Archive for the ‘Rummble Developer Blog’ Category
Friday, August 6th, 2010
As a developer it’s important to know what exactly what happened when the application crashed. On Android Crash Reports were introduced with Android 2.2, but a lot of devices are still on Android 2.1 or below and will probably never get an update.
So what about these devices? A user can only tell you what he was doing where the crash happened, which is important. But a lot of errors are not reproducible, because they happened on a different device or under special circumstances. If the user has installed aLogcat he could send his log file, but a lot of users have not installed this application. Another problem is that some users just see that the application crashes, uninstall it and give it a bad rating.
We’ve solved this problem by using acra – a library, which sends crash reports to a specified Google Doc. Acra works with all versions of Android and sends more detailed device information than the standard Android 2.2 solution. Also you can show a notification, a toast or just send the report automatically when the application crashes. The integration is very easy – just follow the introductions on their Wiki Page. We have integrated this feature in Rummble for Android 1.2 – released later today!
Posted in Functionality, Rummble Announcements, Rummble Developer Blog, Rummble for Android | No Comments »
Monday, July 26th, 2010
One of our little side projects that we developed with our Rummble API is the Rummble Recommend a Place application for Facebook users. Using the public Rummble API we were able to effortlessly develop a simple web app that uses geolocation data to obtain cities closest to the current visitor and also deliver results when people want to recommend places for a particular person to visit.
Given the time and cost of building your own geospatial infrastructure or implementing expensive commercial APIs, we found the public nature of our own API enables us get creative when building projects around all core Rummble services.
Using the OAuth library for Ruby, we were able to use the OAuth Consumer classes to make requests to the search.findCity and rummble.getNearestRummbles methods.
The Rummble API supports OAuth 1.0 authentication, and should work straight away with most standard client libraries. One of the main things to watch out for, as raised by developers in the Rummble API Google Group, is that OAuth public key should be passed as a parameter, instead of in the HTTP header. Also, make sure endpoints for request tokens, access token and authorisation URLs are set correctly.
We understand that issues with OAuth authentication can prevent projects getting off the ground, so if you’re having problems, we’ve probably been there before and will do everything we can to help!
OAuth has a long future ahead. Facebook recently adopted OAuth 2.0 for authentication and authorisation for their recently launched Graph API, which uses SSL instead of the complex signature schemes and token exchanges.
As ever, we appreciate your thoughts and feedback. How would OAuth 2.0 support impact your decision to implement an API? Is there anything missing from the Rummble API? What geo-projects are you dreaming of? We can help make it happen. Feel free to post to the group or contact us directly. FTW.
Posted in Rummble Developer Blog | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Today we are pleased to announce that WiFi hotspot data is available free of charge for non-commercial use via the Rummble API, which has read and write capabilities. Simply register for an API key and drop us an email to request free access or discuss commercial use.
In December 2009, Rummble acquired its first company - Total Hotspots, The Global WiFi Directory, that helps you stay connected on the move, and contains over 250k public hotspots from a global network of service providers, community wireless projects and independent venue owners – one of the largest and most accurate sources of legitimate public WiFi hotspots. Total Hotspots for iPhone is now also available free of charge from the App Store (previously £2.99 / $4.99).
We are planning further WiFi integrations with the Rummble API and will be sharing ideas first with the Rummble API Google Group. We encourage passionate geo-developers to get involved and create incredible apps with our support.
Posted in Functionality, Rummble Announcements, Rummble Developer Blog | No Comments »
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
We’ve recently upgrade our Fire Eagle support to enable full sycronisation with Yahoo Fire Eagles recently released XMPP Location Stream. In layman’s terms, this means that your location is now updated automatically in Rummble whenever you update your location in any other service you have also connected to your Fire Eagle account. Before, you would have to manually poll Fire Eagle to update the location, although Rummble location updates have always syndicated automatically out-bound to Fire Eagle.
Rummble Releases Open Source Java Location-consumer for Fire Eagle
If you’re writing an app to support Fire Eagle, Rummble has released the Java location consumer library for Yahoo’s Fire Eagle’s XMPP location stream as open source. This allow services who have Fire Eagle users, to subscribe (and unsubscribe) their users to Fireeagle’s location stream and receive instant location updates.
When a user updates their location on Fire Eagle the XMPP location stream pushes out their new location to all listening XMPP clients. The library is already being used at Rummble to update our users’ locations if they have a Fire Eagle account.
How do I use the Fire Eagle Java location-consumer library?
To use the library you will need to have a Fire Eagle application and access to an XMPP server for which you have a user that has fireeagle.com added to its roster. You will then be able to subscribe to location updates for users of your Fire Eagle application.
Written by Rummble’s CTO, Clive Cox, the Java Fire Eagle XMPP location stream library is published under the Apache open source license, to share the Java Fire Eagle XMPP love.
Posted in Functionality, News, Rummble Announcements, Rummble Developer Blog | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
The keen-eyed among you will have noticed a few changes on rummble.com over the last week or so – we’ve been working on improving a few key features to make the site more useful (and nice to look at!). Here’s a quick rundown, in case you want to go and play with all the new toys we’ve added.
Find Rummbles anywhere!
We added search. Yes, finally. To many people, this seems like such a no-brainer – but for us it was a really hard decision to make. There are a million search engines out there – dedicated to places, experiences, venues – and we’re not trying to compete with these huge directories at all. One of the nicest things about Rummble is that you very often don’t need to search – you just tell Rummble where you are, and it gives you a seemingly hand-picked list of things you’ll like nearby. There doesn’t need to be a hundred results in the list, because the things that aren’t there are the things you’re not going to be interested in anyway.
