iPhone/ iPad Application for Quiz / Trivia Application

We were recently analyzing a sales lead which was targeted for development of an Educational Application that test the users knowledge, in other words we can say a Quiz application or some one call them Trivia Category of application.

Lets take an example to understand the dynamics of this application, to start with lets say this is an Education app for school kids and for which our client said they have :

1. 150 Question set for Math
2. 150 Question set of Spelling
3. 150 Question set of Grammar

Additionally they wanted us to make sure that the app has below functionality:

1. The App should tests the users knowledge with a 60 question quiz which are pulled randomly from a question bank of 150 questions.
2. Store Scores locally on iPhone
3. Ability to save incomplete test
4. Generate tips on wrong answers
5. Have  a subcategory for helpful tips
6. Vibrate on incorrect answers
7. Ability to purchase additional questions

After going through the above job specification and analyzing the case, we proposed the best we to move forward on this would be as below

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1. User starts the application by clicking the icon
2. Splash screen is displayed for 3 seconds, if untouched.
3. The user will be displayed category for which he need wants to take a test, this will be displayed in a vertical list like we see the phone contact list.  Like “Math”, “Spelling”, “Grammar” etc.
4. There will a button at bottom of the list which tittle “Purchase Additional Question Set” on click the user will be taken a next screen which will display the list of Question Set that user have not yet purchased.
5. Coming back to point 03, lets say the application already has “Math” Question set already bundled with the application, the user will touch the “Math Quiz” from list and this will start the quiz
6. If the user had left the Quiz application half way previously the user will be prompted with a popup “Play a New Quiz” or “Resume Previous”, the Resume Pervious functionality will address the requirement to play with incomplete saved test.
7. The application will always have AutoSave test mode enabled, so if a users leaves the application half way the application will know exactly where the test was left.
8. While the game play is in action, the other features like Store score locally, generate tips, vibrate on incorrect answers will be implemented

Our Suggestion on above to our client:

1. We suggested our client to add Facebook / Twitter social network elements to this application which will allow a message to be sent on these social networking sites something like ” I am playing ABC iPhone application and I scored “9999″ Score for Math Test”
2. Regarding implementation of purchase of additional questions there are couple of ways to do that, you can read more details about the same on our other web page on “Various ways to implementing In-App Purchase”
3. In the above case to keep the cost of application on lower side it is better to bundle all the questions in “locked” form inside the application and then when a successful inApp purchase request is processed the Question bank will be unlocked for that user.  By doing this you will not require to setup a server infrastructure and create web-services for the same.
4. But if the client expects to keep adding questions sets and questions very frequently, then it would be advisable to create a small CMS system on server with web-services that will make this application dynamic.
5. Also since the nature of questions is all text, the questions can be bundled inside an XML file and stored locally.  Doing this will also not increase the size of application much, but if the nature of quiz is more on images or photo’s and if you store them locally the size of application can get very large.
6. With launch of iPhone iOS 4 new SDK, we also need to take care for application to support multitasking capabilities.
7. If this application is targeted for young generation then ability to play iPod music in background can be an added feature.
8. If you want to take this application to advance level then the same application can be expanded to be played in multi-player environment with use of Bluetooth or using server if the user base is outside reach of bluetooth range.

As an Expert in iPhone Application developer, we do provide  free consultation to our clients and support them in  create rough napkin drawings about the entire flow of the application depending on your budgets and offer end-to-end solution starting right from idea to making the application live.

So, lets get on a Skype (iphone.lancers) or gTalk (iphone.lancer [AT] gmail.com) and talk through your requirements, Contact us now.

“Image Gallery Application” with inApp feature V/s Multiple Volumes

While reviewing one of a Sales lead for a customer, we came across a situation when the client had below scenario.

They wanted us to develop an “image gallery” app for the iPhone/iPad which allow the users to scroll through a series of images that they have created.

Secondly they also wanted to have the functionality that allow the users to purchase additional images for viewing as well, for easy understanding lets call each set of Images as “Volumes”

Now the client was not exactly sure if the implementation of in the inApp Purchase feature was easer  or offer each Volume as a separate individual app.

