yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
xedahh: I really like the look and feel of your design, although as mentioned, I will not include the name "XDA" in the title of the site. I want this site to be understood and known by the millions of people who don't know what xda or xda-forums are....

redmanmark86: Read above.. I totally agree with your meanings.

Electzik: All your points are the general idea for the site :)

If you guys keep posting ideas and/or screenshots, I'll most probably incorporate them in the site, and the final design might be some combination of all the designs, or might be one selected design. Nothing is decided (and may never be...) and some things I've decided already...

Anyway - it's great that so many are showing interest in this project, it makes it so much easier to work on it, and it shouldn't be long until I have something working and ready for testing!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jiangruibing:
It sounds like this will be a great website and a great application! When it comes to the name I also think it would be good to avoid names that includes "marketplace", if the plan is to keep most of the applications free. A better word to use in the title could be "database".

Like "YSAD.com Your Smartphone application Database". Or perhaps "OSAD.com Open smartphone application Database".
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] ghost-5:
this sounds like a great idea but one thing has come to mind, how is the server going to be paid for... something like this could take off really quickly (mainly due to the popularity of this site) but with 1000's of people downloading files off the server it is going to cost a fair bit to keep it going. Maybe a timed advertisement before your allowed to download anything?

An idea from me would be to have an option like in WM Marketplace, to be able to download and install all previous downloads. This would be great after a ROM upgrade, but also an option to delete items off the list (as our favourite apps change all the time and we don't need to be downloading 3 task managers ;) )
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] stefanclark:
yngvebn - you seem to have worked a lot quicker on the idea that I had planned. Was going to suggest getting together some coders and possibly host on svn or similar, that way we can get this project up and running as quickly as possible, set up bug tracking and we can assign feature requests etc. to various milestones. I had been thinking about the general database structure but your already there, maybe it's worth another eye going over it?

I personally am hopeless at design, but if others can provide the sketches for what the site should look like I can get the code to make it work. Maybe we shouldn't restrict the site to a certain design. If we can make the website work well with templates then different people can create different designs - i see the need for a mobile friendly website as well as access via dekstop/laptop - so that is 2 templates straight away.

Let me know how I can help if at all.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] gorn15:
Best Idea

I never heard about a better idea.

When this comes true microsoft can go home with his marketplace.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
I have no interest in keeping the code for myself, so I'm happy to share the work.. :) I'd like, however, to get a preliminary version finished first, and then releasing it through svn...

I've been considering the future from the start, so the dataaccess-layer is built so that the database can be easily changed.. I'm also spending some time on building good unit-tests, to avoid breaking stuff when changes are done.

You will most definitely be able to help, so I'll let people know when I release it to svn, and people will be able to contribute.

I'll also build the design of the site based on strict CSS and it's best practices... This should make templating the site pretty straight forward, simply by changing the css-file.

Conserning the hosting of such a site - I've got a pretty decent deluxe hosting plan over at godaddy, which gives me 150GB storage, SQL-server and 150Gb bandwidth, so we should be fine in the beginning. -mobile apps are usually not that large in size, so we'll just scale it before we reach a certain point :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] arturobandini:
Fantastic project. Thanks a lot guys :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] stefanclark:
yngvebn: all makes plenty of sense to get it off the ground at first! Let me know whenever I can step in.

As for hosting it's impossible to predict what we'll need, just have to play it by ear - two i've used in the past before are www.servage.net and www.lunarpages.co.uk - not the quickest hosting, but as far as value for money space & transfer I've not really seen any better.

(Doing some quick maths, what size is an average app, 3MB? 150GB is therefore 50,000 downloads a month, this forum has "265,959" active members according to the text at the bottom - not sure how much truth there is in that but this project could be a lot bigger than anticipated. Maybe have to build in mirroring of downloads from the start? Torrent downloads?)

Was driving home and was thinking the styling should be pretty much completely customisable via css a-la csszengarden.com
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Barlows:
Excellent idea, I'd love an XDA app!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] KowboyBebop:
This could possibly be one of XDA's most important project =)

I'm really exited about the idea of XDA/free/donated app database for PC and PPC. Desin by CSS is a standart these days, so Different themes will be pretty easy to create (*CSS file + images). The hard thing will be coding and hosting as mentied above. But there is a great problem. How to make people go and upload their apps in there. So before you start anything, you should talk with some admins of famous websites to get support in this project.

