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Discounts For Me

This is my own project.

An iPhone app to explore member-discounts. Lot of member organizations (public radios, auto clubs and gyms ..etc) offer local business discounts for their members. This app uses current GPS location to show users the discounts they can get for the memberships.

web site : DiscountsForMe.net
icon/splash design : Veronica Van Gogh Design

This is a client-server iPhone app. The server application and web services are built using Ruby on Rais.
More about server side app

Highlights:

  • took the idea from concept stage all the way to a finished product
  • architected and developed both iPhone-APP(Objective-C) and the SERVER-SIDE (Ruby on Rails)
  • negotiated agreements with member organizations
  • promoted the app using social media (Twitter, Facebook)
    @discountsforme
  • Gave talks on 'building client-server iphone apps' at various meetups and iPhoneDevCamp
    link to presentations

Features

iPhone app

  • Client-Server iPhone app
  • app uses iPhone's geo location to show discounts available around the user
  • Intuitive UI - simple and to the point
  • Network activity happens in background threads so UI remains very responsive
  • Data is fetched from Server. This allows us to update data without issuing new iPhone app updates
  • Uses secure connections to server
  • 'security codes' to prevent un-authorized clients
  • Mobile-Analytics enabled to track usage patterns

Server backend

  • Built on Ruby on Rails
  • Serves as a web application (DiscountsForMe.net) and a webservice platform for the iphone app
  • Webservices are tuned for performance. Data sent over the wire is kept to a minimum; Also frequently used data is cached for quicker response
  • Built in 'security codes' to prevent un-authorized clients
  • Designed to support future versions of clients and new functionality while supporting the old versions of clients
  • Built in support to 'end-of-life' clients that are too-old
  • Code is profiled to keep track of web service performance. Critical stats like 'response time' ..etc are logged to spot trends
  • wrote crawlers to extract discounts data
 checkout screen shots below (use arrow keys, mouse wheel or slider)

Splash Screen
(use slider below or mouse wheel to see other images)
Help for first time launch
All memberships shown by category
public radio memberships
User selects the memberships he has
All discounts near the current location. Also online/national discounts are shown
Discount list
Discount details
Integrated News & Updates
Built in Feedback form
use slider / mouse-wheel to see images