Admittedly, this philosophy started on, and works best with, our mobile platforms. It’s different on the web – you’re much more likely to be looking for stuff somewhere other than the spot you’re sitting; if you’re planning a trip or a night out, or you’re hunting for spots to share with your mates in another town. For this sort of thing, ‘Find xxx near yyy‘ is indispensible.
So, we built it, and it’s working really well. The new search has two key parts:
1. What are you looking for?
The tag search includes some clever interpretation behind the scenes – so you can search for ‘restaurant’ without missing out on things tagged with ‘bistro’ or ‘bar and grill’. Tags are grouped together by theme, which matches what most people expect when they start searching.
2. Where are you looking?
The location search is where it gets really clever – it searches a variety of sources, from country and region names, through cities and towns, right down to databases of local businesses. Depending on what you enter, the search results are filtered intelligently – if you enter the name of a country, you’re unlikely to want local business results included in your results.
When your search could match more than one location, you’re given the choice to pick the one you want. If your search only matches one place, we center the map directly on that spot, and start showing you what’s nearby immediately.
Testing this was tricky – the search is so good that whenever I typed ’svshbsa’ to try to trigger the ‘we couldn’t find this place‘ response, I discovered tiny towns in Iceland and Mongolia!
Sexy new masthead and navigation:
We’ve replaced the old masthead with a streamlined new version. Much of the functionality remains the same – we know a lot of Rummble users really like the quick access to all the parts of the site – but the new design keeps visual clutter down, and stops those big yellow buttons screaming at you from the top of the page.
Bigger Rummble Explore view
The ‘Explore’ page now has a big Rummble map and the new ‘find’ box, and that’s it. Great for browsing around to discover new stuff.
What’s next?
As ever, we’ve got a whole lot of stuff in the works – the next big thing is the launch of our new mobile site. Those of you who frequent m.rummble.com are in for a real treat! More on that in a couple of days!
We’re all ears for your reactions to the new changes – either hit the comments form, or drop me an email at ben [dot] hull [at] rummble [dot] com.
Posted in Functionality, Rummble Developer Blog | 2 Comments »
Saturday, October 25th, 2008
Google Gears for Windows Mobile launches today and Rummble is excited to be a launch partner with Google. Gears represents and exciting next step in the evolution of the mobile internet. It will eventually give mobile developers access to all the really useful functionality of mobile handsets which cant currently be utilised from mobile phone web browsers – including camera, file system, address book, etc.
Gears launches on Windows Mobile with Googles superb Location API, which delivers Rummble users automated location detection on any modern Windows Mobile device – even if the handset itself doesn’t have GPS. Using the same magic which sits behind Googles really useful My Location maps service on mobile, the Location API uses CellID and other technology to detect where the user is and communicates that to Rummble.
Until now, there was no sensible way to get automated location updates from within the mobile browser. Gears solves that problem. As Google releases more APIs into the Gears platform, we’ll be adding these to the Rummble mobile website functionality.
Gears will be launched on other major mobile platforms in the future and Rummble will be supporting them, so watch this space!
- Find out more about Google Gears here
- The Rummble for Gears mobile website is here
NB: Rummble for Windows Mobile uses version 1.5 of our Rummble mobile site, which sports a brand new interface and UI, more along the lines of our soon to launch Rummble iphone application; we’ll be hoping to roll out this version to other versions of the mobile website, asap.
Posted in News, Rummble Announcements, Rummble Developer Blog | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
- iphone app UI designer/developer
- N95 series App UI designer
- Web UI designer / usability god
Part Time and Project Work available, potentially Full Time
Passionate about location based services, Web 2.0, 3.0 and mobile services? Want to work with a bunch of people who are equally obssesive about mobile and LBS? Are you capable, at the top of your game? Do you aspire to have your work seen by millions?!
We have one of the most comprehensive and advanced location based social discovery platforms on the planet – but we have listened to our Beta users and we know we’re not punching our weight in one cruicial area: User Interface Design. Perhaps that is because actually, none of us are great designers! Infact, our CEO is currently doing the design work along with the multiple hats of being a CEO. We’ve decided this madness has to stop – Maybe you are the one?
We have Immediate work for the following: (can be same person if you really swing both ways 
We want some who is at the top of their game on each device; the more specialist you are the better.
1. UI designer/developer for iphone optimised app for existing platform (new app)
2. UI visual designer for J2ME app optimised for N95 series of phones (existing app getting new UI)
3. Web application graphic designer and usability god
Agencies need not apply at this stage; we’d prefer to work with a freelancer or individual.
Please provide some examples of your work, location, availability and what mobile stuff you’re passionate about!
Please contact our CEO, Andrew Scott http://www.rummble.com/andrew
Posted in Jobs, Rummble Developer Blog | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
We have added a basic integration of Fire Eagle to Rummble. If you have a Fire Eagle account (its in beta at present) you can allow Rummble to set your Fire Eagle location when you set your location on the Rummble web service. You can also update your location manually from Fire Eagle.
When we get time we will provide a more seamless bi-directional integration with Fire Eagle over the coming months, ready for Fire Eagle’s public release.
Posted in Rummble Developer Blog | 2 Comments »
