We thought out a concept for a mobile app that allows:
To create bar/restaurant/event profiles (we want to define them ourselves);
Access these profiles via Nearby Places (possible to link?);
Check In, via the profile
See how many people are checked in into the place, male/female according to the user profile.
Is this achievable via the Foursquare API?
If not, can it be done in another way?
I also don't understand very well why I read everywhere that finding or checking in into places via GeoLocation is patented, but at the same time it seems freely available and everyone seems to use it (?).
I would be eternally grateful!
This is possible with the foursquare API, but you will only have access to the information of users who check in with your app, and your custom profiles will not appear in Foursquare's venue search results.
With such an app, you will need to take care to maintain user's expectations of privacy. Your app must have a privacy policy that explicitly explains how their information will be used, and what information about them will be made public. See the Foursquare app policies for more information.
Related
I've got an app which shows user's contacts inside device and allows him to make a call.
I want to show my user the last calls he has made. I was using READ_CALL_LOG permission (and was reading call log) until Google restricted access to it, then I switched to ContactsProvider to retrieve contacts and sort them by LAST_TIME_CONTACTED but now Google says this column is deprecated and effectively it will have 0 value for new versions of Android OS (see https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/providers/contacts-provider#ObsoleteData)
My app is not a default dialer (only default dialers apps are allowed to access call log) so I was wondering how I can achieve what I want in Google Policy compliant way.
I tought about storing the last contacts selected inside my own database (I know it won't be a full call log, as I will only have access to calls made from my app but that's fine for me), but don't know whether it's compliant with G Policy. I wrote an email to Google, however the person who replied said he can't help me with my question and I have to create new version of my app and ask them for review.
Does anyone know if my idea about saving contacts in my own database is compliant with G policy (please provide links from official sites). From my link (which I've provided above) I can only see that Google says
If your apps are accessing or updating these fields or APIs, use
alternative methods. For example, you can fulfill certain use cases by
using private content providers or other data stored within your app
or backend systems.
However it doesn't convince me to whether my idea is compliant
Thanks for help!
I believe you may store and use any user actions that had happened within your app.
The purpose of the policy (as stated here: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9047303?hl=en) is to prevent apps from getting access to the call-log in order to make use of it for purposes other then what users' expect, that's why the emphasis on critical core functionality of the app.
In my experience, different Google reviewers tend to review the same app very differently, and while one may reject a certain use-case based on this policy, another might approve it.
I would suggest phrasing the screen you want to create in a way that will help the reviewer understand that this data was not acquired from the call-log but some app specific actions, so for example instead of title "Call Log" which might confuse some reviewers with the risk of rejecting this update, you should title it "Recent app actions" or something like that.
I have been going through the Google Places API and to make optimum use of the API in my app, I need clarity on their Terms of Service regarding Google places API.
My application shows nearby restaurants to a user.
In my database, I have manually collected all the restaurant information such as name, photos, reviews, opening time etc. Please note that this collection has been done manually and not with the Google API.
Now, since Google allows to cache id of places, I have manually mapped their id to my restaurants.So, my database has five fields. id, name, photos, reviews and opening time. Again to reiterate, only the id's are from google, all other data has been manually collected by me.
The reason for doing this is that I want to serve a mix of both info for nearby restaurants. I would always hit Google places API at run time, and along with the information from their api, I would also serve my custom data.
I want to know if this is ok. Google's terms of usage are not very clear, so it would be great if someone can clarify this.
Thanks.
This is A-OK! Supporting your use case is actually why we updated the rules recently to make place IDs exempt from the caching restriction. Just be sure that when you do call Places API to display the place information, you're including the appropriate logo and attribution requirements.
I develop mobile cross-platform games (for iOS,Android and WP).
I want to know the email or the phone number of the people who bought my app from the iOS,Android or WP store, for using these informations for authentication purpose.
Waiting for your valuable comments and sugessions
Thanks.
You don't have that information unless people authorize you or give it to you.
