Text Deck Case studyWhat is Text Deck?

Text Deck is a widget developed for the Mac Dashboard that allows Mac users to simply and quickly send SMS messages from their computer. Text Deck Pro is a full featured Mac desktop application that sends SMS messages, and stores previously sent messages in a Mail.app like interface. Text Deck Pro integrates with users’ AddressBook and Google Contacts to allow fast selection of the SMS recipient, removing the need to manually enter phone numbers, although this can still be done.

The Text Deck Widget was developed as a standard Widget to run within Dashboard on a Mac. This uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript to provide the user interface, and communicates via a Javascript bridge with a framework developed in Objective-C to abstract the BlueVia APIs. The framework uses an open source OAuth framework that I customised, and the open source JSON processing library YAJL.

Text Deck Pro is a full Mac desktop application developed in Objective-C. It reuses the same framework that I developed for the BlueVia integration of Text Deck. Integration with Google Contacts was facilitated via the GData Objective-C library that Google provide. The UI on the Mac was created in Interface Builder and uses part of BWToolkit, and data storage is provided by Core Data.

The creation of a standalone framework was an important part of the applications’ development, as now accessing any of the BlueVia API services from within an application on the Mac is a simple activity, and significantly decreases the development time required.

How it works

Text Deck is exclusively powered by the BlueVia SMS API, allowing Glimmer Design to directly monetise all the SMS traffic created by the application. In addition the

BlueVia SMS API provides great functionality like ensuring the sender field in all the text messages generated are populated with the originators real mobile number.

This ensures that the recipients’ phone or device can easily match the inbound text messages generated by Text Deck to address book entries, producing a real name, rather than some off-putting machine generated originator address.

“As a developer who is very familiar with recent web technologies such as OAuth, REST APIs and JSON, I was excited to see that BlueVia supports these. From a developer’s perspective these technologies simplify integration and offer access to services previously unavailable. For consumers, the security

How is BlueVia helping Text Deck?

and control that technologies such as OAuth offers makes it very clear what applications can and cannot do on their behalf, as well as giving them simple interfaces to approve and deny applications access to their accounts. I believe Telefonica are an innovator in the mobile and internet integration space, and the BlueVia APIs are ahead of other services I have seen.”

“On a personal level, I am always keen to try out new technologies and platforms to understand the value they could bring to projects I am working on.” Hamish Rickerby Owner, Glimmer Design

Glimmer Design began releasing online web based applications in 2006. From 2008, Glimmer Design has released Apple App Store apps. The company was incorporated in 2010 and currently has 11 apps in the app store (6 have been released under the happtic brand), for both iPhone and iPad.

About Glimmer Design

You can contact Glimmer Design through the following links:

Glimmer Design: glimmerdesign.comhapptic: happtic.comBlog: hamishrickerby.comLinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/hamishrickerbyTwitter: twitter.com/rickerbh

twitter.com/happtic Glimmer Design Apps: itunes.apple.com/us/artist/glimmer-design-limited/id302871163happtic Apps: itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/happtic/id385076451

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