RIM gets “Pushy” over new BlackBerry developer APIs
Research In Motion (RIM) has been talking publicly about “push” application programming interface (API) technologies for some time now, it was back in 2007 that we last heard about a new set of developer tools for the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE) aligned to push delivery of mobile applications.
With a new wave of push delivery technologies to announce, this time targeted at the consumer space rather than the corporate developer space per se, RIM is telling us that we’ll be happy when we see more real-time content pushed to our BlackBerry smartphones. Specifically, it is giving developers the tools to do this, so you’d better be happy with it or else.
Push technology provides a proactive mechanism for developers to deliver data (in the form of both content and alaerts) to BlackBerry smartphones via Java-based applications as it becomes available. The arguments FOR these mechanisms to be in place are, I assume, punctuality of the information and also preservation of battery life. RIM also points out that this scenario minimises data usage by eliminating the need for “poking” and “polling” servers.
Push APIs for browser content are the foundation of the BlackBerry Web Signals service that was launched by RIM in October 2008. This technology, according to RIM, enables online content providers to push alerts to BlackBerry smartphone users when relevant content has been published or updated and supports one-click access from an icon to the online information.
Suitable usage scenarios for push data delivery obviously include areas such as news, weather, banking, medical services and even games. Disappointingly perhaps, one of the first RIM customers using this technology is an online digital music store. I say disappointingly only because it would be great to hear that the first killer app wasn’t just music if you know what I mean.
There are other new services already emerging that are more encouraging such as flight status updates so let’s not be to negative. RIM’s Canadian heritage showed through when the company also included a note of the Hockey News application for real-time scores and player updates. Ah bless, Hockey’s not that big in Surrey – but I had to mention it anyway.
The BlackBerry push API is available exclusively to BlackBerry Alliance Program members so if that’s not you, here’s where you need to go to find out how to get in the club.