Many of my friends ask me for recommendation of good Android Apps. So, long back I built Apps Cloner (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anenth.appscloner). It didn't become popular as I expected. One reason could be the weird name :p
So, would like to team up this time to take this idea to the next level. How about you having list of favorite apps under http://apps.me/name. You can also create lists of apps based on specific category like http://apps.me/name/sports
The idea involves both native Android app and responsive-web interface to view Apps and their playstore info.
Hi Anenth,
One of the challenges here is that typically such an app needs to present app meta data in addition to just a list of names in order to be useful. It's not always convenient to jump to the market for each one to check it out.
Do you plan to just link off to the playstore or do you have some way of displaying app meta data? One of the challenges with the play store is that Google doesnt offer an API (Apple does for affiliate partners). Site scraping isnt dependable - lots of formats, constantly changing data, etc.
Arvi
I agree that atleast some important meta data is required. I was just thinking to show the app's Name, High-res icon, PlayStore link and optional field (user generated) on what the app does. As the icon is the only missing piece, I was hoping to scrape that.
I remember you showing an app that you built for Verizon during last Droidcon. So, you guys got exclusive API through them or you also had to scrape?
Are you at JSFoo? I've got a ton of learnings around this. Happy to share & discuss. We are also exploring a new launcher idea - I think KJ might have mentioned that to you.
Arvi/Anenth, I think at an aggregate level the data might come in very useful analytics. For e.g. a given app is recommended by 1 user, but was uninstalled by 10 users in system after minimal usage.
So some sort of synching mechanism that we can build between what's on the phone now and server, we might be able to bring in handy and useful high level information which is far more relevant than reviews and ratings on the play store which are so much to make proper sense.
That would be cool. I didn't think of the possibility with aggregated view of generated data :)