Database Users

Specifications for a "Blackberry Facebook App" equivalent

After jealously observing the Facebook app on my wife's Blackberry Pearl, I am shocked that neither ShoZu, Snap2Face/Skybook nor FriendMobilizer have come close to matching the simple elegance of Facebook for Blackberry. Each of the aforementioned Windows Mobile apps, I believe, will fail to become very popular among users because they are trying to do fundamentally different things than the official Blackberry and iPhone apps.
So I'm going to attempt to specify the basic features that would make for the best "Facebook for Windows Mobile" application. The developer who carries these out will, I predict, quickly dominate the rest.
What we already have
A couple of mobile-friendly versions of the FB user interface. Whether you use http://m.facebook.com in PIE, or http://iphone.facebook.com in Opera Mobile/IrisBrowser, or indeed desktop-level Facebook in Skyfire/Opera Mini/etc., we already have great ways to passively view most of Facebook. FB apps for WM appear to have devoted most efforts to remaking their own, sometimes uglier interfaces for viewing the same information. While this introduces the possibility of offline synchronization, this is nowhere near a key functional benefit offered on Blackberry and iPhone. The trend is toward more users having data plans and ubiquitous data connections.
A way to access Facebook Chat. 3rd-party multiprotocol chat applications offer this for Windows Mobile already.
Several ways to update your status. You can do this through Facebook Mobile, SMS, etc.
A crappy way to upload mobile photos. You can send an MMS to [email protected] - not ideal and lacks the ability to place photos in specific albums, tag, etc. But it is a start.
A crappy way to receive notifications. The FB notifications feed is actually available via RSS, and several free RSS clients exist for Windows Mobile.
A really crappy way to new FB message alerts and everything else. Suppose you registered a new Gmail account devoted solely to receiving Facebook notification emails. You could register that address with your Facebook settings, set it as the address to receive email notifications and then turn on notifications for everything that happens on Facebook. After setting up this email account on your Windows Mobile device, you could receive regular alerts from Facebook on your mobile device. (Heck, with System SEVEN beta or some other service that utilizes the IMAP IDLE feature, you could essentially have "push" FB alerts).
What we don't have (but Blackberry does)
Based on the features listed at http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/features/social/facebook.jsp , you can see that the man feature that WM users don't have is "push"-style homescreen notifications. On the Blackberry homescreen, the number of new Facebook notifications and messages sits beside a little FB icon. It is updated immediately as new messages and notifications are received.
Thus I would propose the following specifications for a WM Facebook app (or suite of mini-apps). The Facebook Developers API should be used, not some unreliable html-parsing library.
1. New/unread FB messages and notifications on a "push" or rapid-refresh basis. This either means (a) a Today screen plugin that lists the unread message counts and points Pocket IE to the appropriate http://m.facebook.com link when tapped, (b) WM popup notifications of the same, or (c) a MAPI interface library that allows the FB Inbox and/or FB Notifications feed to be added as regular mail accounts in Pocket Outlook - letting WM take care of popups if the user so desires.
2. A photo upload and tagging tool. The user must be able to select a photo (or take one) and then choose to either add it to any existing album or create a new one, followed by the option to tag that photo.
3. Dedicated Facebook chat. If it is easy, of course.
Everything else on Facebook - contacts search, Phonebook, etc - is just as easy to access on the existing Facebook Mobile site. My instinct is that developers inevitably waste our memory with bloated software when they make "native" interfaces that just rehash the content at http://m.facebook.com/
Or am I missing something? Maybe others have thoughts. I'm no developer and I don't mean to sound demanding - I'm just trying to give developers some ideas here.

would be fine if someone would fix the iphone.facebook.com java problems

libpurple already incorporates facebook im but i dont think there is a client for windows mobile that uses it. As for uploading, you can upload pictures but not videos directly from a touch series phone (videos are uploaded to youtube). If the protection can be stripped from an ipa and the can be decrypted then I dont understand why we cant port the facebook.app. I have an iPhone 3G and an iPod Touch, both jailbroken. I'll SSH into them and grab the files for the facebook app but the rest needs to be done by someone else. Just give me sometime to find them.

