    blackberry.invoke.invoke({
        target: "Twitter",
        action: "bb.action.SHARE",
        type: "text/plain",
        data: "In @chadtatro we trust."
    }, onSuccess, onError);
}
function invokeFacebook() {
    blackberry.invoke.invoke({
        target: "Facebook",
        action: "bb.action.SHARE",
        type: "text/plain",
        data: "I’m eating tacos with Alex."
    }, onSuccess, onError);
}

All memes and jokes aside, the invocation framework is incredibly powerful. Integrating it in to your application is another simple way for you to provide that genuine BlackBerry 10 “look and feel” to your users.

For the full sample app, check out our GitHub repository.

If you have any question, concerns, or just want to show your love, you can find me on Twitter at @chadtatro. (http://twitter.com/chadtatro)

Forget everything you know about working with maps and BlackBerry WebWorks. Mapping just got real, real easy!

We heard you ask for an easy way to integrate mapping services with your BlackBerry WebWorks applications, and today I’m happy to announce that on BlackBerry 10, the process has become much simpler.

We’ve put together a straight-forward sample application that will show you how to integrate with a few of the services out there:  Google Maps, Bing, Leaflet, and OpenLayers.

If you’ve been following the progression of the BlackBerry WebWorks framework, you’ve probably noticed an awesome amount of transparency. Open web standards are lovingly embraced and adopted here at RIM. Even the framework itself is staged publicly on GitHub.  Continuing this theme of openness and following web standards, the maps samples we’ve released are not platform specific.  Whether you’re writing an exclusive BlackBerry app, or planning on targeting multiple platforms using Cordova (previously known as PhoneGap), these samples are most definitely for you!

For each service, you’ll be able to learn how to:

-          Setup a mapping service to use to in your app

-          Find the users location with HTML5 Geolocation

-          Perform a search for nearby points of interest

-          Display push-pins on the map, showing the search results.

The goal of this sample is to show you how you can quickly integrate maps into your app and have it perform great in WebWorks for BlackBerry 10.

When it comes down to picking which service is right for your app, it’s completely up to you.  One of my teammates, Jim Ing, wrote a really in-depth article on maps, comparing services and much more.  I strongly recommend checking it out “Lightweight Maps For Mobile”.

Check out the sample, in action!

Download the source code.

Ready to add some maps to your app? Download the source code from our GitHub repository!

Calling all Native developers!

Have you been yearning to contribute to the BlackBerry 10 cause but weren’t sure how?  Why not take this WebWorks sample, and build a Native version?!  If you’re interested, get in touch with Shadid Haque (@ShadidHaque) on Twitter.

If you’ve got a success story, have a question, or just want to chat about apps, hit me up on Twitter @chadtatro!

Before I joined the Developer Relations team, I was a 3rd party developer with mblware and created the apps LensBoost and Memegasm. One of the difficulties I often ran into when creating an app was finding a high-quality set of icons I could use in my application. Sure, there are tons of amazing icon packs out there (some free, some premium) but while the icon packs I ran into looked great, they didn’t necessarily “work” in my app.

In my new role as an Application Development Consultant, part of my job is to create sample apps that showcase specific features, or APIs. I love working with the new BlackBerry 10 SDKs – it gives me a chance to not only learn about the new, and existing APIs, but also allows me to do what I love, develop apps. That being said, when I start writing my sample apps I still come across that old issue of finding icons that follow our UI Guidelines and “work” in my app!

Finally, due to some incredible contributions from a couple of amazing developers, there is a solution. Thanks to efforts of Liz Myers and Pixle, we can all use high-quality icons that follow the proper UI Guidelines in our applications for BlackBerry 10! Let’s take a closer look at the sets:

BlackBerry 10 Assets by Liz Myers (http://myersdesign.com/resources/)
Licensed under CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

This set contains 100 icons which are well suited for Context Menus, Tabs, and Action Bars, and come in both light and dark themes.

Subway Icons for RIM by Pixle (http://subway.pixle.pl/rim/)
Licensed under CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

This set of icons is a subset of Subway Icons (http://subway.pixle.pl) and contains 16 of some of the most common icons developers use in their apps. They come in three sizes: Small (61×61), Medium (71×71), and Large (81×81).

If you find these icons as useful as I do, be sure to show your support and follow the creators on Twitter. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it!

Liz Myers @LizMyers
Pixle @madebypixle

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can find me on Twitter (@chadtatro) or in our Developer Support Forums.

