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!

So we’ve updated the socialinvocation sample to include examples of how to invoke Foursquare with all of the currently supported invocation parameters.

As you can see, Foursquare allows BlackBerry 10 developers to leverage their app in a number of different ways, both through Cards and the Invocation Framework.

Big thanks to Kyle from Foursquare who has also documented these features in his sample app:  https://github.com/foursquare/foursquare-bb10-sdk

If you want to learn more about Social Invocation and why you should be including it in your app, come to one of our sessions next week at BlackBerry Live!  We’ll be talking about the benefits of integrating with Foursquare and the rest of the Social apps in two sessions:

JAM37 - Building context-aware applications by leveraging the power of Foursquare APIs, Thursday, May 16

JAM52 - Get Social: Connecting your app to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and more! Wednesday, May 15

Kyle from Foursquare will be there, and we will show a real world example of how Untappd found success by integrating with Foursquare.  Sample apps, best practices, and code snippets will also be presented that will show developers how to quickly get started in both the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK and the BlackBerry Native SDK.

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!

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.

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

One of the highlights for me this week at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was having the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing work from developers starting to leverage the BBM social platform. Social networking application foursquare is one such example, and was demoed during the Tuesday General Session keynote by Senior Director of Developer Relations (and fellow Inside BlackBerry blogger) Mike Kirkup.

The above video is really three videos in one! First, I speak with Mike about the overall opportunity available to developers that integrate BBM social platform APIs into their application. Then, foursquare developers Pete and Jeff provide a great demonstration of foursquare for BlackBerry integrated with BBM. I then pass the mic to Mike for a brief sit down with Pete about developing for BlackBerry and how the coming BBM social platform integration enhances the foursquare super app experience.

Post a comment and let us know what you think of the integration of BBM with foursquare, and what other applications should leverage the BBM social platform.

The BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 team was really excited to partner with the fine folks at foursquare for the BlackBerry DEVCON foursquare Challenge. Judging by the amount of attendees that lined up at the Social Media desk to claim their limited edition tee shirt, you were too! I had the opportunity to sit down with Peter Nofelt, lead developer of the foursquare BlackBerry app, and talk about the Challenge, Peter’s DEVCON 2010 session, and the future of foursquare. Check out the video above and don’t forget to upgrade to the new version of foursquare that was released during the show!

One of the great experiences of BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 was getting to chat with various BlackBerry developers and learn what they’re working on, what they’re excited about and what they thought about the show. We did a series of brief one-on-ones with every developer kind enough to speak to us and compiled it into the above video. Post a comment and let us know about your own DEVCON 2010 experience, what you thought of all the announcements, and if you’re excited for BlackBerry PlayBook.

Those that have attended in the past know that Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer Relations at RIM (and Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog blogger!!), is the walking embodiment of BlackBerry DEVCON. We thought it would be a good idea to follow him around and have him show us some of the key locations to visit as you make your way through DEVCON 2010. It was also a great opportunity to get in a shameless plug of our Social Media desk and promote the BlackBerry DEVCON foursquare Challenge. Enjoy!

As we all get in taxis, cars, trains, and planes (maybe boats too?) to travel to BlackBerry® DEVCON 2010, have you planned ahead and checked out all the special programs this year?!

Yes, not only do we have a MASSIVE catalog of over 100 sessions, but we’ve also lined up a panacea of special programs to suit the diverse passions and interests of the community.

These are my personal favorites!

• On Monday morning, various @BlackBerryDev team members – including yours truly – will be leading DEVCON tours to help new attendees get familiar with all the key activities and locations throughout the week – even an alumnus may discover something new! Find the tours by heading to the registration desk.
• Also on Monday morning, DEVCON Alumni will have access to an exclusive One-On-One event with Research In Motion® (RIM) experts in an informal setting. This event is taking place in Yerba Buena Ballroom 7 between 9:00-11:30am. Check out all the cool alumni benefits including VIP lounge, discounts, and an Alumni exclusive breakfast!
• Monday night is going to be huge too! After the welcome reception (another can’t-miss event, by the way), we will be holding a special Community Connection event all about celebrating the BlackBerry Developer Community. Join us to hear about highlights from the BlackBerry Partners Fund “Super Apps” Developer Challenge, learn about our new BlackBerry Developer Groups popping up all over the world, and cheer as we recognize community members for outstanding contributions. Get all the details here!
• The BlackBerry DEVCON foursquare Challenge starts with the first check-in at the DEVCON keynote Monday at 12:30pm.
• Tuesday night. DEVCON party! Enough said.
• Wednesday night, we have both an International Reception for our guests from outside the US and Canada, and the DEVCON Mobile Scavenger Hunt powered by AT&T. Head out into the city of San Francisco for an evening of adventure and fun! Passes will be handed out at the AT&T booth, so make sure you swing by!
• Are you a student or faculty? Make sure you check out the special Academic Program!
• …and don’t forget about Developer Day on Thursday! Find all the details here, and in my previous blog post.

Which of these DEVCON special programs will you be attending?