1. New/unread FB messages and notifications on a "push" or rapid-refresh basis. This either means (a) a Today screen plugin that lists the unread message counts and points Pocket IE to the appropriate http://m.facebook.com link when tapped, (b) WM popup notifications of the same, or (c) a MAPI interface library that allows the FB Inbox and/or FB Notifications feed to be added as regular mail accounts in Pocket Outlook - letting WM take care of popups if the user so desires.
2. A photo upload and tagging tool. The user must be able to select a photo (or take one) and then choose to either add it to any existing album or create a new one, followed by the option to tag that photo.
3. Dedicated Facebook chat. If it is easy, of course.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wFacebook will have ALL of these things that you mentioned. A little patience is all that is needed. I started developing this only 2 weeks ago Thanks for the breakdown though, it gives me something to work towards. I hope to have facebook chat up and running in the next release. Push style notifications will come as soon as I can figure out an "always signed on" connection to facebook. Photos and tagging are very easy to do, I just haven't gotten around to implementing it.
What you have to realize is that the blackberry apps and iPhone apps are both designed by facebook. They access facebook's data directly. Facebook does not allow this in its API so we have to find workarounds. Blackberry has nothing to do with it's facebook application (as far as I know). Facebook developed and maintains it.
Also, thanks for the tip on the rss feed. I did not know this and this may help with notifications!

Give computerjunkie some time....
And all the requested features will be hopefully implemented.
Btw since you have a BB and have positive feelings regarding it's user experience and user interface it would be great if you could dedicate some time to write down some detailed specs !
Ciao
Marco

The BB app doesn't really have a "push" notification system. All apps that use notifications, like Facebook and MySpace, are simple emails. When the same email account is registered under the BB profile, and Facebook profile, it recognizes the FB notification email as the app specific notification, and gives the notification instead of the email.
But, on the app, I really don't like it much, so I don't suggest it as your "template". All it really does is give you the notifications, allow you to update your status and view your friends list. You can't view profiles or photos through the app, it opens the browser, and you have to login! Further more, the news feed only shows the notifications, like birthdays and comments.
Try something like the BB MySpace app, I love that one! You can flow through pictures and view everything in the app.

wFacebook will be like the BB myspace app. You won't have to log in to the website to see info. It will be fetched from the application itself. Also, it will have push style notifications (maybe not ALL notifications but most: Wall, Inbox, photo comment, etc.). I am looking into an always on (or as close to always on) so when the notification occurs, wFacebook automatically fetches the info THEN notifies the user so all the user has to do is start up wFacebook and check the item. Also with the semi-always on connection, wFacebook users won't have to keep logging in to facebook which right now is taking about 1.5 minutes with wFacebook because of data speeds on mobile machines.

Problem with the xda app is it requires .NET 3.5
iphone.facebok.com in Skyfire is the best solution for me.

though I think a windows mobile facebook app is much needed I have to agree the very Bloated net cf is def not the way to go. I do appreciate all you are doing as this app has potential to be very useful . thanks again for all your hard work. pleasyo code in "C"

[REQ] Sychronisation Options

I know there are a load of threads out there regarding syncing OTA but I thought I'd canvass some opinions from people to see if my current method can be imporved upon.
A little background:
I use a desktop PC running Windows 7 (build 7100) primarily but also have laptop for taking to Law School with me (also running Windows 7 build 7100).
I (obviously) also use an unbranded Touch HD.
I'm a devoted user of Outlook and it manages all my contacts, calendar appointments and tasks and neatly ties into my Onenote workbooks which I use for Law School.
The Problem
It's surprisingly difficult to keep all of the above in sync! Originally both machines were running Vista and I used my (very old) Hermes to keep the two sets of PIM in sync. This however produced quite a few confilcts over time and things like birthdays would appear repeated over and over again in my calendar.
I'm now using Google Sync to keep my calendar in sync which works well but doesn't sync the categories that entries are set with nor does it allow for attachments to sync with appointments.
For tasks and contacts synchronising I'm still plugging my phone in between the two computers but wondered if there was a more elegant solution.
I'd love to set up an exchange account but most of them are geared for corporate use only and (for example) the Microsoft Hosted Exchange requires a minimum of 5 users before you can sign up.
I'm managing with push email provided by Seven on my phone but would love to be able to have tasks and contacts pushed as well.
So, wise crowd of XDA Devs, would do people suggest? Any other options open to me? I've looked into Mail2Web but can't seem to get it to work properly, likewise Zimbra desktop but I really want to keep using Outlook (there's 5 years worth of information stashed away in my .pst file!).
Suggestions? Please?