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Now lets look at how inApp Feature works in the above case.

There are 2 scenario for inApp Feature:

Senario #1
In case if you already have all images that can be bundled in Volumes and you do not expect these volumes to be updated very frequently.

>> In the above case, what we can do is pre-bundle each volume inside the application and upload the application on iTunes.
>> We will implement inApp purchase feature to unlock each volumes on a purchase request.
>> When a purchase request is made for a volume, a inApp purchase request is sent to iTunes  server, payment is processed by iTunes, when confirmation token is received for successful purchase, we unlock that particular volume and is now user can view the images for that particular volume.

>> Limitation / disadvantage of implementation of this approach are:
a) Since all images are pre-bundled inside the application, the size of application will grow very big.
b) If you want to add a new volume after couple of months, then you will have to add that volume inside application and upload a new binary on iTunes store as a new version.

>> Advantages of implementation of this approach are:
a) You do not have to create or have a web-server to host all Volumes
b) There is no need to create any XML file or Webservice (API) on the server
c) This is good approach when you have limited budget and expect 4 to 5 version updates a year.

Senario #2
In case if you already have all images that can be bundled in Volumes and each few week you expect to release new volumes, lets take example of a monthly magazine which has a new release each month.

>> In the above case, what we can do is have a server with web services &  database, create a simple Server control panel code which enables the Admin of this application to upload new volumes on server.
>> Then when user selects the “View Volumes” button on iPhone, we shall call make a server call through API to get latest updated volume list and prices for each volume.
>> User selects the volume he want to purchase, a purchase request is sent to iTunes server, after receipt of confirmation token from iTunes server, we record the User Device ID and iTunes purchase token on our server for audit trial and then push the Volume to users device.

>> Limitation / disadvantage of implementation of this approach are:
a) Cost of server, web services and server maintenance is high
b) If the server is down / not functioning, the user will have bad experiences
c) User will gets notification when he look for “View New Volumes” and if you want users to be notified through push notification, then there will be additional cost to implement the push notification.

>> Advantages of implementation of this approach are:
a) This entire application becomes dynamic in nature
b) Easy to update volumes and ability to add new volumes
c) You can use the same server code and Web-services API if you want to port this application on Android or blackberry (remember those devices do not have inApp purchase features, but there is a way around)
d) If you want to accept payments by credit card or through third party payment gateways and not pay apple 30% for each transaction, then the server code can be expanded to handle the same.

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Now lets look at  offering multiple each volume as independent apps (volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, etc)

>> This is a very simple and less costly approach, basically you need to create a Base Template application, then when you want to put-up or launch a new Volume, what you do is use the Base Template application, change the images / resources folder with new images, change the name of application like “Image Gallery Vol 1″ …. “Image Gallery Vol 2″
>> Upload this new volume to iTunes and once approved its there for users to download.

>> Limitation / disadvantage of implementation of this approach are:
a) User have to maintain 10’s of individual application on there iPhone, (but with new iOS 4.0 feature, user can now have folders.. isn’t that a great feature .. thanks to apple team for such a brilliant feature)
b) You will need a Mac Computer with iPhone SDK and have very basic knowledge of how to create a new binary and upload that as new app on itunes.

>> Advantages of implementation of this approach are:
a) Lot of saving on pocket $$$$, this is less costly approach.
b) If you have volumes in various categories like “Wild Life Images in volume 1″, “Vintage Car Images in Volume 2″ etc.. this approach of having individual volume  is highly recommend, because you can add those category details into the name of application and description of the application, which is easily searchable on iTunes.  Lets say I am fan of Vintage Cars & like to know about various apps of Vintage cars, what I normally do as a iPhone user is go to AppStore app and type “Vintage Cars” in search, now if my application is listed as an stand alone app or as separate volume, the search will display that particular app in search result and in-turn my chances of download are increased many times.
c) But if the same approach is implemented through InApp feature, there are no changes that “Vintage Cars” Volume will be displayed in search result,   only my users will have to know that my inApp feature enabled app deals with various categories and they have to look for “Image Gallery App” in search to reach me.

