Java Development

[shahriyarali]

hey,

i'm on project to create public check-in at a venue & need help creating NFC Tag for foursquare. i want it to function as shown in latest Foursquare demo at BBWC. can anyone guide me?

Also, is there anyway i could do the same for Twitter & Facebook? it will cut down a step or two for users

[mwoolley]

Hi

it should be possible to create an application which can do something like this i.e. check in on foursquare, post a message to your Facebook wall and Twitter account all in one go and in response to encountering a tag. There are three parts to the solution however and I can only really comment on two of the parts.

1. APIs to these three applications. I assume that all three applications expose APIs of some sort, probably cloud based ones and that these APIs provide the functionality you require to trigger in response to encountering a given type of NFC tag. I know little about APIs these applications may or may not offer.

2. Tag detection and action triggering. Here I'd envisage you having an application on the device which allows the user to configure their account IDs for all three of foursquare, twitter and facebook. It would automatically run when the device starts and would register for a particular type of tag using the ReaderWriterManager class and NDEFMessageListener interface.

3. Tag content. If I were you I would invent my own custom type of NDEF message using the TNF_EXTERNAL 'type of type'. This enables you to deploy tags which only your application will register for and understand and you will therefore have complete control over what the user experience is like and not be concerned about some other application also registering for the same type (which the device would deal with by prompting the user to choose between the 2 applications).

So in summary, invent a custom tag type which means "check in to my social network accounts". have an auto-starting application which registers for this type and then exits. On encountering your tag type, your application will be launched, as the only application which has registered for this type and you can then use the various social networking APIs to take whatever action you require. Your app will need to be configurable so it 'knows' the user's foursquare, twitter and facebook account IDs and passwords.

You'll find information and examples on NFC, including tag reading and writing here:

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/NFC-Article-and-Code-Index/ta-p/1538775

Hope this helps.

Regards

Martin

[shahriyarali]

thanks. will try & let you know. but does the tag work for android as well? i dont think it will

[mwoolley]

Hi

custom tag types which use TNF "TNF_EXTERNAL" are completely compliant with the NFC Forum specifications so provided Android's APIs support TNF EXTERNAL, there should be no problem with this approach.

Regards

Martin

[KyleMC]

Hi guys,

I need to write an NFC tag that will open a URL with "zero-click".

ie. the user taps their device and the browser is immediately launched.

This is possible on Android but I am having difficulty with BB.

The tag would be in a public space so we can't assume that the user would have any apps pre-installed that would innitiate this.

Is this possible? Is there a specific app that can perfom this function or would custom NDEF code need to be programmed to the tag?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Kyle

[mwoolley]

Users have to confirm the action if it's handled by the BlackBerry Smart Tags app. This is a security measure aimed at protecting the user from tags which have malicious intent. The only way to implement "zero click" is if you have your own application handling the tag and it therefore has complete control over the user experience.