I’m stoked to spread the word to all of our developers that as of version 2.2, you can now build apps with PhoneGap that target BlackBerry® 10!

Our very own official Apache Cordova contributor Gord Tanner (@gordtanner) has been hard at work making sure you can build PhoneGap apps for BlackBerry 10 today. What’s got me really excited about this news is that even though BlackBerry 10 is still in beta, a quick test revealed more than half of the APIs are already supported. With monthly updates to PhoneGap being released, this means that developers can start working on their BlackBerry 10 apps right away, and have peace of mind knowing that more and more support will be available in each release.

What is PhoneGap, you say?

PhoneGap is an open source framework that allows developers to quickly build cross-platform apps using HTML5, JavaScript®, and CSS. PhoneGap is powered by Cordova and is compatible with BlackBerry® OS 5+, BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS, and now BlackBerry 10!

Have a PhoneGap app created for another platform? We’ve got 10,000 reasons for you to port it over!

If you already have a PhoneGap app available on other platforms, why not take advantage of the recent BlackBerry 10 support? By porting your app over to BlackBerry 10, and registering for the 10k Developer Commitment, we’re guaranteeing you will make at least $10,000 in 12 months or we’ll pay the difference!

Note: Conditions apply. For complete details, visit the 10k Developer Commitment webpage.

So, are you ready? Get started in 3 steps:

1. Visit the new PhoneGap Getting Started Guide for BlackBerry.
2. Head over to the PhoneGap website and download the SDK.
3. Win!

If you’ve got a success story, have a question, or just want to chat about apps, hit me up on Twitter @chadtatro.

So how do you actually go about integrating features from these services into your application?  First the needs to allow your application access to their profile, and this bring us to Open Authorization – better known as OAuth.

OAuth you say?!

OAuth is an open standard for authorization used by tons of popular services, foursquare, Twitter, and Tumblr, to name a few.  It allows applications to connect their users to these services without having to handle their username and password.

There are a couple versions of OAuth which we have created sample apps for.

OAuth 1

Let’s be honest, OAuth 1 can be darn right nasty to work with out-of-the-box.  OAuth 1 and I are not really good friends, we’ve had many fights over the past year, and often I’ve been on the losing side.  In a nutshell, the way OAuth 1 works is by having an application perform a series of requests to a service, exchanging “tokens”, and ultimately granting the application access to the service on behalf of the user.  It requires several things to go just right, and if something doesn’t, access is denied.

Luckily there is a really awesome open-source JavaScript library written by Rob Griffiths (@bytespider) called jsOAuth. JsOAuth takes the pain and extensive process of OAuth 1 away, and allows you to focus on connecting your app with a service such as Twitter rather than spend a ton of time working with the OAuth 1 protocol.

OAuth 2

While OAuth 1 is my adversary; OAuth 2 is my best friend.  This is the next evolution of the OAuth protocol and is used by services like foursquare, and Facebook.  OAuth 2 is much friendlier for developers to integrate into their apps, and provides much easier, and straight forward authorization “flows” to work with.  Though the standard is still evolving, it’s solid, and in contrast to OAuth 1, is amazingly easy to work with.

The Sample Apps

Getting started with OAuth can be pretty intimidating to say the least.  As a former 3^rd party developer, I’ve been there.  I’ve screamed at my console log, cried like a baby, and even begged the OAuth gods for it to “just work”.  Since joining the BlackBerry® Developer Relations team here at RIM®, I vowed to help make this process easier for fellow developers and I’m glad to finally say that we’ve released two sample apps on GitHub today to help guide you on your OAuth journey.

The first sample app shows how to integrate Twitter into your application by using the OAuth 1 protocol.  You’ll learn how to quickly and painlessly authenticate with Twitter, and post a Tweet to a user’s timeline by taking advantage of the jsOAuth library.

The second sample shows integration with foursquare, and uses OAuth 2.  It’ll show you how your application can authenticate a user with the service, search for near-by venues, and then check-in to a venue.

The third sample shows how to integrate Facebook and OAuth 2 into your application.  You’ll learn how to authenticate a user with Facebook, and interact with their feed by posting, and reading content.

Each of these samples are completely Open Source, and available on GitHub.  If you find them useful, have any feedback, or need an extra helping hand along your way find me on the BlackBerry Developer Support Forums or Twitter @chadtatro.