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On our developer website, we provide a seamless solution consisting of replacing the Google Maps library for Android with a web view integrating the web version of Google Maps. More information can be found by following this link.

That said, a fellow Italian developer (the maker of Prezzi Benzina), just sent me detailed information on how they easily replaced Google Maps with Open Street Maps, a free worldwide map providing open data under the ODBL (Open Data Commons Open Database License).

The result? Outstanding! And since it is a very common issue faced by many Android developers making use of Google Maps in their Android applications, we wanted to share in this blog how they did it.

Download

First of all, you must download the Open Street Maps library from the following link: https://code.google.com/p/osmdroid/

You can either download the jar ready to use osmdroid-android-3.0.8.jar or download the source code and compile it (recommended).

Step 1: Layout Change

Pretty easy. You code goes from

<com.google.android.maps.MapView
        android:id="@+id/mapview"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:apiKey="@+string/mapviewkey"
        android:clickable="true" />

to

<org.osmdroid.views.MapView
        android:id="@+id/mapview"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent" />

Unlike Google Maps, no key is needed for OSM.

Step 2: Modify Import

Most class names remain the same, so it’s very straight forward..

Your code goes from:

import com.google.android.maps.GeoPoint;
import com.google.android.maps.MapController;
import com.google.android.maps.MapView;

to

import org.osmdroid.util.GeoPoint;
import org.osmdroid.views.MapController;
import org.osmdroid.views.MapView;

In addition, you might want to add the following:

import org.osmdroid.views.overlay.ItemizedIconOverlay;
import org.osmdroid.views.overlay.ItemizedIconOverlay.OnItemGestureListener;
import org.osmdroid.views.overlay.OverlayItem;
import org.osmdroid.views.overlay.OverlayManager;
import org.osmdroid.views.overlay.mylocation.GpsMyLocationProvider;
import org.osmdroid.views.overlay.mylocation.MyLocationNewOverlay;

WARNING: resources

The default class for resources is: DefaultResourceProxyImpl. It handles English only, so you probably have to create your own with the proper translations.

    ResourceProxyImpl resProxyImp = new ResourceProxyImpl(this);

Step 3: Map Customization

From

mapView = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.mapview);
mapView.setBuiltInZoomControls(true);
mMyLocationOverlay = new MyLocationOverlay(this, mapView);
mapView.getOverlays().add(mMyLocationOverlay);

to

mapView = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.mapview);
mapView.setUseSafeCanvas(false);
//enable zoom controls
mapView.setBuiltInZoomControls(true);

//enable multitouch
mapView.setMultiTouchControls(true);
//GpsMyLocationProvider can be replaced by your own class. It provides the position information through GPS or Cell towers.
GpsMyLocationProvider imlp = new GpsMyLocationProvider(this.getBaseContext());
//minimum distance for update
imlp.setLocationUpdateMinDistance(1000);
//minimum time for update
imlp.setLocationUpdateMinTime(60000);       
mMyLocationOverlay = new MyLocationNewOverlay(this.getBaseContext(),imlp , mapView, resProxyImp);
mMyLocationOverlay.setUseSafeCanvas(false);
mMyLocationOverlay.setDrawAccuracyEnabled(true);

mapView.getOverlays().add(mMyLocationOverlay);

Step 4: Add Marker

In OSMDroid there are some classes ready to use. The best is ItemizedIconOverlay.

Create an overlay and add it to the map:

ItemizedIconOverlay markersOverlay = new ItemizedIconOverlay(new LinkedList(), myMarker, null, resProxyImp);
mapView.getOverlays().add(markersOverlay);
Add markers
OverlayItem ovm = new OverlayItem("titolo", "descrizione", new GeoPoint(s.LatitudeE6(), s.LongitudeE6()));
ovm.setMarker(myMarker);
markersOverlay.addItem(ovm);

Of course, this is just the basic part of the story. There is much more available on OSMDroid – feel free to explore and bring your Android app to BlackBerry 10 easily!

What’s Count.ly? It is a real-time mobile analytics platform that shows information by using eye-catching visual elements. Görkem provided me with a test account and after logging in, I was very impressed by what I saw. The UI is gorgeus and the amount of useful and critical information a dev can get about their app is impressive.

Moreover, it’s an open-source project in which the team aims to discuss the future of Count.ly in an open, democratic environment. They offer the developers the opportunity to take part in the community, to send bug reports, feature requests, to provide fixes and best practices. It collects data from mobile phones, and visualizes this information to analyze mobile application usage and end-user behavior.

Having the ability to see how your users behave is critical for the success of an app. Developers can get a clear picture on what’s working well and what’s not working, what their users like the most, what the least/most used feature is and, last but not least, how much time people spend in your app and doing what.

When we met, BlackBerry 10 was not supported yet, but they were very interested in investing in our new upcoming platform (after the conference, even more!) and for that reason, twenty days after, they finally published their first SDKs for BlackBerry 10.