As an attorney I know the importance of what your needing to do. Are you using gysyncit? http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/. I believe it gives you ota wireless sync for your calendar...not sure about tasks though.

Thanks for the links but it seems as though gSyncit does exactly what the offical Google version does but charges you $9.99 for the privilege?
Google licensed Activsync from Microsoft towards the start of the year rendering (IMO) all the 3rd party options a little redundant for syncing Google Calendar and Outlook.
For anyone reading this, you can find out more details over at the offical Google page.

Have you considered mail2web?
The provide an exchange server for a small monthly fee and offer outlook web access.
http://www.mail2web.com/

Better calendar app?

Is there a better calendar app than the stock one? And I don't mean just a widget like Pure Calendar, I mean an end-to-end solution like Hancent and Chompsms are to the messaging client.
In particular, on my old Palm and Nokia devices, I had calendar clients that allowed me to do something that I wanted to yesterday - make an event that reoccurs on the same day every other week.
The applications I had actually allowed further customisation where you could set a reoccuring event to occur with a user defined number of day/weeks/years between the even reoccuring again.
Are there any apps that give this level of control?

Cleargrey said:
Is there a better calendar app than the stock one? And I don't mean just a widget like Pure Calendar, I mean an end-to-end solution like Hancent and Chompsms are to the messaging client.
In particular, on my old Palm and Nokia devices, I had calendar clients that allowed me to do something that I wanted to yesterday - make an event that reoccurs on the same day every other week.
The applications I had actually allowed further customisation where you could set a reoccuring event to occur with a user defined number of day/weeks/years between the even reoccuring again.
Are there any apps that give this level of control?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's what I do............ google calender is extremely customisable. When you are creating the event, look for the Repeats link; change that to Weekly, then - in the new info which appears, 2. I do this on the website calender, not in the phone.

Exchange/Outlook issues (email, tasks and calendar)

Ok, I've managed to get my 4 day old HD2 up and running pretty much how I'd like it to be (with a lot of thanks to the Cookie Monster for CHT), which means the Sense UI and everything "front of house" is looking good. However, behind the scenes, things like Exchange (IMO) are nowhere near as well integrated as could be. Here are my issues:
- Inbox is the only folder that shows any emails whatsoever - if I go into any subfolder and do a Menu > Send/Receive > I still don't get any mails appear - WTF?
- Even my Sent Items remains empty!
- Task and calendar reminder appears on-screen = great, but I can only snooze for something like 5 minutes - how can I change this?
- When a task reminder appears on the screen and I click it, all I get is a blank task, i.e. absolutely no info whatsoever. Which means I have to unlock the phone and go into tasks (currently something like 200+) and find the task that appeared, then go in a check out the notes, etc. How rubbish is this? Even on my Tytn II I could check reminders instantly.
- If someone calls/texts/emails and I want to add them to my contacts, they seem to go automatically into Exchange - this isn't good because if they're a friend then I want to keep their details separate - how is this possible?
- Folders appear to show emails from only the last 14 days or so - surely I can change this to 30 days or whatever? No ... ?
- Having come from Android, I'm used to having all my personal contacts in Googlemail - if I export this as a CSV and import into Outlook, will these contacts get lumped in with my Exchange contacts or will they remain "local" to Outlook? I'm hoping the latter because I DEFINITELY want to keep my personal contacts separate.
Bear with me - this is not a rant. I've dabbled with WinMo and Android in the last 2.5 years and the HD2 has the slickest front-end of any phone I've seen (now that I've got it running properly (excluding the faulty speaker which doesn't play any sound/ringing whatsoever - so it's going back for a return)). However, the backend of things like Exchange/Outlook integration seems particularly poor - especially for a Windows device. And this is holding me back from committing to the phone. IAW, I could spend all day playing with the Sense UI (CHT) but ultimately I need the device to serve me as a business tool, and it's just not happening.
Does anyone else have similar issues? How have you got round them?
TIA
SC
EDIT: Another issue with tasks = the options to sort them make it pretty impossible to manage them. I have about 50-75 reminders most of the time and in Outlook I won't use Start Date/Due Date for many of them beecause I'm be updating them all the time - which means I rely on reminders, and therefore sort them by reminder time. But the HD2 doesn't allow this, which means managing tasks - even just having a flip through to see what needs to be done over the next day or so - is unfeasible unless you spend ages updating your Start Dates or Due Dates. Even my Tytn II allowed me to manage them properly.