It would be good to make a post with list of people working on it and list of features. Just some general infos.

Looking forward to seeing this soon =)

Btw: Design in this topic is pretty awesome. But a bit plain, should be a bit more complex for a big project as this. I'm sure it will get even more awesome as soon as designer get to know codes and ideas behind them.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] rzasharp:
total support for this project dudes! just an advice: make it as pretty as the touch flo 3D as user friendly. could be a nice way for the great developers here to earn some bucks
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] jnyberg:
Hi, I'm new here but I think this is an excellent project and something that will be used allot.

One suggestion that I can think of is some type of version tracking of the downloaded application.

This way when you login to the site it knows what versions of an application you have downloaded before and can inform you that a new version is available.

It's easier to be up to date this way.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xedahh:
People have rightly mentioned that the hosting requirements would be enormous.

I suggest not hosting the files on the site, just listing direct downloads where possible. That should make the site far more scalable and limits legal vulnerabilities.

I think the sooner someone can set up a multi-author project and versioning for this the better.. Lots of people want to contribute and I reckon the potential is immense so let's get organised about it.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Recoda:
One of the major advantages with a marketplace such as this would be that people wouldn't have to find own webpages where they could host their files. I know there are a lot of programmers out there who simply don't share their applications as they don't have any good place to share them on.

Being able to host the applications on the webpage would be one major advantage, even if it would increase the bandwidth used.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] petexx:
Great idea,

I could support it with a donation. Probably many people would do the same.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xedahh:
This makes sense.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
This is already implemented in my current version ;)

When it comes to hosting and bandwidth, godaddy has unlimited hosting/bandwidth for $15 per month... This is not a problem for me to cover personally for the time being, so let's put the hosting-discussion on hold for a while and concentrate on getting the site up and running.

The files should be hosted on the site, in order to make sure links aren't broken, and to give all the developers without their own hosting the ability to upload their apps to a free repository. Remember that the main idea is to make applications easily available to everyone! Even the people that don't know xda-developers.com exist!

I'm not home until later today, but when I get home, I'll take all the suggestions, and make a milestone 1 feature-list with all the features that are required for an initial release.

oh, and for the name... When I started planning this project last summer, I registered the name MobileDownloadr.com, so that's probably where it will be hosted in the beginning... That domain expires in august, so no problem changing the name underway, but it's a place to start.

:)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] rzasharp:
Do you mean MobileDownloads.com or MobileDownloadr.com ?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
I mean MobileDownloadr.com :)

The reason was that I visioned mainly an winmo-application at that time (and mobiledownloader.com was taken...)

As I said, this does not have to be the name of the site. But since I have hosting and stuff set up, it's a good place to start :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] [★]:
Just been reading over this thread and I must say, Im really excited, I think it could go very far :)

A couple of points I wanted to make-

1. I think if you want this to be really successful then you should talk to the creators of xda and maybe try to work out some sort of joint project where you can use the name, I expect it will atract alot more traffic as it will be a trusted name + they may be able to share the costs and support you.

2. Is the site going to be accesible via mobile? I think that would be a reason bonus (not sure if this is already intended) as then it is accesible on the fly and the files can be downloaded straight to the phone, simpler for the less techsavvy on here.

3. I dont think we should use any direct download sites for a few reasons, firstly people may being to use your links on other sites, secondly like was already mentioned, links could become broken and also if this marketplace is accesible by mobile phones, most direct download sites cant be used on them.

Just a few ideas to think about :)

Anyway, I'll keep following this and be of any help I can (although I cant program or design lol)

Good Luck !
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Recoda:
I think the whole idea would be to have a new application (Marketplace) in your Windows Mobile device, so that you could access, search and filter everything in the mobile itself? :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] derScheich:
Right, this is what I imagine, too. Just like the marketplace from MS, only with much more software.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] PiepsoDJ:
To whomever is going to make the XDA Marketplace app:

It think it is a great idea! This would be a really really really nice feature!

