If you’re in a mall and you need to find a shop quickly, Malls.SG is your friend. The other day, I was in Plaza Singapura searching for school shoes (for my son), and dog food (not for my son). I whipped out my iPhone, called up Malls.sg and within seconds, I was able to find out where the relevant stores were. That inspired me to get in touch with developer Zhou Wenhan to thank him and to find out more about the app, which he had originally called Mallment.SG.
Tell us about yourself. What do you do and how long have you been developing for the iPhone?
I am a final NUS student majoring in computer engineering and I am going to graduate this May. I am going on 26 years old. After I graduate, I will be working full time on my startup, 2359 Media.
Malls.SG is my first application. I started learning iPhone development in December of last year. The main resource used was the iPhone Developer Cookbook (by Erica Sadun) and the Stanford CS193P course materials. Malls.sg took about one month to develop and about one month to gather all the data from the various shopping mall’s website.
I am not a Mac user. I know that sounds like heresy ha-ha. For my development I actually had to try out several versions of Hacktinosh (Hacked versions of OSX) so that I could start coding. When I first got my iPhone, it was to develop a location based application for my final year project and I didn’t know that you needed a Mac to develop on the iPhone. Of course after I bought the iPhone I fell so much in love with it to sell it away but then I was so broke that I couldn’t buy a Mac.
Why did you decide to develop MallMent.SG, later Malls.SG?
While I was learning to develop for the iPhone, I was looking for something that I could develop and learn at the same time. Initially I wanted to do a food application as I was involved in an online restaurant ordering startup (getquik.com) back in Silicon Valley. However after buUuk came out, I realized that they did such a good job that I won’t be able to compete effectively. So I was actively searching for another idea. The idea for Malls.sg came about when I was in a mall and I noticed that there were a lot of people looking at the store directory. Actually a lot of iPhone applications are built in the same way. They are a view into certain data that can be found in public spaces. Being an iPhone application just makes these data portable and easily accessible and thus people use them.
What challenges did you face in developing the app?
Development-wise, the main challenges were developing on Objective C. I have cursed it many times because of the lack of a garbage collector in the iPhone implementation. Memory errors are so hard to diagnose and fix. As such, one has to be careful in memory management and this is a skill that most modern programming languages do not require anymore. Version 1 of Malls.sg crashed pretty frequently when the map was loaded. Also acquiring the data from various shopping mall websites took a lot of work but this part was mainly outsourced.
What feedback have you gotten for your app?
Generally feedback has been positive as this is a very useful application where the pain point is quite high. Interestingly, the first review on your application really determines the type of reviews you get from then on. One can see the difference in reviews of MallmentSG and Malls.sg. They are identical applications but the reviews follow the tone of the first application.
Why did you change the name of the app from Mallment.SG to Malls.SG? What does Mallment mean anyway?
I was looking for a name for the application. Mallment.com had “mall” inside it, and in Chinese, it sounded like Mall们。Most importantly the domain name was available. Later we decided to change it to Malls.SG because we realized we didn’t really need to be creative with names on iTunes and that no one goes to the domain name anyway.
What other iPhone apps are you working on?
Right now I am working on an advertising library that can be integrated into the applications of other developers. As for applications, I haven’t got a great idea for another application yet. We are also making Malls.SD, which is the same application as Malls.SG but for Sydney.
What aspect of 3.0 excites you?
I haven’t taken a close look at 3.0 yet. But I am looking closely at push notifications as that can be useful for advertising. 2359 media is not into push advertising but I would like to see how other ad networks use it and if users will be irritated by it which I think they will be.
What are your favourite apps on the iPhone?
On the iPhone, the main apps I use daily are Facebook, Twinkle (@Ybother), Yammer (for communication within 2359media, all three of us are iPhone users), Malls.sg :), Today, Straits Times, New York Times, SGTransport and buUuK.
Tell us about 2359 Media. What it is and why should iPhone developers care about it?
Founded in February 2009, 2359 Media is Asia-Pacific’s creative advertising network for native mobile applications. With the introduction of the SDKs for mobile applications to be developed by thirdparty developers, we believe that mobile advertising can now achieve its true potential through embedding targeted advertisements within applications. As such, 2359 Media looks to help local advertisers understand and leverage this new platform to effectively targeted marketing campaigns at users.