Summery:
Depending on what you want to put on iTunes as an app and how much budget you have, we provide you various services.
In a nutshell we can say :
a) If an application that has to be implemented as stand alone app or independent apps for each volume development cost of such efforts can range between USD $700 to USD $1500, depending on how much custom graphics animation you want to implement, lets say if you want to implement cover-flow style of browsing images or social networking elements in this app like twitter or facebook, the cost can go unto USD $3000 to USD $4500, so lets us know know many features you need and what are your budgets, we can provide you best solution.

b) If you want to pre-bundle images and implement simple inApp feature then add USD $500 to USD $750 to above cost of basic version.  The cost can increase decrease in terms of how the user interface needs to be implemented.

c) If you expect frequent update and want to make this application more dynamic, then its better to have Webserviecs developed on server, the cost of developing webservices alone will be between USD $700 to USD $1750 (we can do the same in PHP/ ROR or DotNet)  plus implementation & processing of those webservices, push notification etc.. will overall add a big cost, but in general the entire solution can cost between USD $4000 to USD $7000

We offer free consultation to our clients and support them in  create rough napkin drawings about the entire flow of the application depending on your budgets and offer end-to-end solution starting right from idea to making the application live.

So, lets get on a Skype or gTalk Chat and talk through your requirements, Contact us now.

iPhone / iPad Application Development Company in India

A whole complex of reasons can influence your decision to outsource your software development needs, think on below questions:

Is this the first iPhone project you are outsourcing to India?

When it comes to financial contracts for iPhone project, Do you know that most of outsourcing iPhone projects  are Categorized either as  fixed-bid, time and materials, or function point contract ?
How much “free consulting” can you expect from us to spend while preparing a project cost estimate and plan?

As we all know that iPhone application industry has just started to build up experiences, there are no standards set things that will answer all above questions, hence our experiences have enabled us to create a hybrid model which enables us to give you quote in hours for most of the features that you want to be part of your project and also calculate a fix price.

With a team of skilled developers and designers, we convert your idea into iPhone application. Take advantage of the offshore iPhone Application development company in India, iPhone-Lancers offers offshore Application development in India in iPhone SDK iOS 4.

We offer custom iPhone Application development as per Apple Guidelines in our India development center.

You can either  schedule an Interview with our developer or Contact us now to get a quick ball park estimates for your iPhone App.

iPhone OS 4 Application Development Offshore

With more than 100 user features including 7 biggest features (Multitasking, Folders, Mail, iBooks, Enterprise, Game Center and iAd) the new iPhone 4.0 OS also known as iOS4 have enabled developers to access to more than 1500+ new API’s… WOW isn’t that amazing.

With now developers having iPhone 4.0 OS preview  and it will be part of launching on the new iPhone 4 devices: “The devices that does everything” and very soon iPhone 4.0 OS is coming to the iPad this Fall.

All that said, if you are planning to develop and iPhone Applications, think what new features of SDK can be incoporated to make your application more user friendly.

We at iPhone-Lancers.com offer offshore iPhone OS 4 Application Development services and we have experiences on developing applications in below verticals:

* Small & Medium Business Application
* iPhone OS 4 Games programming
* iPhone Utility & Widget coding
* Mock-up, Icon and theme Designing for new iPhone OS 4
* iPhone applications for enterprise solutions which require Web Service Integration or 3rd party API calls.
* iPhone OS 4 Social Networking Apps
* iPhone OS 4 m-commerce enterprise solution
* Traveling, Navigation, and Weather forecasting apps and many more…

Some of unique features that we offer to our clients are :

* Working closely with the client to ensure that we capture the “concept” and executive it up to a final product listed on iTunes.
* Providing full support with guidance in Application development & design,  setting your own iTunes account and submitting your applications for Approval in iTunes.
* One roof solution for planning, mock-up, design, integration, testing, support and marketing.

