I'm researching geo-fencing options for a new app. I need to create geo fences programatically. The options that allows me to do this out there are not in plenty ...
I found ArcGIS geo-trigger service, which seems to do all I need. ArcGIS is well known for GIS services. But I found it strange the lack of buzz around this specific tool.
Is there anyone out there using this service that can help in providing some inside view of it?
Or even alternatives to it ...
Thanks,
Murilo
I do not have any experience with the ArcGIS service, but you might want to check out Plot Projects. You can send a notification when a user enters, exits or dwells in a geofence or perform any other action using geotriggers. You can create an account for free and test it using demo apps for iOS and Android. Additionally there are wrappers for PhoneGap/Cordova and Appcelerator if you want to write your app in JavaScript.
Disclaimer: I work for Plot Projects as a developer.
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I'm trying to integrated in our iOS app. Due to the bad relationship between Google & our government, Google Map is not a good idea.
We have bought a local map service company's javascript & Web Services based SDK, now we want to use it on iOS. But it seems that MapKit does not support customer tiles.
So here are my current ideas:
Use UIWebView. But I tried that map in Safari, I can't drag to move the map nor use two fingers to zoom. I think I need to call some javascripts while touch events happens.
Build a costumer UIScrollView, download map images and display them using iOS sdk. But that map service does not have API to download images, I tried to read their 200KB+ undocumented javascript to find out the relationship between location & image files, but I got no results for now.
Both the two ways could face certain legal risks. I'm not sure what the purchase contract is like.
I need suggestions about the two ways or some new ideas. Thanks guys.
There are a couple of non-Google map implementations available on github that you might be able to use (linked via CocoaControls):
NAMapKit
MRMapView
i'd like to know any resources or any starting point to start developing addons/plugins for Google earth. i am not talking about application development using Google earth API. instead i want to create addons/plugins for GE such as flight simulator tour guides etc..
Thank you very much !!
The COM API has been deprecated, and so the ways you can control the user experience in Google Earth are by either creating KML content (including robust Tours), or by using the plugin.
Can you be more specific with an example of what you are trying to accomplish that cannot be done using the plugin?
If you are talking about extending the full Google Earth Application then you are out of luck.
You can use the depreciated COM API to make your own application that uses the full Google Earth - but this is not very advisable.
I realise that you said you are ot talking about application development using Google earth API - but that is pretty much the way to get what you desire - i.e. A Google Earth implementation that supports multi-touch.
Really I don't see any other way, sorry.
We have a web application and we've built phone applications (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) to be companions to the site. The usual workflow is that an existing user of the site gets a phone app and then plugs their existing credentials into the phone app and they are off and running, but more often now we are seeing folks who are downloading the app and then (and this should not surprise anyone) don't read the help screen that explains they need to go and get credentials at the web site and therefore cannot connect to the application which does require registration to manage their content. This is a giant usability fail condition.
So we know that we need to put user registration workflows on the phone app.
Other than the obvious solution of duplicating our registration page on the mobile, does anyone know of a better identity solution for the phone? For example, on the desktop we also use Facebook Connect as an identity server and the users love it. I'm looking for something that simple that we can implement across the major smartphone platforms.
Clarifying note:
I should add here that this registration mechanism is likely to; and it would be desirable if it did, go hand in hand with a general identity/authorization mechanism such as the Facebook mechanism mentioned below.
One other place I'm poking around is to see whether there's an openId solution that does not require a browser to pop up.
Restful service might be the e asiest way for you to achieve this, you can use it on any device that can make http requests, so you can make your own login screens and talk to the s ervice that way...
Facebook has a Connect API for the iPhone. Integrating it into your iPhone app is very smooth.
http://developers.facebook.com/connect_iphone.php
On the BlackBerry we were able to build a fairly robust REST pipeline between the client apps in the field and our servers. We primary use the framework for updates, but the device API is generic enough to be able to build almost anything you need via standard HTTP/HTTPS GET/POST calls.
On the RIM platform, look into the HttpConnection API as a starting point. There is also an example on the BlackBerry Developer's site which will help. Finally, I believe there are several examples inside the sample package that comes with every BlackBerry JDE (IDE + API download).
I've been doing mobile app development for a long time (2001?), but the systems we worked with back then were dedicated mobile development environments (Symbian, J2ME, BREW). iPhone SDK is a curious hybrid of Mac OS X and Apple's take on mobile (Cocoa Touch).
But it is missing some stuff that other mobile systems have, IMO. Specifically:
Application background processing
SMS/MMS application routing (send an SMS to my application in the background)
API for accessing phone functions/call history/call interception
I realize that Apple has perfectly valid reasons for releasing the SDK the way they did. I am curious what people on SO think the SDK is missing and how would they go about fixing/adding it, were they an Engineering Product Manager at Apple.
The biggest shortcoming in my opinion is support for separating licensing from distribution.
What I mean by this is that it should be possible to download a trial version of an application and later purchase a license for that application (from an API call inside the application or from the app store). This would make it much easier to try-before-you-buy and get rid of the current duplicates of many applications with 'lite' versions.
