[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Why write a social-networking application for
BlackBerry? Social networking is all the rage, and people want to
take this experience with them wherever they go. Many
social-networking users carry BlackBerry devices. The BlackBerry
platform is rich and ripe for social networking.“Its capability as an Internet-accessing device is solid, its
reputation as a messaging platform is legendary, and one important
feature that most BlackBerry devices boast is a full keyboard.
Having a camera is handy, but the power lies in a keyboard where
users can rapidly type messages to friends or business associates.
The BlackBerry environment also presents an open programming
infrastructure where you can “catch” or hook many events of
interest. These capabilities open many possibilities for
feature-rich social-networking applications.“This tutorial is not singularly blazing new trails; there are
already commercially available social-networking applications for
the BlackBerry. This tutorial’s sample application demonstrates how
to build a useful open source application centered around social
networking. Learn to add a custom menu into an application and
implement a “Share this Event” feature that highlights interacting
with the contacts database and the calendar events on the
BlackBerry. Contacts and events are part of the larger, more
general set of data known as Personal Information Management (PIM).
Once you understand how to interact with the PIM data on a device,
the social-networking opportunities are limited only by the
imagination.“This tutorial provides a brief introduction to PIM data, then
dives into the requirements for a BlackBerry social-networking
application. Download the complete source code for the example
BlackBerry application.”