Since i'm owner of a hosting company, i'm willing to provide the programmer with:

- A free domainname

- Free webhosting with a lot of space

- Free mysql databases and FTP access

- Anything further he/she might require to get this marketplace up and running.

PM me for more details.

Lets make ourselfs a nice, fast, clean running marketplace! :D
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xedahh:
Definitely - this could go so much further as a project affiliated with XDA, I have no desire to see an independent site set up when instead we could leverage the community and take an established 'brand' further. Perhaps this should be moved into the 'About xda-developers' forum as it seems more fitting than the HD2 one.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] [★]:
Agreed, that way more people will look at it and voice their opinions.

BTW put my down for some alpha testing
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xenept:
That's awesome of you and a very generous offer. Hopefully someone will get in touch!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Archer:
If this project doesn't go down that route, I don't see the point. Another website with the content that already exists on xda-developers is basically just a copy of xda-developers.

An application that runs on our xdas, however, is a great idea!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] PiepsoDJ:
I've used so much roms from XDA members, installed and uninstalled so many cabs filled with tweaks. And my HD2 is now finally perfect.

I haven't posted a lot of replys however, this is only my third, and i joined this forum way back in 2008...

I think it is time for me to do something back ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Timothye:
i want to see this happen .

nice
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Kjohnsen:
If this ever being a reality im gonna break out in tears of joy! literally!

Oh and 2 more things..

1. Im an photoshop addict, been workin with it in bout 12 years now, so let me know If theres anything i can help design.

and 2, Why havnt anyone thourght of this before? :p
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] turborider:
fantastic idea hope will be true :D
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
Hehe, don't hang with your heads people! :)

I'm working on it right now, getting things to stick together...

Actually I'm adding phones/manufacturers/os/osversions to the database through a Web-gui, so I'll soon be able to test uploading projects and releases.. Trying to keep a fast pace, and I'm paying no attention to design at the moment.

I need to get the functionality up and running first, then implement design :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Barlows:
Excellent, I'm looking forward to it!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] djngal:
hmm sounds like a very interesting project indeed... :)

it could change the way we see xda for the best ;)

but i would really like to see what moderators and/or developers think about this project... and really how come no one has ever thought about this before? or did and it didnt work out?

i guess someone from the founders of this great community could shed some light.. ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] chill today:
Good luck in getting this together.

Sorry I cannot help, useless at this sort of thing.

Chill.....
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] KowboyBebop:
it would be great to hear opinion on this from admins and know if and how they want to cooperate. anyway, sounds like this project is going just fine. let us know if you need some graphic. i too could help a bit. but there are others better then me, i guess :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Kjohnsen:
I think I love you! :p Sounds cool, when it gets to any design face let me know, I'l be glad to help out.. And event be willig to do tumbnail to any App or Cab there goes on this. :D

I gonna shed some light right now, wheres there is way there is will! Thats all we need. :D "Nothing is impossible for He who carries the will in His heart" as Einstein, Napoleon, Hitler or Will smith once said.. Im not sure..
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Kjohnsen:
Sooo... Any news on this? Or did it just die Yesterday? :p
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Timothye:
i think we just need to be patient .
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xedahh:
I've been developing the concept design I started on the weekend and will post it when I get back from work. I imagine yngvebn has been busy as well!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Ruudfood:
I don't know if this suggestion has been made already but the apps should be organised first and foremost by phone model. Why? Because developers tend to write an app or tweaks for a device they own and users want to find apps for their devices too.

This will also quickly filter out stuff like minimum CPU or RAM requirements.

The "testing" of an app can be carried out by the community who can download an app or tweak for ANY device then give feedback on the site in the form of a matrix:

I've tested this on:

Device - SE X1

OS - WM 6.5.3

ROM - Manila 2.02

And [ ]it works [ ]it doesn't work [ ]it works but with bugs

As the [ ] it works values increase the availability of the app/tweak will then be added to the list for, in this example, SE X1.

Does that make sense?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] tmaniac:
What a nice feature would be is;

1) Register an account

2) Define your phone model and stuff like that (Profile)

3) Browse the normal website on your desktop.

4) Select the apps you want to have on your phone on the website

5) Open the InstallerApp on the phone ;) and log in with your profile.

6) Install the previously selected apps with 1 push of a button!