- Inbox is the only folder that shows any emails whatsoever - if I go into any subfolder and do a Menu > Send/Receive > I still don't get any mails appear - WTF? – Menu – Tools – Managed Folders – Click the ones you want to sync...
- Even my Sent Items remains empty! Tick it!
- Task and calendar reminder appears on-screen = great, but I can only snooze for something like 5 minutes - how can I change this? I don’t use exchange so I’m stuck on this one.
- When a task reminder appears on the screen and I click it, all I get is a blank task, i.e. absolutely no info whatsoever. Which means I have to unlock the phone and go into tasks (currently something like 200+) and find the task that appeared, then go in a check out the notes, etc. How rubbish is this? Even on my Tytn II I could check reminders instantly. Have you tried S2U2 – you can access the task from the lock screen and go directly to them – may not be the perfect solution.
- If someone calls/texts/emails and I want to add them to my contacts, they seem to go automatically into Exchange - this isn't good because if they're a friend then I want to keep their details separate - how is this possible?
- Folders appear to show emails from only the last 14 days or so - surely I can change this to 30 days or whatever? No ... ? The only way I can think of - at the moment – is through activesync – there is an option in the mail setting to the time for the sync’d mails.
- Having come from Android, I'm used to having all my personal contacts in Googlemail - if I export this as a CSV and import into Outlook, will these contacts get lumped in with my Exchange contacts or will they remain "local" to Outlook? I'm hoping the latter because I DEFINITELY want to keep my personal contacts separate. – From my dealings there is only one contact file – and you can only sync to the main contact file in outlook. I removed all of my business contact into a new folder in outlook – now they aren’t on the phone. If you want both I could only suggest using the categories. But even then you will get a very long list of all contacts. Not sure how else you could deal with this using the standard software.
Limited Help Sorry! But I hope some

Thanks for the tips Neville.
I didn't even see the Tools option for managing folders - everything is now sync'ing very nicely
Had a look at S2U2 but like you say, this isn't an ideal fix. I'm really looking for a better task manager - and at least one that lets me launch task info when the reminder alarm goes off. Is that too much to ask Mr WinMo/HTC?
Can't get Activesync to do anything other than sync 14 days or so. Ar5e, but not the end of the world.
I don't mind work and personal blended together in a single contact list - what I need to be sure of is that my personal contacts are not being dumped into my (Exchange?) works contacts. Like I say, Android managed this perfectly with Exchange and Googlemail, but WM doesn't seem quite so accommodating.
Cheers
SC

