[QSportsEvent] FIFA World Cup and Football App
 

Hi Maemo Developers!

Has anyone already thought about creating an app for the FIFA World Cup in Sout Africa???

This app could feature e. g.
- Match and result tracking
- Calendar integration
- WC related news/rss
- ...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

I'd love this, anyone up for it?

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Its a must application:) Africa I wanna come

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

yes, to do this application...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Ok, guess this was a stupid idea...
considering all the coding and testing work for an app that is useless after just 4 weeks ;-)

BUT:

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much I miss an app for tracking football results of the major national leagues as well as Champions League...

This is really a must have for me!

Who else wants to have a football app?

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Well, I tried building one (see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=47688), but given the sparse response I dropped it (or maybe I should say paused it). I know it doesn't look very sexy, so maybe it killed interest right off the bat?

Indeed, building something for only 4 weeks of fun would be a waste of time, so my app is totally dynamic as you can load your own fixture. Use it for any sports event (well, not really, but still), from now to eternity.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

I think the difficult part is finding a free & legal source of data, especially the live data as matches are happening.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Would be really interested about this.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

I was going to start a thread about this a while ago and flagged the requirement in the thread about football results. I think it is an absolute necessity.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Hi Magnuslu!

your app looks good, think its a nice start for a World Cup app.
But dont you think an app that retrieves data from an online database makes more sense?
Especially with the goal of having a full blown football app (supporting all major leagues as well as cups) in mind...
I am thinking of an app that allows browsing results, schedules, league tables...Maybe also support for a liveticker functionality!?

I VERY sure there is a great demand for such an app - so come on guys lets do a bit brainstorming and help Magnuslu or any other skilled developer bring us this app and make our N900 even more usefull and enjoyable :-)

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Indeed, finding a good and reliable data source is the main issue. There are a few. I have looked at www.elmarcador.com and they follow an impressive list of results. I'm just worried that parsing HTML pages will make the interface too fragile. Their RSS feed seems to be broken.

I contacted a data service provider, but they charge EUR 750 per month (!) for the data feed and there is no way I would be able to recuperate that amount. It is mainly used by betting firms, I understand.

As an alternative, I was actually considering allowing the app to serve that purpose in some way. I thought I'd store the results in the data store of the Google App Engine. Users following the game could update the results which would then be propagated to the other users in the spirit of Wikipedia.

If someone has any suggestions, I'll happily have a look!

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

i am totaly up for a football app not just for the world cup but for the regular season and club cup competitions i really hope this app gets off the ground i kmow i would use it loads

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

So, we would either need

1) A sports data service provider that gives free API access

OR

2) find a way to cover or avoid the charge for the data

1)
So far I only found either expensive (http://www.oddsminer.com/)
or unusable (http://www.footytube.com/openfooty/api_overview.php)
services

2)
Damn, there must be a way of doing it, there are several apps for other plattforms doing just what we are looking for (iPhone: http://www.supportware.nl/iphone/EN/myfootballpro.htm and http://www.sport1.de/de/themen/mobile/ for example)

Maybe it is possible to cooperate with someone who has the needed data? For example by branding the app with the data providers logo?

What do you guys think? Any ideas, comments, thoughts...???

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

its sounds like developing a simple aap for this platform is damn hard. i bet u android or iphone already have that kinda aap. Infact they have an espn and tsn aap. LOL
just kidding fellas! good work keep brain storming just dont forget its starts 06-11-10 so..

P.S: why dont u grab the data form fifa.com, dunno if it makes any sense.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Yeah Im on board!

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

From the FIFA website:

I've asked them, but don't expect anything great out of this...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

place my vote too!
We need one!

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

And I've now also contacted the data providers for the iPhone app, www.soccerway.com asking them the same question. Again, given the number of users of the Maemo community interested in this app, I doubt that it will be economically viable...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

could you mabye call a betting company and do a deal with them for them to provide the data from the feed they have already and for you to include a link button on your app that sends the user to the betting companys website???
mabye you could get them to pay you to create a really slick app??????

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

A good data source is SoccerDB, which supports crowdsourcing to keep scores up to date. It covers many leagues and provides a lot of statistics.

We may ask Jorge Aragon, the site owner, if he is interested in letting a Maemo application access the data. As a reward, we could put in the application a banner for a PayPal donation to him, just like the one he has on the site.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Sure! I'll contact SoccerDB as well.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

i would love to have a football app:)

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

What is it that makes footytube unusable? It seems to require the 'IP address that will make use of the service'...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

yeah a football app would be awesome already asked about one before, espn's app is no good though it is not accurate and doesn't refresh itself.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

They only allow access for websites but not other technologies and its free for now while its in Beta Trial, but afterwards?