Lets get on on a Phone call and talk through your idea, we are sure to offer you quickest ball park estimate.. Contact us now.

iPhone 4 App Development | Hire iPhone /iPad SDK iOS 4 Enterprise Application programmer

iPhone 4 App Development | Hire iPhone /iPad SDK iOS 4 Enterprise Application programmer

With Apple started sending out emails to all iPhone application developers to all iPhone Developers to get their iOS 4 Applications ready for launch on June 21 almost all The existent iPhone applications have to be updated for the multi-tasking feature and made compitable with iOS 4.

With all App Programers  now  ensuring that their product is iOS 4 compatible and be  first up in the iTunes Apple Store.

While if you are  iPhone developers didn’t show much concern about it as making few tweaks to their current apps could make it suitable for iOS4, Apple’s delay in approval of new apps is definitely a concern for most.

At iPhone-Lancers we have expert programers who have have already started working on iPhone SDK OS 4, who can assit you in you during your planning & development of your New iPhone application or want to make your existing iPhone / iPad Application compitible with new iPhone SDK 4 with fast turn around time.

We are a one stop solution for all your iPhone iOS 4 Application development Outsourcing needs,

Click here to request for a  free quote.

iOS4 upgrade iPhone iPad Apple

Hire iPhone iOS 4.0 Expert to upgrade your current iPhone app.
Long awaitied  free release of iPhone OS 4 (iOS4) upgrade is finally set to be on June 21 for iPhone 3GS/3G/iPod touch users.

Lot of buzz is being created with Apple iPhone 4 and its iOS 4 which is going to be next generation and innovative Mobile Operating System in the world.

All new set of features incorporated is iOS will change what is possible on a mobile platform.

Some of the Core features are:

• Multitasking
• Folders
• Better eMail
• iBooks
• Create playlists
• 5x digital zoom
• Tap to focus video
• Faces and Places in Photos
• Home screen wallpaper
• Gift apps
• Spell checking
• Wireless keyboard support

Our developers have already started developing application on  iPhone iOS 4.0 and also providing support for upgrading your current iPhone App.

Our dedicated iPhone OS 4.0 Team is capable of adopting your current coding standards and offering you custom /  tailored solution according to your requirements.

Contact us Now to Hire iPhone OS 4.0 application developer.

Upgrade your iPhone app to SDK 4 GM seed (iOS 4)

Today Apple has announced that now its possible for you to submit iPhone application compatible with  “iOS 4″   for review so, when  iOS 4 is available to iPhone and iPod touch users, your application is compatible and are have application does not crash.

We have started receiving many inquiries from many of our customers who have built there apps in SDK 3.x and now when they try to run that on OS 4 most of them have reported to have crash issues.

Some of the  problem is:

One of our task on OS was to

Create a modular project for code reuse that performs the following
- Open and Play Videos from the inbuilt Photos & Videos Library on the iphone
- Records Video using the front facing and/or back facing camera on the new Iphone 4 and saves to the inbuilt Photos & Videos Library on the iPhone for OS 4.0.

Click Here to Get a Development Quote to upgrade to iOS4

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iPhone Application Developer 4.0 | Outsourcing

iPhone-Lancers is offering professional iPhone application development services for new iPhone SDK 4.0

We are in the Mac Application development projects since 2003 and since last 3 years we have a successful track record of creating robost iPhone Applications. We have successful history of delivering large iPhone application projects to our clients in the United States, Canada, Denmark, United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand.

We extend ourselves to utilize our professional expertise in applying the knowledge of SDK 3.1 and now with SDK 4.0, that builds a platform for an amazing range of advanced technologies, that could create wonders while enhancing the functionality of your iPhone and iPod touch applications.

We also have a very good experience in using UIKit, OpenGL ES 1.1, CoreGraphics and Networking frameworks using API to build sophisticated UI-rich applications. We are able to build data-intensive applications, deploy Push Service and In-App Purchase modules with server-side integration. We have experts in general math and game physics/AI.

Are you looking for iPhone Application Developer for 4.0 ?
Please contact us and submit project details to get free quote now.