Neville.Holland said:
- Task and calendar reminder appears on-screen = great, but I can only snooze for something like 5 minutes - how can I change this? I don’t use exchange so I’m stuck on this one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you go into the options for the calendar there is an option for the default snooze time. Also you can set the reminder time on an individual basis when the entry is created.
Neville.Holland said:
- If someone calls/texts/emails and I want to add them to my contacts, they seem to go automatically into Exchange - this isn't good because if they're a friend then I want to keep their details separate - how is this possible?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not. simple as that. In the first thread you started before you even got the phone i did tell you this. I really don't like it when people don't pay attention!
Neville.Holland said:
- Folders appear to show emails from only the last 14 days or so - surely I can change this to 30 days or whatever? No ... ? The only way I can think of - at the moment – is through activesync – there is an option in the mail setting to the time for the sync’d mails.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on your version of exchange. If it's 2003 it's hard coded to 7 days and can not be changed. IIRC, in exchange 2007 and exchange 2010 this can be changed. Ask you IT department to have a look at it.
Neville.Holland said:
- Having come from Android, I'm used to having all my personal contacts in Googlemail - if I export this as a CSV and import into Outlook, will these contacts get lumped in with my Exchange contacts or will they remain "local" to Outlook? I'm hoping the latter because I DEFINITELY want to keep my personal contacts separate. – From my dealings there is only one contact file – and you can only sync to the main contact file in outlook. I removed all of my business contact into a new folder in outlook – now they aren’t on the phone. If you want both I could only suggest using the categories. But even then you will get a very long list of all contacts. Not sure how else you could deal with this using the standard software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on how outlook is configured on the PC. If you have a profile for exchange and a profile for everything else or simply multiple mailboxes in the same profile you can create the divison there but you can only sync one mailbox over the air and this is always the defualt exchange mailbox.
EDIT: Another issue with tasks = the options to sort them make it pretty impossible to manage them. I have about 50-75 reminders most of the time and in Outlook I won't use Start Date/Due Date for many of them beecause I'm be updating them all the time - which means I rely on reminders, and therefore sort them by reminder time. But the HD2 doesn't allow this, which means managing tasks - even just having a flip through to see what needs to be done over the next day or so - is unfeasible unless you spend ages updating your Start Dates or Due Dates. Even my Tytn II allowed me to manage them properly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just set the start date for the day the job was created and really long due dates then set up a reminder for every 6 hours or something.
You do have a really large number of on going jobs and you really should be managing them better when they are created. I'm not defending WM6.5 here but it's not entirely a software issue, imo.

Manifest : Improvements asked for the calendar

Hello
We are developers of the windows phone platform.
We have chosen this platform because in our opinion it is superior to other established phone platforms and we like creating apps that users enjoy and that help to emerge the windows phone platform.
We also think that nowadays there are some features that a user simply expects a Smartphone to “have”. One of these features is a great calendar.
The current windows phone 8 programming API lacks of some important features that hinder developers from creating a fully features calendar application.
- There is no programming interface to edit or delete existing appointments => Vote Here
- Access to calendar categories (private, office, birthdays, …) is not provided => Vote Here
- Access to sub-calendar of an account to recover name and color setting is not provided => Vote Here
- Information for private appointments is not returned => Vote Here
- No way to access “Task” in windows live and exchange => Vote Here
The built in calendar has all of this options but they are not accessible for developers.
In order to let developers improve your calendar experience, let Microsoft hear you voice. You can use the link above to vote for those missing features.
Hannes and Olivier
PS : Other persons are also asking for this improvements : message

Hello,
You can not access the built in calendar but you can make your own framework to provide the same functionalists. You can also use Live connect to sync with the hotmail calendar(which is the core of the built-in calendar anyway).
The only thing that the built in has and the custom do not is the notification and live tile update. The built-in calendar acts like a real time application, whereas any custom requires a background process to update, or interaction from the user.

mcosmin222 said:
Hello,
You can not access the built in calendar but you can make your own framework to provide the same functionalists. You can also use Live connect to sync with the hotmail calendar(which is the core of the built-in calendar anyway).
The only thing that the built in has and the custom do not is the notification and live tile update. The built-in calendar acts like a real time application, whereas any custom requires a background process to update, or interaction from the user.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi,
that true - a developer can use the windows live sdk to CRUD calendar entries in the windows live calendar.
The major drawback: Appointments created/modified/deleted do not show up in the WP calendar - they show up the next time, the windows live calendar has been synced back to the phone calendar.
Next problem: A user have to give it's permissions to access the live calendar - this is possible but not the best way to do it - it should be done with a "ModifyAppointmentTask" and a "DeleteAppointmentTask" where a user have to give his permission to modify/delete calendar entries.
Next thing: A developer has to create an access layer for ALL caledar types a user has configured on his phone (exchange, google, facebook ...). When a users wants to create appointments in one of these calendars he has to sign in to the specific calendar. Of course this is not as user friendly as the built in calendar.
Most important thing: All this methods to CRUD calendar entries already exist (the built in calendar uses them) - making them accessible for a developer via a Task (like the new "SaveAppointmentsTask") imho. is the best way this can + should be done.

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