Last weekend was a smashing weekend for developers in Asia Pacific – almost 500 developers in India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Philippines got together and hacked their way through Friday evening to Sunday morning!

Yes, I am talking about BlackBerry® JamHack 2012, the first simultaneous Asia-Pacific-wide 40-hour BlackBerry hackathon. This weekend’s five simultaneous JamHack events were organized by Rubus Labs DevGroup (Bangalore), BlackBerry Developer Group India (Delhi), BBMYCoders (Kuala Lumpur), and PinoyBBDev and BBDevSG (Singapore)! While the 500 JamHackers were hacking in five different cities, their spirit and goal was admirably unanimous – hacking their way to the best app on BlackBerry® 10.

On Friday evening, participants started their 40-hour with registrations, networking and a series of RIM® -designed sessions, including local market insights session called “Country Vibes”, a “JamBytes” session on BlackBerry 10 design and user experience, and an introduction to the Built for BlackBerry program and the 10K Developer Commitment.

Each developer group helped participants to help form teams to ensure the best-rounded pitch on Sunday.

The hackathon started around midnight, and the dev groups had planned various icebreaker activities to wake up their contestants. If I had to pick my favorite icebreaker, it’d be the BBMYCoders Gangnam Style kickoff! Check out the video:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

A great start is always important, but what’s better than that? Solid support and non-stop energizing activities to keep awake! Throughout the 40 hours, developer group leaders, co-managers, partners, business development teams and RIM Developer Relations were present to motivate and help our hackers. But it didn’t end at that: Our experts in RIM Canada didn’t want to feel left out, so they offered virtual help-desk hours for our hackers through Twitter® (#BBJamHelp) which saw over a hundred questions and tweets! Special thanks to @Naveenan5, @PratikSapra, @RSSessantotto, and @WaterlooErik for staying up through the weekend to support our APAC developers.

Other than providing support, the developer group managers were also busy keeping the teams entertained (and awake)! If the participants were bored of coding, needed a breather, or just wanted an excuse to have fun, there were exciting activities that kept them up. Let’s take a look at what tactics were used by our group leaders to keep their participants awake:

Massage Corner by PinoyBBDev
Tired from hacking? Teams in Philippines were rewarded by one of the best break activities they can get – a spa treatment onsite!

Quiztions by PinoyBBDev
Quizzes are fun, and even more so when they are done over Twitter. PinoyBBDev planned a social media quiz with small giveaways for the quiztion winners.

Pen in Bottle by BBMYCoders
While the Pinoy Devs were busy getting massages, the KL JamHackers were tasked by BBMYCoders team to complete a task — but what are they doing?

Photo courtesy of BBMyCoders

The deal is that they had to untie a pen from their back and drop the pen into a bottle behind them, with a paper bag over their head. Sounds fun and simple, but they were definitely trying hard to get the special prizes given out!

Some other fun activities:

Game on at the Gamezones

Best DJ

Singing Competition on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games — the teams had to work hard on getting the apps done within the 40 hours, and their hard work and efforts were all worth it! It absolutely showed during the pitching sessions – more than 100 apps were showcased across the five cities. Here were the teams from the pitches and their winning apps:

Bangalore, India

Winner: Team QEDGE
App: Story Board, a presentation and slides creation HTML application on BlackBerry 10

Delhi, India

Winner: Team Fukraaas
App: UnTANGLED, a complex puzzle game built with HTML on BlackBerry 10

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Winner: Team Websmith ATP
App: 1BB, an augmented reality application on BlackBerry 10
For more event highlights, check out BBMYCoders’ post: http://bit.ly/BBMYCodersJamHack

Manila, the Philippines

Winner: Team Rain Creative
App: Realm of Elysium, a strategy game inspired by Battleship

Singapore

Winner: Tiam Yang, Tyler Projects Ptd Ltd
App: Drop Zone, a HTML game on BlackBerry 10

All in all, the participants had loads of fun, were rewarded with giveaways, and walked away with awesome prizes even if they didn’t win. Teams walked away with a bag of great goodies such as water bottles, t-shirts, stickers, and more. Also, all participants who attended BlackBerry JamHack received a BlackBerry JamHack rewards badge on BlackBerry JamZone as well as a free pass to BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012 in Thailand! Spirits were definitely sky high when the events ended and everyone walked away a winner.