Under no circumstances should you be able to get the information of the people who are buying your apps unless they opt into it and it’s made crystal clear to them that you are getting this information.
This was in the news last year because you shouldn't have that data.
This counts for iOS and Android.
options
Ask users for their personal information in the app and send it to
your servers.
Make your app need registration and login ( This is very strict on iOS, make sure you have some kind of offerable service which actually need registration)
You can link their personal information with device numbers, but these are spoofable on rooted and jailbroken devices
To get the device information on android:
You want to call android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getDeviceId().
This will return whatever string uniquely identifies the device (IMEI on GSM, MEID for CDMA).
You'll need the
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />
permission to do this.
On iOS look at this answer: How to get IMEI on iPhone?
I can only speak for iOS:
You can't get email address nor phone number using iOS APIs. If you want this, you need to ask the user yourself.
Then you'd need a way to verify them:
Email by sending a link they need to click.
Phone number by sending the user an SMS (with link they need to click, or code they need to type in UI), or by calling them and asking them to dial/DTMF a code they see in the app, or on the app enter a code they hear.
If you want to keep users apart, without needing any info from them:
Have a non-consumable in-app payment item (which you could call 'account' for example). Since these items can only be bought once per user, and because Apple's in-app purchase receipt contains a unique ID, you can use this as a user identifier. (If this does not make sense, you need to read Apple's documentation about in-app purchases.)
If you are asking the user for mail/no then just store temperorly and use webservice to retrive in background
If you want the details without knowing to user Use analytics and catch maild id's of user (flurry , google analytics)
I dont think this is possible currently. The playstore console displays information like number of download, carriers, devices, etc. You may want to consider building in those features and requesting the info from the user via the valid permissions. Aside there is an unofficial playstore API that lets you pull data viz. app info, comments, etc. You can find it here
I'm planning on creating android location aware app, which will access location of people with their permission. It's up to the users whether they want to share their location with others or not. So we can know where our friends are, may be we can guess what they are doing, according to their current location.
Security is major concern here, my primary aim is to create family-location network.
Guidance needed for:
From where can I start
Which API I need to use
Can a Google account be used for Login for my app
I have a few questions regarding android market(Google play). How can I list my published application by accessing from my google account? What I have done so far is using my application package name as a query string to search my application and display all information which I used android market api to do it. Is there another better way to display all my published or installed applications by accessing from my google accounts?
My second question is about detecting number of downloading and installations of my published application. I have found only google analytics so far(for free) which I need to embedded some codes to monitoring my application. Is it possible for me to access those information from android market publish page . I have found that publish page contains information that I need.
Edited: For second question, I would like to obtain statistical information without adding any new code to my application. Is it possible to provide only google account to grant the permission to get those information?
My application is published. If I am using google analytics to monitoring my application do I need to start my counting from zero?
Sorry for my English and my little knowledge about this.
Thanks in advance..
Edited: .. I have found an application, called "analytics" that is what exactly I want to do. But I still cannot figure it out how it works..
The only place you will find this kind of information is on your Developer page. That said, if I were wanting to do what you are, I would put up an app on App Engine that either parsed my Dev page on request, or on a schedule. I mention App Engine as personal preference here, you could obviously use anywhere you can host scripts on.
You can then do what you like with the data you have collected, and your app can request this from your site. Assuming you have no qualms with publicising these numbers, you wouldn't need to scare users by authenticating, and would just need a plain html request.
Edit:
In your language of choice, you would need to request your developer page (the one that lists apps and their install count) and would also need to authenticate as yourself to get it. It's for this reason I would use your own hosting if you can. I can't be more specific than this, as I don't know what language you're most likely to be using. It should be trivial to find out how to do an html request and step through the page in whatever language it is though. App Engine pages are written in Java or Python and deployed to the server, while other obvious options are PHP or Perl. On my own server I would most likely use Perl as it's ideal for ripping up html with regexps.