RIM made some big announcements during the BlackBerry Developers Conference.Research In Motion unveiled a
new services platform for developers that offers advertising, payment,
content push and new location services.
The BlackBerry Advertising Service will enable
developers to integrate advertising into their BlackBerry applications,. The service will feature
ads compliant with the Mobile Marketing Association's (MMA) guidelines
as well as rich media ads that will be able to deeply integrate with
BlackBerry applications.
Examples of this deep integration between ads
and applications will include the ability to easily initiate a call
from an ad, add a calendar entry or contact entry from an ad, and
directly link to an application in BlackBerry App World™ from an ad.
The Ad service will also include real-time, detailed, consolidated
reporting of advertising across ad networks, including ad impressions,
clicks, conversions and earnings, as well as integration into the
Omniture Online Marketing Suit™ for more advanced analytics.
BlackBerry Advertising Service and a software development kit (SDK) are planned to be available in the first half of 2010.
A new BlackBerry Payment Service from RIM will present will allow devs to sell
digital content such as premium content, monthly or annual
subscriptions, and additional levels or upgrades for games and other
entertainment applications from within their applications. The
BlackBerry Payment Service will also incorporate merchant services,
including customer billing.
BlackBerry Payment Service and an SDK are expected to be available in mid 2010.
BlackBerry Push Service, which was first made exclusively available
to BlackBerry Alliance Program members earlier this year, will be made
generally available to registered developers in the first half of 2010.
Adding to the GPS capabilities already supported on the BlackBerry
Application Platform today, RIM will introduce three new location-based
services for developers to build highly responsive, location-aware
applications for BlackBerry smartphones. The three new location-based
services include cell site geolocation, reverse geocoding and travel
time.
Cell site geolocation is a new
service that will provide developers with an alternative to GPS,
providing an estimate of a smartphone's location based on cell tower
triangulation. Cell site geolocation is generally faster than GPS, uses
less battery power (which makes it ideal for applications that run in
the background while multi-tasking), and is ideal for indoor use where
the line-of-sight to satellites required by GPS receivers is not always
available.
The cell site geolocation service is planned to be available in the
first half of 2010. It will be supported on BlackBerry smartphones
running BlackBerry OS 5.0 or higher.
Reverse Geocoding - RIM is introducing a new
reverse geocoding service that converts geolocation coordinates to a
specific address for use in BlackBerry applications. Reverse geocoding
is available today with BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS
5.0 or higher. A reverse geocoding API is available with the
BlackBerry® Java® Software Development Kit 5.0 (BlackBerry Java SDK
5.0) which is available in beta at http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/devbetasoftware/javasdk5.jsp.
Travel Time - RIM will also launch a new travel
time service. Using a simple API call, developers will be able to
incorporate estimated travel time within their applications for almost
any destination in the US and Canada. The travel time calculations will
be based on distance, speed limits and aggregated traffic conditions.
The service returns values for an estimated arrival time, total travel
time and total distance that can be used in an application.
The travel time service is expected to be available in the first half of 2010.
For more information and updates about the new services available to developers on the BlackBerry Application Platform, visit www.blackberry.com/developers.