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Login to the Foursquare API v2 from Android with OAuth

March 16, 2011 / posted in Android, Java, Social / 8 Comments

Once you figured out how OAuth works, you might ask yourself how this principle works from within a native Android app. It’s actually easier then expected at first. There exist some libraries that can make our life somehow easier, but I decided not to use any of them and to do everything from scratch.

This is the OAuth workflow for Foursquare:

  • A call to the Foursquare server is made with the client id and a redirect URL (has to be in a browser)
  • The user accepts the access request of the application
  • Foursquare calls the redirect URL with special code as parameter
  • The Foursquare server has to be called again with the client id, client secret, the code and the redirect URL (not in the browser anymore)
  • Foursquare returns now the access token which has to be saved by the app
  • Further calls to the Foursquare API can be made with the token

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Does Social Networking changes our view of privacy?

May 15, 2010 / posted in Social / No Comments

Social Networking:

How Social Networking changes our view of privacy

As Social Networking Sites (SNS) in the Internet are faced with an exponential growth, it gets more and more important what kind of personal data users are willing to disclose to get a fully satisfying user-experience in return. These days, many users expect a SNS to allow them to broadcast their thoughts and doings in realtime to all their friends. But that was not always the case; when Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook which has currently over 400 million active users (Facebook, 2010), in 2004 invented the status field that allowed the users to make their thoughts public, many people asked him “What is that good for?” and “Why would I like to post my thoughts to the Internet?”. Since then, posting status messages has become normal for Facebook users and most of them would certainly miss that feature. These status messages are in fact nothing else then highly personal data. It is possible to know a person quite well just by reading this persons Facebook wall. But what does it mean when millions of people feel the demand to disclose their personal data to their friends and often to the whole world? Does this mean that they are less concerned about their privacy than people were previously? My research actually shows exactly the opposite of that; Even if people are sharing quite a lot of their private data, it seems that they care rather more about their privacy then in the early days. »Read More