From the Terms of Use (http://www.footytube.com/openfooty/terms.php):

"(c) We do not intend to charge non-commercial Beta Trial Users for access to OF during the Beta Trial. However, depending on demand and feedback, it may become necessary to offer alternative partnership models. We will provide notice, on the OF Site, prior to such changes taking effect."

"(a) You will:

• Apply for a separate API key for each website through which you wish to access OF and on which you will publish OF Content ("Your Website")...

(b) You will not:
...
• Create, or facilitate the creation of, additional registration accounts or other technology for the purpose of accessing, or facilitating third party access to, the OF or OF Content without permission..."

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Magnuslu, thankx for contacting SoccerDB and the other data providers!
Also thankx to all other users trying to help out here.
Especially Fraaaaankas idea sounds promising to me!

Keep on Brainstorming guys :-)

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

I think this is a nice idea. I would definitly use this program. The data for just the worldcup shouldn't be hard to get/create. We can make it a community effort. I would be happy to add all the scores of the dutch team.

So maybe start with a full application for the worldcup and make it better after that?

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Robbie, thankx for offering yur support here!
But from my point of view, an app created based on manually gathered data is no good base for a full blown app with online upadte capabilities...However I am no developer...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

gooooooaaaaaaalllll !!!! want it . this site thinks like i do . no need for useless app just the good stuff

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

??? What are you saying?

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

I have more hope on the SoccerDB track. I followed some games yesterday on that site, and the results were updated quite quickly. Anyway, getting the data into the app is but one (the most important!) feature. I might structure the program such that the user can chose data provider. Well, all that's theoretical at the moment as I don't even have one :)

One feature that I'm planning to add to it is to allow entering your own predictions before the games. Ideally, it should be possible to share predictions with your friends (or the Maemo community), but that would be for version x+n... Let's get the data first.

I've also realized that a license (!) might be required to show the fixture for some (most?) leagues in an app like this. Anyone knows more about that?

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

I'm saying that i would put the data in a central database so that everybody can use it. If you have a couple of people doing this (say one per country thats in the tournament), you have all the data that you need. The community is big enough for that.

I can help creating a webfrontend so that people can enter the data.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

@robbie

That's what SoccerDB is doing (www.aragon.ws/soccerdb), so I'd rather leverage on that, if possible. Let's see what they respond...

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

there is a live scores app within snaptu. something similar would be good. see www.snaptu.com

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

i think its a good idea to let the community give the scores through the app to a central db.
i think this will give pretty soon quite good results, if we could join an existing community then that would be even more perfect.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Looking at SoccerDB, I found this page about using their data. It contains both instructions and license information: basically everyone can use the data, the site owner just asks for donations. Putting a 'donate' banner into the app it would be enough, I suppose.

Their data is available for embedding in any HTML page. You must insert their Javascript scripts in your page and they create tables and match result reports. Full details are available here and here. So, the simplest (laziest :) ) solution would be to use just a QWebView to display a local HTML+CSS page referring the remote script. However, for offline usage and more advanced features (other visualizations, manual score editing) access to raw data is needed with local caching. In that case, an arrangement is required with the site owner in order to be able to access raw data.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Yeah... The whole purpose is to do some 'fancy stuff' on top of the data in the 'offline app', so, yes, I'd need the raw data.

He's also keeping a lot of 'historical' league data on his site, see http://www.aragon.ws/teamstats/leagues.php. I've asked him about getting access to those files too as the format is almost identical to what I'm using in my app and we'd have something to play with while waiting for the World Cup :)

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Guys,

Are we not better of hunting for the best RSS streams?

I'd say the BBC ones were quite good.

Then we can just either view these, or if someones keen they can make an app to parse them?

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

Sure, that's an option too. Is this the one you are thinking of?
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/sporton...otball/rss.xml

Until proven otherwise, I'll still prefere the SoccerDB option though as it has loads of leagues, probably more than the BBC cares to bother about.

Re: FIFA World Cup App ?
 

All I can offer to this is my vote for having an app like this - not sure how much help I'd be but happy to help where I can...

I also vote soccerdb - just had a look at it and it even goes right down to my local part-timers football club (Bromley FC) which is about 7 leagues below the top flight...!