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.