I was once exchanging contact information with a newfound friend and we both agreed that the process took much too long. It was that remark we remembered when getting the inspiration for TapXchange.
This app first allows the user to set his or her own contact information that he or she wishes to share and saves it on the device. Then, all the user needs to do is hold his or her phone up close to another. As long as the receiving device has TapXchange installed, it will acquire the contact information needed in a matter of seconds.
The primary technology used for this app was NFC or near field communication. We used this to send string bytes from one phone to another. We also saved the user's desired contact data on the phone's storage device.
We were brand new to NFC and phone storage technology, so much of the challenges we needed to overcome were in implementing NFC on android and writing a JSON serializer class to save the user data on the phone's storage system.
We are proud, first off, of the accomplishment of using brand new technology like NFC that we had never been exposed to before coming to the hackathon. We also are proud of implementing file storage system on the phone itself so the user doesn't need to enter his or her desired contact information every time the app is opened.
We learned much about how to implement NFC technology on android applications. Most of the team was relatively new to Android as well so overcoming the challenge of learning new technology on an already new platform was an impressive feat for us. Learning about data storage techniques was also a point of pride for us as we learned about how JSON objects are used and implemented on the Android platform.
Next, we want to implement the app as a service running in the background so that users can exchange contact information without even having to open the app. We would need to learn about Android services and how to minimize battery usage while running this app as a service.
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