This series of JamHacks would not have been possible without the BlackBerry developer groups. To find out more about the developer groups behind the scenes of the awesome JamHacks, check out:

• Bangalore: Rubus Labs DevGroup
• Delhi: BlackBerry Developer Group India
• Kuala Lumpur: BBMYCoders
• Manila: PinoyBBDev
• Singapore: BBDevSG

Registration for the next five cities is still open – so don’t miss your chance to be jammin’ with us on October 19-21 (5-city simultaneous hacks):

• Indonesia – Jakarta by BBDevID
• Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City by BlackBerry Viet Nam Dev Group
• Thailand – Bangkok by @BBDevThailand
• China – Shanghai by CNBBDev
• Australia – Melbourne

All ten winners from BlackBerry JamHack city events will be walking away with an all-expenses paid trip to the BlackBerry Jam Asia in Bangkok, where they will be vying with nine other teams to be crowned Asia Pacific champions and receive the grand prize of an all-expenses paid trip to BlackBerry 10 global launch, amongst other great prizes!

Follow the hashtag #BBJamHack to find out more about the JamHack events – here are some tweets we were pretty proud to see:

Interested to learn more about some program or events mentioned above? Click to learn more about:

• BlackBerry JamHack 2012
• BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012
• How to form a Developer Group in your region
• BlackBerry Jam Rewards program

Organized by Apstrak Studio, a partner in Thailand, BlackBerry Jam Sessions Thailand provides Thai developers in Bangkok and Chiangmai insights into app development for BlackBerry® 10 platform — its strengths, vision, and how to make BlackBerry apps that stand out and get downloaded. Join us as Justin Lee (@triplez82), BlackBerry Application Development Consultant, and Johan Kremer, Senior Manager, Alliances and Business Development from Research In Motion® (RIM®), tell you more about BlackBerry 10 and how to make money on the platform.

Jam Chiangmai
Tuesday September 18, 2012
18.00 – 22.00
Centara Duangtawan Hotel
Registration: http://www.blackberryjamthailand2012.com/blackberry-jam-thailand-2012-chiangmai/

Jam Bangkok (SOLD OUT!)
Wednesday September 19, 2012
18.00 – 22.00
Dusit Thani Hotel

Following hot on the heels of the Thailand sessions, there are two more mini BlackBerry 10 Jam sessions in Vietnam, organized by BlackBerry Dev Group Viet Nam. Happening in Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, the Jam Sessions bring to Vietnam developers a localized version of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour series. Vietnam developers will hear from Justin Lee at these events too. To register, send your details to the group’s manager Louis Tang at louis.keeper@gmail.com! For more details, check out BlackBerry Dev Group Viet Nam’s post here: http://blackberryvietnam.net/threads/blackberry-10-mini-jam-viet-nam-2012.12427/

Ho Chi Minh City
Thursday Sep 20, 2012
6pm-10pm
Café Tinh Tế, Hồ Chí Minh

Hanoi
Friday Sep 21, 2012
6pm-10pm
Café Amigo, Hà Nội

And that’s not all! We’re not forgetting our dear friends in Indonesia. BBDevID is holding a series of BlackBerry 10 Jam Sessions in Indonesia! Named “BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam Indonesia,” the series also brings snippets from BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour to the Indonesian developers in six cities. They have already kicked off the first event last weekend in Yogyakarta and there’s more to come. Look out for the BBDevID and RIM troop in the following cities and dates:

Saturday September 16 – Yogjakarta
Tuesday September 18 – Semarang
Saturday September 22 – Malang
Tuesday October 2 – Bandung
Saturday October 6 – Denpasar Bali
Monday October 8 – Jakarta

For more details: http://bbdevid.tumblr.com/post/31129297043/bb10minijam

It’s non-stop action here in Asia, and the developers simply can’t get enough. If you’re in the region in the cities above, you must not miss the action here!

BlackBerry Developer Group India is the very first BlackBerry Developer Group in India and will meet on a regular basis in New Delhi. The group aims to help the Indian BlackBerry developer community in creating the best apps and games possible. The first meeting is scheduled for June 11th and will feature a talk entitled ‘BlackBerry Ecosystem: Challenges and Opportunities’ by Mr. Prashant Singh, Evangelist, Spice Digital (Spice has hit the 10 million download mark for its apps on the BlackBerry App World™ storefront). Mr. Prashant is also the co-founder of Mobile Monday Delhi. Additionally, there will be an informal networking session at this meeting. For more information on the group and the first meeting, please visit the group site on Facebook.

The Barcelona BlackBerry Developer’s Group is also launching in June. Developers in Barcelona and surrounding areas will be able to share their experiences developing for the BlackBerry platform and participate in future workshops which the group plans to organize. The first meeting is scheduled for June 21st at Rambla de l’Exposició 61-69, 08800 Vilanova i la Geltrú. For more information please visit the group’s official site.

As always, we invite you to visit our BlackBerry Developer Groups website to find a group in your area!

The well-established Philippine BlackBerry Developer Group is planning to meet on March 16th March 23rd at the Chowking Villar Branch in Makati City from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM. Agenda topics for the meeting include a step-by-step guide to BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet development as well as the new BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) API, including a demo on how to use the new APIs in your applications. Their official group site is under construction, but you can visit them on Twitter to get more up-to-date info.

