RIM’s vision of BlackBerry ID is slowly taking shape with more and more services coming under its umbrella. More and more RIM services are starting to use BlackBerry ID and it will be an integral part of BlackBerry OS 7 just like it is on the PlayBook. Right now when a developer wants to identify an app user they can either use the users PIN number or maybe query one of the email addresses associated with the device. RIM plans for BlackBerry ID to replace that as single point of identification for a BlackBerry user.
I spoke to Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer Relations @RIM, about this upcoming API that is either shipping with BlackBerry OS 7 or coming as a service after launch like the Advertising or BBM service. Developers can potentially use that BlackBerry ID data as a form of identification to uniquely identify a user. For example, developers can use that ID to verify app licenses against their own registration list and other customizations based on a single identity. I am hoping that means the end of registration codes and painful PIN transitions.
On top of that RIM has a long term vision beyond the original use case for BlackBerry ID. They envision leveraging it in the future for 3rd party devs to store information about the user like app registrations or even app settings in the cloud. I can see quite a bit that devs could benefit from especially for making the transition between devices simpler. It could store a quick backup object for each app with basic settings to make device switches a piece of cake sort of like what BlackBerry Protect did.
What do you think about the BlackBerry ID API?
Oddly enough I found that Adobe Developer Evangelist, Renaun Erickson, posted a whole tutorial about working with the BlackBerry ID API on the BlackBerry PlayBook. The weird part is that I can find no reference to the different API’s Renaun talks about though I can now confirm that they are coming. Renaun pulls in this ID information from the following classes:
Except for Renaun mentioning them I cannot find any other reference to them. Let me know if you figure out more!
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