I think lack of push notifications for apps is the big thing we're missing right now. With push, you can register your application to perform a task (like getting the most recent data from a web service) even when it's not running, at a time and frequency the OS decides is best. In an ideal world, along with the existing concept of iPhone apps loading quickly and resuming where you last left off, this solves the problem of not running in the background. I know some tasks will be more difficult or maybe impossible with this strategy, but it's still a pretty good compromise between third party applications and the iPhone's limited hardware.
Originally push was scheduled for last September, but it was removed from the beta SDK and not spoken of since then.
API's I'm personally looking for:
Apple80211 as a public API (private, current API is fine if documented)
Access to Volume buttons (semi-accessible via Celestial, private, needs new API)
Access to Calendar (private, API status unknown)
Access to Bluetooth + SPP profile (status unknown)
Access to Camera (directly, API status unknown)
Access to JavaScript runtime (directly, not through UIWebView, API status unknown)
WebKit access that's lower-level than UIWebView (private, current API is fine)
Access to Music Library (private, current API is fine)
Garbage Collection.
CoreData is missing.
You've mentioned some of the big ones - copy & paste (or in fact any way for apps to collaborate) is another huge omission.
It also seems to lack a desktop synch framework (at least if it exists I can't find it).
Language independence and especially lack of scripting is another pet peeve - objective-c is all very well but more languages to choose from would be good.
Inability to dynamically extend apps, via scripts or otherwise, is another big omission. This is partly an SDK/OS issue, partly licensing.
My list ordered by priority:
Mapping abstraction (the MapKit looks awesome), but that would require a new Google Maps TOS
Music library
Camera (photo + video) Access to more
UIViews, Apple designed some pretty nice custom ones for their apps
Better UIWebKit abstraction
The features I see missing that it should have is
Access to SMS
Direct Access to Google Maps App. You should be able have access to this so you could extend your application to use the built in features provided by Google Maps.
Access to the Bluetooth functionality of the phone.
Access to the Calendar. Why not allow access to simply post a calendar event for the user.
Access to Active Sync. It would great if we could directly access this and communicate back to the Exchange Server.
Core Image. They provide Core Animation but Core Image is missing. I hope that this is added to the API soon.
These are some of the features that my clients have access for in the past and are supprised when they are not available.
We definitely miss a Calendar API and SMS access. So many applications could leverage such APIs. The iPhone allows users to have everything in their pocket, but it's almost useless as long as developers cannot leverage this integration in their apps.
A language with proper namespaces.
A limitation that bugs me is lack of access to system features that require root or setuid. For example: opening privileged IP ports.
I'm not sure there is a good solution to this, as long as Apple's policy is to keep the device locked-down.
Allow program to set some kind of local timed event for your application to bring up an alert and launch your app if the user agrees (like any calendar app). You could do that with push notifications but there are many cases I'd hate to have to rely on a whole server infrastructure and network connectivity just to basically do some timed thing.
Some idea of what direction the user is facing. I cannot believe the GPS chip the newer iPhones use are not capable of reporting direction.
I would personally love to see
Access to the CoreTelephony Framework (Currently private). Which allows access to all the phone functions (Especially sending MMS / SMS).
Some sort of ability to run stuff in the background. While push notifications is ok for most things, but it is a bit hard to leverage CoreLocation (i.e. have the app show a notification at a certain location). Of course this would probably need an on/off button or app specific like push is.
animation view which will be reduce developer to make a cool app , of course the core business local still need consider more , but the view layer could more easy to use ....
So I'm looking at writing an iPhone application that shows things on a map. What frameworks/methodologies are out there for doing this?
Searching around on Google, I could only find this one:
http://code.google.com/p/iphone-google-maps-component/
Which according to the issues list is slow, and stops working after a while. Does anyone know of something better, or have any experience with the library above?
I'm pretty sure your only options for now are:
Call openURL: to switch to the Maps app
Use the Google Maps component you linked to
Roll your own thing
Wait for Apple to expose a "MapKit" framework
WARNING: Embedding Google Maps inside an application may violate the Google Maps terms of service.
I have written a full mapping UIView on the iPhone (the application is on the AppStore) and it is not easy (this would be option #3 "Roll your own thing"). Getting good performance is really difficult. I would like to OpenSource my map component but right now the F-NDA is preventing that.
I have been chasing this for a while now, and here's the best solution I've found out there:
http://code.google.com/p/touchcode/
There is a component in there called TouchMap and it comes with a demo that shows it off. It's tiles are loaded directly from Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Edit: #schwa, I just a look at your profile to find your email address, and then realised that you actually released this software. Nice work
I've just found route-me which looks like a large(30+) active community of ppl developing an open source mapping app for the iPhone. It can take tiles from OpenStreetMap, Virtual Earth(Bing) or Cloudmade.
just use mapkit framework.really good
alternatively: [[uiapplication sharedapplication]openurl:#"www.maps.google.com];
that will open the google map,but one problem with this is that it will navigate you to safari and your application will be exited and if you want to move back to your application from this web page,then it won't be possible .you again need to run the app.