What’s so special with Count.ly?

• It has a dashboard
  • where you stay up to date
  • where you can easily monitor your data with graphics
  • which shows you everything at once with no need to dig in several pages
  • where you can track unlimited number of applications and switch between your apps, games and ebooks

• It has a special user behaviour stats experience in which;
  • you can track and visualize your users’ behaviours
  • you can see your application’s in-app performance
  • you can understand your customer’s behaviour and where user left off
  • you can observe your players closely to ensure success and maximize your online game revenue

• You can build better apps, games and ebooks;
  • by measuring and evaluating mobile app engagement as it enables optimization of mobile content
  • by exploring where a spike occurs and by personalizing and optimizing your app according to stats
  • by the help of the support that Countly offers for leading smartphones (iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry)

• You can produce electronic reports with customizable charts and tables, showing how your application performed for a given period, add / remove pages through report generator.

Also, Count.ly is free. You can install Count.ly in-app analytics tool on your server to track unlimited number of mobile applications, if you want.

Here is what Onu Alp, Soner, co-founder of Count.ly, told me:

“The best feature of Count.ly is custom events: we help developers identify in-app purchase patterns, defining the best flow for payment. This is a crucial factor towards maximizing revenues in e-books and games. We are thrilled with what BlackBerry provides in their next-gen mobile OS, and decided to invest in BlackBerry 10 SDK. Being the most complete open source, real-time mobile analytics app in the world, we believe Count.ly will provide a lot of value for BlackBerry 10 developers”

If you are a BlackBerry 10 developer looking for a good option for in-app analytics, Count.ly is definitely a great choice. The team is also very accessible and happy to help if needed.

You can download the Countly WebWorks SDK from GitHub here, while the Cascades SDK can be download from here.

What’s Buffer? Well, the name speaks for itself – it’s a service that allows you to send your status updates to a buffer in order to post them to multiple social networks at once and stagger these posts throughout the day. This way, you won’t flood your followers/social media friends with tons of posts all at once. More importantly, you can choose the time of day that you want the posts to be published, in order to have the best visibility in terms of audience.

You can even keep track of the number of retweets, likes and clicks that your posts get. Smart, right?

After they launched the service more than a year ago, they built an app for iOS and Android that quickly became successful.

A few weeks ago, I contacted them again to inform them about my new adventure here at RIM and to ask them about the possibility of porting Buffer to BlackBerry 10. They are not a big company, so they need to prioritize tasks and were very busy at the time. One option was to port their Android app to BlackBerry 10 and then to plan the development of a native Cascades version later.

I am happy to announce that as of last week, Buffer was made available for download from BlackBerry World.

Do you think that 24 hours after publication, and given that BlackBerry 10 devices are not commercially available yet, we could impact their service? Well, apparently, YES!

Here is what Leo says:

“Converting Buffer to the new BlackBerry 10 platform couldn’t have been any easier. It took us less than one day to do so and it was running super smoothly immediately. Seeing hundreds of downloads within days and great reviews too was an incredibly overwhelming response from our userbase.”
“Being part of the new BlackBerry 10 platform is super exciting for us. What few people know is that BlackBerry users are the second largest mobile traffic for Buffer, even before Android. So being able to provide a slick app in such a hassle free way made our life extremely easy. And, a large part of our userbase is a lot happier and more productive. Happy Buffering from BlackBerry! “

Impressive, right? I really recommend giving Buffer a try – the BlackBerry 10 app in conjunction with their browser extensions is a killer social media weapon!

A few weeks ago I was lucky to finally meet the CEO and Founder of Hedone Design, Branko Nikolic. Branko took the opportunity to create a BlackBerry Developer Group in his home region of the Balkans. Branko worked with our Developer Relations team to setup the first event for BlackBerry developers in the Balkans: a “mini” BlackBerry 10 Jam in Maribor, the second biggest town in Slovenia.

Why “mini”? Well, there is a reason for that… but it turned out to be everything but “mini”! The event took place at Feri, a local university, and everything was organized perfectly – from the invitations for developers, to the badges, to the video interviews, the sessions… everything. Over 170 developers were there to listen to our sessions about BlackBerry 10 architecture and development tools. A few local devs also showcased what they developed already, with also a presentation by a local dev company, Codeten. Also, it’s worth mentioning the great (and funny!) presentation made by Dennis Reumer, who runs another BlackBerry Developer Group in the Netherlands.

Last but not least, Branko organized a party for us and for the developers, transforming a popular club in Maribor into a fully-fledged BlackBerry club. Everything inside, from the waiter’s t-shirts to the DJ console (using a PlayBook, of course) was branded BlackBerry. Devs were more than happy and the first surveys demonstrate that now devs in Slovenia (mostly Android developers) are more willing to develop for the BlackBerry 10 platform than ever before.

In short: praises to Branko and his team for the incredible job! I am looking forward to looking at apps from developers in the Balkans showing up in BlackBerry World.