Hi all, I'm a Singaporean developer and I'm here to tell you that I'm sick of idiots posting/bragging their daily life on Facebook, I mean, if you want to do that, why not do it so that I can ACTUALLY use that information next time? Thankfully, I'm a developer and I can actually do something about it.
WHAT IF, those stupid FOOD pictures taken at the restaurant actually POP UP the next time I am hungry and near that area? WHAT IF those slutty clubbing pictures could actually help me pick a club when I want to go? So here's my solution.
Spawt is a location-based experience bookmarking service so now you could actually point those idiots to the app and actually end up building a beautiful scrapbook of experiences that you and your friends can mutually share and discover.
Features
- Bookmark a great experience by creating a Checkpoint.
- Contextually discover interesting experiences from fellow Spawtters based on your current location.
* Spawt believes that your friends' experiences matter more, so your Facebook friends' Checkpoints will be treated as first class citizens.
- Builds a catalog of Checkpoints that will serve as a scrapbook of experiences for when you need an inspiration on what to do next.
- No need to create a whole new social network, leverages your existing Facebook network.
* Note, we send NOTHING back to Facebook, your privacy is MY topmost concern. (I should know, I'm a Facebook cynic.)
Download the app and tell me what you make of it, and most importantly how I can go on making it better for you and your friends. Search for "Spawt Beta" or get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/...result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5jdHJsZWZmIl0.
PS: Oh did I mention Galaxy S2 kicks ass?
PSS: Oh also, if the app does crash, and it will, please click Report so I can fix it so you can swear a little bit less when the next update comes.
Hello.
I am here seeking for help and advice on how to approach the development of a security framework (via APP or via hacked Android ROM to be used by kids, that could be monitored by adults (parents or legal tutors).
The idea would be to develop a (white hat) hacked ROM, that would allow the kids to communicate with their friends, but also would allow their parents to supervise/monitor in real time what their children are doing, who are they communicating with and that way protect their children. The thing is not to spy on our kids, but to be able to check regularly if there is anything wrong going on with our kids (mobbing, insults or harassment). Kids aged (10-14) could be influenced by other kids, adults, or adults simulating being kids, and on some occasions they can be tricked to do things without their parents consent/knowledge that can lead to a tricky situation.
When I was a kid, we had the telephone (wired telephone, of course) on the middle of the hallway, so all our conversations were basically family-public. The truth is that there are not many secret things a 10yo kid could/should talk about, but nowadays, it could be a little bit worrying to lend a smartphone to a kid. I think it's just as letting a kid drive a car; he can do it right, or not be able to evaluate the whole consequences of driving a car.
Talking to other parents around me, they all found very interesting the idea of having a telephone that one could lend to their son, having the kid available all the time, and with the peace of mind that you could know what's going on. Of course the kid should be aware of this, and that the telephone comms are being supervised. I think it's no big deal. "Kid, it's very simple. The telephone is mine, and if you want to use it you have to use it under my terms".
Probably, all of us working for a company, have also our communications supervised, cannot make personal phonecalls with the company's telephones, probably cannot navigate to webs looking for personal content, and we asume those rules (because neither the company's phones nor the computers are ours but our company's). It's basically the same, switching the company-employee role to a father-son one.
So, let's get to the point (technically). I am a tech-geek, linux pro-user, have compiled a few ROMs just for personal use, but don't feel capable enough of starting a project of these magnitude alone. If there is anyone willing to help, opine, or whatever, will be very welcome.
First of all, APP or ROM? I basically think that the ROM is the way to go, but I'm asking just in case someone can convince me on the contrary. I will make a poll on this question.
APP An APP could be easily downloaded and installed but would require a rooted phone, and I don't see it clearly if an APP could resolve all the needed issues (access to communications for example) and could be fairly easily uninstalled too.
ROM On the other hand, a ROM would be trickier to uninstall (basically flashing another ROM) but wouldn't be as easy to install as an APP (though the installer model of cyanogenmod could be kind of a solution). There could be an universal (if possible) independent flashable module, over whatever android ROM, or an entire ROM solution.
Features that I want to develop in this ROM (by the way, I call it 'Vigilante ROM'):
Suitable for as many devices as possible
Web interface for parents available to see device-related information
Some hack-proof measures to avoid kids bypassing the ROM's security
Alerts triggered on some events (offensive words, whatever)
Position of the mobile -just in case-
Suitable for as many devices as possible
The first thing I though was what platform should be used for this ROM. To select Android over others (iOS, Blackberry, W7) was a no-brainer. Now, the question is should we use pure Android or make a CyanogenMod fork?
