Third-Party Android App
HunterRobbert
April 21, 2015 at 03:35 PM posted in General DiscussionHey,
If anyone is on Android and looking for an alternative to the official ChinesePod app, I published a third-party alternative called ChineseMaterial on the Google Play Store.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hunterrobbert.chinesematerial&hl=zh-TW
This is something I started a while ago since I love ChinesePod's material but didn't so much love the ways of accessing it. I published it earlier this year so other people could hopefully find it as usefull for studying as I have. It's not as full featured as the official app, but it allows viewing of lessons vocab, dialogue, expansion and grammar, searching lessons, filtering lessons, and the ability to download lessons offline/an offline mode.
There are two caveats at the moment which are
1. You must be on at least Android 4.4 (Kitkat) and
2. It's really only optimized for phone sized devices at the moment (no tablet layout support yet).
If this sounds like something you'd find useful, give it a try and let me know how it goes. This project is my first real foray into Android so any feedback you all have would be great.
I hope this can help other people in their studies just as much as it has me!
Matt_T
April 21, 2015 at 04:03 PM
DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS APP!I would recommend against people downloading it since it's not sancionted, approved or promoted by Chinesepod. After you download the app you need to give the app your CPod account info which gives the developer potential access to your CPod account and personal contact and payment information.
HunterRobbert
April 21, 2015 at 05:21 PM
Yea that would have been a good idea. Thanks for taking the time to find that.
Hopefully you can get some use out of the app! Let me know if you run into any issues
Matt_T
April 21, 2015 at 05:05 PM
I did some more digging and found the Google Plus page for your app. I do see that Gwilym is one of the members for the group so I would say that this is a solid indicator that your app is legit even if nobody from CPod responds.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/102926022494773593012
Perhaps you could have linked the app g+ community page in the initial post as well to provide us with a little more info ;)
Like I said, I was just concerned about the potential security risk to myself and any fellow CPod users that may not be as cautious.
The quite like the app design, its clean interface aligns with the design principles on the CPod website. Looking forward to trying it out.
HunterRobbert
April 21, 2015 at 04:53 PM
Ah. Got it
And I understand. I haven't looked at the log in process from this perspective. Maybe there's a different approach that would be less intimidating or more informative for the user as to why they have to immediately provide their credetials.
Hopefully a team member will come to the rescue to help further pacify any concerns.
At least nobody can criticize you for having your guard down
Matt_T
April 21, 2015 at 04:39 PM
Hi Hunter,
Thank you for the response, I appreciate you sharing the info and developing this application for fellow Poddies to potentially use. I will admit that I'm not a developer and the API info does mention on the website that it requires approval but with the information you posted there was no mention that you were working with CPod or that they gave this approval.There was also no comment from CPod so I wanted to raise the concern.
Even if there is a shared API available it doesn't mean that it's being used. Anyone could have created a keylogger app desguised as a legit app. This key logging app requests login info and just captures that login info without bringing the user to any site, then the user has given up their personal login info and access to their account. I downloaded the app to try it and the first this I was greeted with was a page requesting my login info, there was no further explaination.
As a user there is no way for me to know if this is legit or not until I enter this login info, so this is why I raised the concern until we can get a comment from a CPod member stating that it was approved.
HunterRobbert
April 21, 2015 at 04:29 PM
Yikes.
I've been in contact with ChinesePod throughout the process of making this app. The app uses the ChinesePod public API which in order to gain access to, I was required to get in contact with the ChinesePod head developer who then registered my app and provided me with a developer id and password. If you'd like more information about how the app handles user information and what is and isn't possible, you can read through the API documentation here:
https://chinesepod.com/api/docs/index.html#api-Account
Also, take not of the "Promote your app" section in the documentation which encourages third-party developers to distribute their ideas among the community as that is the whole purpose of the API.
There's no way for me to access your personal contact information besides the email associated with your account nor is there a way to access/alter anything to do with a users payment information.
Any service which offers a public api for use by third-party developers functions in a similar fashion.
I hope this eases some of your concerns as this is not at all what I would like people to think. I made this on my own time so I could use it to study. I opened it up for other CPod subscribers thinking someone else might find it helpful as well.
Sorry for any possible confusion
Matt_T
April 21, 2015 at 04:14 PMIf this is an approved app from Chinesepod then can someone from the team who approved this app please comment so we can know if it's safe or not. Right now your API info is just on the websitehttp://chinesepod.com/api/docs/index.html so anybody could create an application and us CPod users don't know if it's approved or not. If this is an approved app, that's awesome and I look forward to trying it but I just wanted to be safe and warn people of potential security risks.