[Paideia]

I had an interesting business idea today I wanted to run by some friends -

Basically, it involves developing an i-phone/smart-phone app that would sync
with a major institutional database.

Anyone here experience with something LIKE this or knows where I can go about learning more?

I have little or no technical knowledge besides basic VBA programming and work with Access databases - I would just be the visionary here and give the job to some tech-saavy types.

There are probably obstacles I haven't thought of, but the more I think about this idea, the more awesome it sounds.

[skulled]

(06-15-2011 06:50 PM)Paideia Wrote:  

Basically, it involves developing an i-phone/smart-phone app that would sync
with a major institutional database.

To what effect?

What is the point of the sync and what exactly is it going to be syncing?

Very little information to provide any kind of useful feedback ...

[Paideia]

My bad -

essentially, I want to develop an iphone app that would sync with the university website that registers all your exam and tuition registrations for my school.

At the start of the semester, you register for the tuition then exams, then you sync the iphone - you get your weekly schedule of lectures and tuition classes, assignment deadlines (plus requirements), finals dates, etc. all synced into your iphone calender for the next semester. When dates are changed or updates made, you get an email and you can re-sync.

My school has about 50,000 students. The city I live in probably has 120,000 - don't know how many have a smart-phone, but whatever it is, that number is rising.

[skulled]

There are a lot more things you need to consider in this case like:

- Does the university provide all the registration data etc in an easily accessible format? They need to have a way where one should be able to get the data from their system through an API or something, if not then it will not really be possible.

- If they don't have the above, how are you planning on convincing them to provide or build one?

- If they use an already existing system like Blackboard or something, there possibly are apps already doing what you outlined. So check what kind of back-end system your school is using first, its technical architecture, the availability of the data in it etc

Hope this helps a bit more. If you have any further questions, feel free to post them.