I have many business locations for which I am building a single native app for Android and a single native app for iPhone.
I would like people to be able to check-in to my establishment whilst inside my app. I don't want users to have to create a Foursquare account, I simply want to use Foursquare's ability to check-in rather than reinventing the wheel and creating all of the check-in geolocation logic.
Keep in mind that I want to keep track of how many times an individual has checked-in to a specific location.
Any suggestions for a solution or direction?
Most of the point of checking-in is to use it as a kind of advertisement that people broadcast to all of their friends. In that case you definitely want them to be using their own accounts.
Otherwise who is checking in? John Doe? What's the point of that?
If you're worried that not enough of your customers use Foursquare, perhaps Facebook is a viable alternative?
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Currently I'm working on a project where I need to know with who the user is chatting with, in any given time, in chatting apps like Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Skype, line and other chatting apps.
Could that be done? Is there any API that I can work with to know this information?
No there is not a way to do this. There is no standardized interface for accessing this sort of information. It would be a privacy and security concern if there was.
Specific apps may individually decide to expose a Content-Provider or other means to share this data, but that would be up to the choice of each app, and each would be implemented in it's own way. As far as I am aware, none of the three examples listed do this.
I'm planning to develop a location based Android app. The app needs to store location information such as currentLocation, location info of an address i.e latitude and longitude of each as well as other user info such as name, sex, age etc which i believe i can extract from a fb or g+ login. The app will also include a chat functionality which will allow its users to communicate.
I'm comfortable with Java, but haven't used PHP. But i don't mind spending time learning it if that is the best option in building a backend.
I was wondering if i could use the GAE for the same. I also came across parse.com which can be used as a backend. There may be other options too, which i may not have explored. I'm new to android app development. This will be my first app. Kindly suggest a backend which suits my needs the best. All kinds of inputs are welcomed!
I work at Backbeam. It is a backend-as-a-service and it has support for geolocated data and users authentication using Facebook, Google+, Twitter and more external services (additionally to email + password authentication).
Furthermore, we have plans to release an Open Source version this year.
If you need further information we will be glad to assist you :)
There isn't a right or wrong answer to this really.
For myself, I've been learning and using Python and MongoDB. There are so many web/cloud based hosting services that learning and using a free account for your development shouldn't be a problem no matter your language choice.
If you are writing the app in Java, maybe you want your cloud system to also be similar using JavaScript such as NodeJS.
I'm developing an Android game, and now I'm in the stage where I want to create a multiplayer option.
My task it to pass between two users on different phones an integer.
My thought is to do it via facebook, to enjoy all the social benefits of it.
Do you know what API's\technologies I need to use?
I installed the facebook SDK, but cant find the specific API's to do it.
Thanks Allot, Vlady.
If the two users play against each other (or with each other) then the best approach would be a P2P connection, that it the two devices should have a socket between them for passing messages.
If that's not possible for some reason, then the fallback would be to have a central server to which all clients are connected, this server will then route the message from user A to user B.
As for the facebook option, what's the point?
It's not what their api is for.
You can use the Achievements to publish user scores and such, gain more engagement and virality, but that's not for the communication between the clients.
I am writing a basic app that interacts with a webservice I'm writing using AppEngine. I was wondering what the repercussions are of using login based authentication and managing users individually on the server side.
I know the business benefits of knowing your users and since I plan to eventually have some user generated content in the service, I realize I will eventually have to add it.
Right now, I'm concerned more about the technical aspects of adding this feature. What are the development and maintenance costs of adding these services right now versus adding them at a later point in time i.e. when the datastore is already populated with some 'anonymous' data and not user histories are kept ?
I know this is a vague question so I'll try to quantize the situation. Let's say we have an app that allows users to search the surrounding area for restaurants. The app only needs to send to the service the type of restaurant, say 'Chinese' ? The app is popular and gets a 100k users. Now we want to add a favorites system. Would we have been better off adding it from the start or is it better to wait to get some user and then add features ?
An underlying concept here is also the value that users attribute to a personalized experience and it would be great to get some insights from experienced App developers.
It seems feasible to build your system from the ground up using an internal unique identifier to segment user data. To start, just use the device's unique identifier to authenticate, then add a login-based scheme later.
I recently rolled my own api-based authentication system using GAE, and one of my biggest regrets has been not biting the bullet and doing it sooner. That said, if the context warrants (ie you want to test out a concept and see how well it resonates), I'd say you are safe going with an extendable approach, like the one I've described.
Tagged with [android] so that someone will actually read this, but applies equally to other application platforms.
We have a number of Android and iPhone applications which have user-feedback functionality incorporated into their user interfaces. These allow the user to leave comments, report bugs, rate the application, request support, etc.
Currently, the applications make a web service call to our backend, which converts them into email and sends them to us.
We would like to replace this with an API call to a remote backend service hosted by someone else, a service that specialises in this sort of thing, and provides us with a web interface for viewing and collating the feedback. The API would need to support arbitrary fields that we can set up as we see fit.
I was hoping to somehow integrate this with the Google Analytics APIs for Android and iPhone, but it's not flexible enough. The likes of FogBugz would seem to do the job, but it's too heavyweight a solution - we don't need anything that fancy.
This question touches on the same issue, but concentrates on self-hosted software. I'm looking for a service provided by someone else.
Free services preferred, for obvious reasons, but commercial options considered also.
You can look into userrules.com. We expose an API to collect feedback which is available with all plans. Also with single plan you can configure your all applications as separate products. Lots of iphone apps are using our API to collect the feedback and then our Admin to manage those.
I've heard good things about GetSatisfaction http://getsatisfaction.com/
UserVoice as well http://uservoice.com/
www.SimpleFeedback.com offers a feedback service that has a web service API for you to submit your feedback. You'll have to map your fields to our defined fields. Along with basic fields like name, email, rating, and comment, we have two custom fields called feedback type and feedback category. You get to define the types and categories. For example, you can define the types to be "Bug Report", "Suggestion", "Question", or "Testimonial". Categories are subtypes. Each Type has its own set of Categories.
We can notify you via email when feedback is submitted. Our SimpleFeedback Center stores all your feedback and provides a nice UI for reporting, sorting, filtering, responding, and other feedback management tools.
We also provide a feedback button and feedback form to use on websites who do not have their own form. We have a plugin for self hosted WordPress blogs, too. An iPhone feedback form is also available for developers who don't want to write their own.
HelpStack has both free and paid solutions. In free solution you will have to communicate via Email. For paid solution, you will have to go with ZenDesk, HappyFox or Desk.com. It supports both iOS and Android. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising. It also has a FAQ section support.
Edit : I just tried the free solution. It simply opens an email app, nothing else. It does have a FAQ section, but no chat support.