Previously, I talked about how to use the MapView APIs to embed your own layers on top of it. While that was nice and very flexible, it still required some work to get basic pins and bubbles going. In BlackBerry 10.1 we have updated the APIs to support push pins and bubbles out of the box. This means you can now use the native APIs such as GeoLocation and MapData to create and manage push pins with custom icons as well as assign a name and description to each that shows up in the bubble.

MapView with pins and bubbles

The bubbles can contain a title, a description as well as an action button. Signals are emitted when the text or the action button is tapped by the user so that applications can carry out the right action in that context. Typical actions would be to show more details about the location or starting a turn-by-turn navigation to that location. Oh and before I forget, did I mention that the title and description supports html tags? Yes it does. You can use html tags to format the text or even insert hyperlinks to open webpages.

A bubble with an HTML hyperlink

I guess I have been saving the best for last. One feature that I am really excited about is the ability to set the MapView to follow a specific pin. This is extremely useful if you want to track friends on a map or keep the user always centered on the map. Simply update the coordinates of the followed pin and watch the map automatically move with it. A full sample app can be downloaded from here.

Finally, a big shout-out to our maps team for their hard work – the MapView now has much better performance, faster tile loading and packs the features most of us need. Let’s get to work and put some more maps in our apps. If you missed the session at BlackBerry Jam Americas 2013, please check out the content on-demand – JAM69 - Maps in your Apps.

Just wanted to quickly remind everyone that we are going to have great contents on how to achieve deep system integration via invocation framework including the rise of the headless apps. If you are attending BlackBerry Jam Americas 2013, please check out the following sessions. Otherwise, please change your mind and attend. J

JAM06 – Built for BlackBerry: System Integration with Invocation Framework

• Larry McDonough – Principal Evangelist, BlackBerry
• Shadid Haque – Sr. Application Development Consultant, BlackBerry

To qualify for Built for BlackBerry®, your application must integrate with a BlackBerry® 10 service. One of the innovation features of BlackBerry 10 is the invocation framework. Through the invocation framework your application or game can request another application to perform a specific task. Also, your application can register as a target in the invocation framework to provide your specific function to other applications. Join us to see why and how you can effortlessly integrate with this framework.

JAM47 – Background Services – Event Driven Processing for your Application

• Russell Andrade – Product Manager, Native SDK, BlackBerry
• Shadid Haque – Sr. Application Development Consultant, BlackBerry

The session will discuss the brand new Background Services framework which allows developers to bundle a separate process with their application to run in the background without a UI.  Learn the basics of how this framework works, learn some guidelines about when to use it and when not to, and learn about the experiences of existing app partners that successfully deployed a background service and lessons learned from their projects.

JAM56 – CaseStudy: InvocationFramework – The heart of your business apps

• Ekke Gentz – Independent Software Architect, ekkes-corner UG
• Shadid Haque – Sr. Application Development Consultant, BlackBerry

Invocation Framework is the driving force behind BlackBerry Flow. Experience first-hand how Ekke’s OpenDataSpace, Conference2Go and SerCar10 app leverages Invocation and Flow for media playback, recording, sharing app and content with social networks such as BBM and foursquare, turn by turn navigation with BlackBerry Maps, in app System Settings, adding event reminders and much more. Ekke also provides his own targets so others can invoke his apps.

MapView provides out of the box elegance with beautiful map tiles and all the basic interactions such as pinch-to-zoom and drag-n-pan. You can also drop push pins for POIs and show bubbles to present more details about a POI. Better yet, both the pin and the bubble can be fully customized to represent your own branding. Although these cover the basic needs for most of us, anything with Cascades has to be a bit more special, right? So where is the moment of charm in MapView? You just have to continue reading (or watch the video above).

I know 2D maps are nice and they do their job, but they are also yesterday’s news. The MapView takes that to the next level with APIs for tilting and rotating the map in a 3D space. Hook those two up with the gyroscope and the compass and you’ve got augmented reality in your app with zero effort. In fact, that’s exactly what I did in the CustomMapView sample app. The sample demonstrates the full power of MapView as of today and will be kept up to date as we add more features to our SDK. Please feel free to fork this in GitHub and contribute back!

I am really happy for how the MapView is coming together in Cascades, and more importantly the potential it has among developers. Please let me (@shadidhaque) know what you plan to do with it and what we can do for you.

Where, Inc. has enjoyed substantial growth in recent years, establishing itself as a company at the forefront of the booming mobile application industry. WHERE®, the company’s mobile application, allows users to customize searches in order to discover new places to eat, drink, and play in cities around the United States. Where, Inc. was a BlackBerry® Super App Challenge 2011 Regional Finalist and the mobile and web versions of its WHERE application have a combined total of 4 million active users and more than 10 million downloads.

Sarah Hodkinson , Where Inc.’s Senior Manager of Partner Marketing, sat down to discuss the importance of Where, Inc.’s relationship with Research In Motion® (RIM®).

Why did you want to be on the BlackBerry platform?
Our goal is to make WHERE as widely available as possible and RIM is a key player in the marketplace. It’s also easy to follow the BlackBerry user experience and make an application follow that experience. In BlackBerry® 6, the location APIs are more reliable and faster – and now all of our new features are fully supported by BlackBerry® 7.

How integrated is WHERE with the native applications of a BlackBerry smartphone?
The focus for our application has always been about creating an amazing user experience, and a big part of that is not only a high level of personalization, but also ease‐of‐use and functionality. Using a
BlackBerry smartphone, users can save places, contacts, and events to their address book and calendar.
They can share places with friends by email, text, or by connecting to Facebook®, which is definitely more fun and engaging, and creates sort of a mobile word‐of‐mouth function. And the more you use
WHERE, the more we learn about you, which allows us to further customize recommendations in the future. The BlackBerry platform really extends integration possibilities through its Unified Search integration and the robust notification system.

Tell us about the transition to BlackBerry 7 OS.
The transition from BlackBerry 6 to BlackBerry 7 OS is simple for developers, since they can support a BlackBerry 7 OS version of an application with little additional resource commitment. In our case, there was no need for any backend changes and all our primary functionalities, like Facebook integration and unified search integration, were working as before.

How important has it been to develop a relationship with RIM over the years?
RIM developer teams have helped us in terms of visibility and with promoting our app on BlackBerry App World™ and the Regional Super App Challenge. When we get featured in BlackBerry App World, our downloads jump by 10,000 per day. We also take advantage of the resources provided to us within the BlackBerry® Alliance Program and the people at RIM have made some connections to help expand our network and grow our business.

What else would you like to highlight about your partnership with RIM?
The BlackBerry® Torch™ smartphone has been a successful smartphone for WHERE and has performed well in terms of subscription revenue. We are activating on average about 1,000 downloads a day through the subscription‐based service and over 1 million in page views across the app in any given month. Another interesting fact is that 40% of our BlackBerry users are using a BlackBerry Torch smartphone. We believe the touch screen has really improved the user experience.

Thanks for your time, Sarah! Readers, be sure to check out Where, Inc’s website to see what they’re currently up to.