For developers, with local advertisements that targets users based on their behavior within the application, 2359 Media offers higher financial returns to the developer. In addition, we realized that a significant majority of application users (estimated at 80%) in Singapore do not have an always on data connection. Hence, unlike other mobile advertising networks, we equip developers with the ability to monetize offline usage.
Malls.SG is my first application. I started learning iPhone development in December of last year. The main resource used was the iPhone Developer Cookbook (by Erica Sadun) and the Stanford CS193P course materials. Malls.sg took about one month to develop and about one month to gather all the data from the various shopping mall’s website.
I am not a Mac user. I know that sounds like heresy ha-ha. For my development I actually had to try out several versions of Hacktinosh (Hacked versions of OSX) so that I could start coding. When I first got my iPhone, it was to develop a location based application for my final year project and I didn’t know that you needed a Mac to develop on the iPhone. Of course after I bought the iPhone I fell so much in love with it to sell it away but then I was so broke that I couldn’t buy a Mac.
Why did you decide to develop MallMent.SG, later Malls.SG?
While I was learning to develop for the iPhone, I was looking for something that I could develop and learn at the same time. Initially I wanted to do a food application as I was involved in an online restaurant ordering startup (getquik.com) back in Silicon Valley. However after buUuk came out, I realized that they did such a good job that I won’t be able to compete effectively. So I was actively searching for another idea. The idea for Malls.sg came about when I was in a mall and I noticed that there were a lot of people looking at the store directory. Actually a lot of iPhone applications are built in the same way. They are a view into certain data that can be found in public spaces. Being an iPhone application just makes these data portable and easily accessible and thus people use them.
What challenges did you face in developing the app?
Development-wise, the main challenges were developing on Objective C. I have cursed it many times because of the lack of a garbage collector in the iPhone implementation. Memory errors are so hard to diagnose and fix. As such, one has to be careful in memory management and this is a skill that most modern programming languages do not require anymore. Version 1 of Malls.sg crashed pretty frequently when the map was loaded. Also acquiring the data from various shopping mall websites took a lot of work but this part was mainly outsourced.
What feedback have you gotten for your app?
Generally feedback has been positive as this is a very useful application where the pain point is quite high. Interestingly, the first review on your application really determines the type of reviews you get from then on. One can see the difference in reviews of MallmentSG and Malls.sg. They are identical applications but the reviews follow the tone of the first application.
Why did you change the name of the app from Mallment.SG to Malls.SG? What does Mallment mean anyway?
I was looking for a name for the application. Mallment.com had “mall” inside it, and in Chinese, it sounded like Mall们。Most importantly the domain name was available. Later we decided to change it to Malls.SG because we realized we didn’t really need to be creative with names on iTunes and that no one goes to the domain name anyway.
What other iPhone apps are you working on?
Right now I am working on an advertising library that can be integrated into the applications of other developers. As for applications, I haven’t got a great idea for another application yet. We are also making Malls.SD, which is the same application as Malls.SG but for Sydney.
What aspect of 3.0 excites you?
I haven’t taken a close look at 3.0 yet. But I am looking closely at push notifications as that can be useful for advertising. 2359 media is not into push advertising but I would like to see how other ad networks use it and if users will be irritated by it which I think they will be.
What are your favourite apps on the iPhone?
On the iPhone, the main apps I use daily are Facebook, Twinkle (@Ybother), Yammer (for communication within 2359media, all three of us are iPhone users), Malls.sg :), Today, Straits Times, New York Times, SGTransport and buUuK.
Tell us about 2359 Media. What it is and why should iPhone developers care about it?
Founded in February 2009, 2359 Media is Asia-Pacific’s creative advertising network for native mobile applications. With the introduction of the SDKs for mobile applications to be developed by thirdparty developers, we believe that mobile advertising can now achieve its true potential through embedding targeted advertisements within applications. As such, 2359 Media looks to help local advertisers understand and leverage this new platform to effectively targeted marketing campaigns at users.
For developers, with local advertisements that targets users based on their behavior within the application, 2359 Media offers higher financial returns to the developer. In addition, we realized that a significant majority of application users (estimated at 80%) in Singapore do not have an always on data connection. Hence, unlike other mobile advertising networks, we equip developers with the ability to monetize offline usage.
1 comments:
is this application using AGPS?
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