In my opinion, even though every phone maker has to supply their ROM sources publicly, they usually introduce so many modifications (HTC Sense, Samsung Touchwizz and so on) that it looks more difficult to develop a common security framework over each manufacturer's version of Android, rather than using a more standardized one like CyanogenMod.
CyanogenMod already works with a wide number of devices (and a wider one if you count the unofficial supported devices), I think CyanogenMod should be the base of this ROM. If all the 'things' needed could be flash on top of any Android device, would be even better, but technically I need help with this one.
I understand that basically there should be an internal proxy setup, so that all the communications go through this internal proxy, and based on the kind of communication, we could log whatever we need. For example:
Visited URLs
Whatsapp or other messaging apps should be decrypted
Incoming/Outgoing calls/SMS
Social network activity
I know the Whatsapp protocol because I'm familiar with a project called WhatAPI. The key point to be able to intercept whatsapp messaging is a key generated and exchanged during the app install (although there are ways to later ask the Whatsapp server to renegotiate this keyword) and that's used later to encrypt all the messages between the phone and the whatsapp server.
Web interface for parents available to see device-related information
Behind every kid with a smartphone there should be a responsible adult supervising the kid -even if it's remotely-. In my idea, logs of messaging activity, incoming/outgoing calls/SMS and even the position should be available to the supervisor through a web interface.
Some hack-proof measures to avoid kids bypassing the ROM's security
That's an easy one. CRC checks on some keyfiles would guarantee that the device is not being 'counter-hacked'. Some kids are also very techie, and we should make some defences against kids trying to hack (counter-hack?) the phone.
Alerts triggered on some events (offensive words, whatever)
It could be interesting if somehow the supervisor could receive a notification whenever the kid sends/receives and offensive word, or tries to enter some special tagged website.
I'm looking for an app that allows users to send a request for help/assistance with built in location, short message and some pictures.
Other users detecting a request within a preset range would be notified of the event and be able to respond.
I've found a couple of apps that do this sort of thing, however they are centralised/restricted to specific areas. For example Australia has only two cities covered, each by a different app.
My desire implement it for off-road driving recovery requests. I'm a member of a Facebook group for such requests of people whom are bogged or otherwise challenged. The most common issue I see it people asking where the stuck vehicle is located and where is "such and such" track located.
A few times when a request has been nearby to me, I've not seen it until too late because Facebook felt it wasn't important enough to show it to me.
I've search everywhere I can think of but an unable to find anything close to suitable. I'm hoping someone here might know of something (or even be willing to start a new project).
Many thanks in advance for any assistance.
Hi,
I used to surf around xda-devs since its early beginnings, but This is my first interaction with this great community, and I am sorry 'cause it is a question.
So, I'm really wondering if there's any dialer or contact list App which don't steal users data .. I really hate it when I find a top rated Apps that requests almost every single permission available on the SDK, it's really disgusting. :banghead:
Even if there's such dialers that would ask for bunch of permissions, if you really know that it's from a clean company and it wont steal information from you, that would be helpful. :thumbup:
# Why I'm thinking of such a Dialer?
Because I was using android for years now, and I figured out that I don't really needs other apps to know my contacts and read my call history, I literally get no benefits from that, So I think if I used a 3rd party Contact list, apps like Facebook will be no longer able to fetch phone numbers out of my Android, by talking about Facebook it was very mean when I learned that they still going to copy your phone book to their cloud even if you consciously touched the 'Skip' button :banghead:
# Otherwise:
How can I prevent such apps from taking my contact list without rooting the device, (you know you try to control your privacy by rooting that device but what are you actually doing is giving access to many apps to many secret places).
Thanks in advance
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
Dear friends,
some time ago I developed an android app based on a cloud service on my hosting where I store private information about the user (like email, drugs, name, weight...).
The app has few active users so far, I'm not updating it anymore because I lost my interest in my baby (yes, seeing it didn't flight made me loosing interest in develop) but it's really well done and well structure I would said.
The problem is that I'm not a professional dev and I know quite for sure it has important security falls all around the code (both in the app and in the server).
I was thinking of making it available on GitHub the source code of the Android version (the server version would be extremely dangerous I guess) but this would reveal how the server side works (more or less) and reveal eventually security falls...
I guess this would make a bit of advertisement on my app (I guess it's the only type of app going open source), but I'm quite worried actually on how it could go.
In the worse of cases I would need to shut down the service and set offline the app once forever, but it's a kind of my baby and to know it is still available makes me a kind of "satisfied" about my "baby".
What would you do guys? I know you will scream for "make it open source as soon as possible!", but I'm concerned about the points I wrote.
Thank you for arriving till this point reading
MOD ACTION:
Thread closed as per OP's request via PM.