Farmyard
- by Richard Jones
Moooooooo For a while now we’ve been using Apple’s enterprise device app distribution mechanism. This allows you to have a user, click on a URL on their iOS device and it pulls down a new version of an enterprise app. of of our servers. Its really nice, have a look at - http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/FA_Wireless_Enterprise_App_Distribution/Introduction/Introduction.html I’ve embedded this, into a check on application launch, that a web-service is called to detect a newer version of the software is available. It then calls the URL to the App and a new version is deployed. You can alert users that a new App update is available by sending them a push notification. See screenshot at the top. We send our push notifications out to users, using a simple C# service. The fun part is this. You can instruct the push notification to play a sound (embedded in the app already). So our push notification’s play a random farmyard noise, i.e from a selection of - cow.wav dogbrk.wav duck.wav goose.wav horse.wav lamb.wav monkey.wav – left field I know rooster.wav Imagine my amusement being able to periodically send out an update and watch our office (of about 60 people) turn into farm for a few seconds. I’ve messed up a few times, with people being interrupted on customer conference calls, but people seem good humoured about it. (so far) Simple(ish) pleasures…