The Vancouver BlackBerry Developer’s Group has also confirmed that they will be hosting a meeting on March 29th from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The meeting will be held in the Wavefront Accelerated Commercialization building (conference centre – lower level), located at 1055 West Hastings Street. For all the information, please visit the group’s Facebook page or the event page.

And finally, the BlackBerry-Dev-Group-DR in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic is tentatively planning their first meeting for March 21st. Please check the group’s site frequently for updates on the exact date, time and location.

Keep checking back to the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for more Developer Group meetup announcements!

As mentioned in our previous BlackBerry® Developer Groups post, February is a busy month for developer groups. A few more groups have scheduled meetings this month.

The first BlackBerry Developer Group meeting in Vienna will take place on February 17th at 5.30 pm at Mellow Café Bar. The agenda is as follows:

To register for the event and get more information on the event, please visit the official website of BlackBerry Developer Group Vienna.

Another first meetup will take place in Cairo, Egypt where the BlackBerry Developer Community in Egypt will hold their inaugural meeting on Wednesday February 23rd the first week of March, due to the current situation in Egypt. Please visit the group site for all the details.

As always, we invite you visit our BlackBerry Developer Groups site to find a group in your area. If one doesn’t already exist, you can start a new one by filling out this form.

As the BlackBerry® Developer Group program continues to expand, several new groups have scheduled meetings for the month of February.

To start off, the Polish BlackBerry Developer Group has organized their inaugural meeting on February 1st (today!) at the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw. For more information on the meeting and to register, visit the group’s official page or their Facebook page.

The second meeting of the New York BlackBerry Developer Group will be an intro to developing for the BlackBerry platform. Topics of discussion will include learning the importance of developing for BlackBerry and learning about recent enhancements to the platform that make this development process easier. The meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 6:30 PM. Visit the group’s Meetup page for all the details.

The Sydney BlackBerry Developer Group holds their regular meetings on the last Tuesday of every month. The next meeting falls on Tuesday, February 22nd. Visit the group’s LinkedIn page here for all the details.

As always, we invite you visit our BlackBerry Developer Groups site to find a group in your area. If one doesn’t already exist, you can start a new one by filling out this form.

Hello developers – I have great news! As part of our continuous effort to improve our map client and the data services behind it, we have added some really exciting features to our BlackBerry® Maps offering. Whether your application uses an embedded MapField or simply invokes BlackBerry Maps to render map data, you can start taking advantage of these new features today!

First, the data coverage has been extended by adding 34 new countries, including Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, New Zealand, The Philippines and Taiwan. I have no doubt that the addition of these new countries in our database will open up a lot of opportunities for app developers in those regions. The figure above shows the current coverage of the BlackBerry Maps service.

After carefully listening to your comments and feedback, we have also spent a significant amount of our efforts to optimize the visual appearance of the maps with a stronger rendering engine as well as with a new color scheme. New POI databases for hospitals, universities/colleges, police stations, train/subway stations, shopping centers, parking, parks and airports were also added wherever available, in order to make the maps as meaningful as possible to the end user. The screenshots below highlight a few of the many visual changes that went in as part of this update.

Please note that, in order to enable the extended coverage and visual optimization, you will first need to update your device as instructed below:

Updating BlackBerry Maps with BlackBerry® Device Software 4.7 or Lower

1. From the home screen, go to Maps.
2. Press the [Menu] key and select Options.
3. Press the [Menu] key and select Clear Cache.
4. Select Delete when prompted to delete cached entries.

Updating BlackBerry Maps with BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 before Bundle 1057

Update your BlackBerry Device Software to the latest version, available here. If you do not wish to update your software, you can follow the instructions below (for the BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 after Bundle 1057) to receive the additional map coverage and new map design. However, the new POI icons will not be available.

Updating BlackBerry Maps with BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 after Bundle 1057

1. From the home screen, go to Maps.

2. Press the [Menu] key and select Options.

3. Press the [Menu] key and select Clear Cache.

4. Select Delete when prompted to delete cached entries.

Updating BlackBerry Maps with BlackBerry Device Software 6.0

1. From the home screen, go to Maps.

2. Press the [Menu] key and select Options.

3. Press Global Map Options.

4. Press the [Menu] key and select Clear Cache.

While we try our best to support new features on all OS versions, it is important to note that some of these features are not available on legacy OS versions. Please use the table below to determine which features are available for the OS version you have.

I am very excited about these new features and am really looking forward to any comments you may have!

Here is another fun video highlight from BlackBerry® DEVCON 2010. At our Community Connections event on the Monday night at the conference, we showcased the BlackBerry Developer Groups program.

These local, community-led groups are literally popping up all over the globe. In the video above, some of our Developer Group Managers share their thoughts on the program and their local groups.

To find a group or to start your own, visit www.blackberry.com/developers/groups!