Is this app idea possible?

[mpbiz]

I got an idea for an app yesterday and out of curiosity I want to see if its possible. I've been searching for awhile now and I found some good info but I'm also finding mixed answers so hopefully you guys can help me out with this one.

Example: Could you make an app that the user installs, the app can see all of the other apps the person has on their phone, and recommend other apps to the person based on which ones it finds?

Could this app not just recognize the other apps, but can it automatically pull data from them? Could it pull data from someone's foursquare app and be able to tell what restaurant they had been to that day?

Some of the articles I found show how certain apps are able to interact with each other, but I'm not sure how much data they can actually pass to each other and also whether you need to create some type of "permission" between app A and app B to do this or if you can just grab data from any app installed on the user's phone.

PS. Can the above be accomplished with an android as well?

 

[SkyFire]

Yes you can do it, no you shouldn't. If you are asking the question you aren't qualified to make it work. You could end up being sued by any of the companies you release the apps you are pulling data from or Google, and you'll only be able to pull from some apps. Totally black hat.

Permissions | Android Developers

If you want to build a recommendation service you should tie it into the users Google Account, and scrape Play for which apps they have installed.

As for iOS, I don't do iOS really, maybe someone else knows.

 

[mpbiz]

Yes you can do it, no you shouldn't. If you are asking the question you aren't qualified to make it work. You could end up being sued by any of the companies you release the apps you are pulling data from or Google, and you'll only be able to pull from some apps. Totally black hat.

Permissions | Android Developers

If you want to build a recommendation service you should tie it into the users Google Account, and scrape Play for which apps they have installed.

As for iOS, I don't do iOS really, maybe someone else knows.

The recommendation app was just an example. I need to pull actual app usage data if possible. Like being able to see that the person used foursquare and went to lunch at subway.

And this made me LOL: "If you are asking the question you aren't qualified to make it work"

Seriously? That's why I'm going to hire someone like you to build it for me.

 

[dchuk]

it's technically possible, but apple specifically is bending over recommendations apps and raping them lately.

As for accessing actual data from other apps, as far as I know, no, that's not possible. I'm pretty sure apps run sandboxed for the most part.