(and after a hard reset, install the InstallerApp and again, with 1 push of the button install your entire WishList!)

Great initiative!

If you need admins for the 'marketplace' just give me a PM.

I'm just a simple systems administrator that can't code but i wanna help where needed ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] [★]:
I think you should be able to use your xda account as it would be better if the sites were affiliated
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
Hehe... Getting inpatient already? :)

Alright.. Here's the current status of the project:

1. Register / Login - Done

2. Set default phone and/or OS

3. Create project with different releases

3a. Set Category for project

4. Admin:

- Define Manufacturers, Phones, OS'es, OS-versions, categories

- Add pictures of the phones

I spent quite some time in the beginning to get the content-editing parts of the admin-section working, in order to easily change/add more phone-models, OS-versions and so on.. Makes it easier to create the views and lists for listing apps, games and so on.

What I really would like to get some input on is what categories there should be on the site.. Preferably with some sub-categories as well.

So far, I've only added Games, Tweaks and Apps, with a few sub-categories just for testing...

I'll keep you updated on progress.. .Love working on this site, so there's no chance it'll just go away and die ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xedahh:
Note: I'm trying to lean the colour scheme more towards xda-devs because I'm keen to see this project go in that direction.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
Seriously - I LOVE the way you're developing this design!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] arturobandini:
AMAZING DESIGN!!! Love it :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Electzik:
mmmh, this design is amazing... what about trying to make the app design too ? :p

I also thought about a wallpaper section... don't know if it's really useful but it could be nice
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
For now I've just made a Wallpapers sub-category under the Tweaks category...
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] jallajalla:
This is a great idea. I realy like the "wishlist" idea:D
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
Great idea!

In my experience there is no such thing as a "simple systems administrator" ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] ToddeSwe:
I just LOVE this idea!!!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Sir Schwanzelot:
input as you wished :)

Categories:

Featured

Programs (sub: Office, Fun, Control (like remote control or joystick), emulator, Editors (registry for example), ROMs,

Games (sub: Race, Shooter, Puzzle, Boardgames, 3D etc)

Tweaks (sub: Guides, Tweaks (a la bsb tweaks),

Design( sub: Themes, Icons, Wallpaper)

just to get you started

I think it's important, that we don't have too much main categories, it would become confusing.

best regards
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] tmaniac:
categories;

(ok, some are 'ripped' from MS Marketplace ;))

Themes

- Taskbars

--Top Taskbars

--Bottom taskbars

- Sense Themes

- Titanium Themes

- Other Themes

Games

- Action

- Puzzle

- Adventure

- Board Games

- Trivia

Apps

- News (RSS)

- Weather

- Tools

-- File Explorers

-- Registry Editors

- Social networks

- Communication

- Misc

Tweaks
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Cret:
Brilliant idea -look forward to seeing this come to fruition.

Am a developer myself but sadly I can only write boring business related stuff in one language, and nothing interesting like this. :(
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Hassan99:
I can help you guys out with one root server in germany. :)

Keep on going with this idea!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Rushedby:
This is one hell of an idea, i'm already a big fan and can't wait till it's release
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] degake:
When the XDA Marketplace is ready, we only need a worldwide advertising campaign, so we can kick the hell out of Apple's, Windows and Google Market!! :D
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] [★]:
Lol,

"Im a mac"

"and Im a pc"

"AND IM A ****ING XDA MARKET PLACE MOTHER ****ER!!!!!"

something along those lines?

even though its not macs and pcs :3
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] stefanclark:
I want to get svn set up with trac so we are ready for when we get multiple developers. also trac will give us the bug tracking and a system to assign tasks and features to developers and milestones. etc.

this something we can set up on your server? my own vps is pretty limited on space with other websites.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] linuxoid999:
gr8 idea.

will be happy to code or test.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] DavidC1980:
This project looks great. XDA is a great place for finding apps but the forum can be difficult to find what you're looking for.

One suggestion I'd make on the categories is that you shouldn't fall into the trap of making too many of the categories at the top level of choice technical/tweak related. If this marketplace is to have some mass appeal, you'll want a number of categories for apps that people want to use day to day. Afterall, we buy the phones to use them, not just to tweak them and fix what the manufacturers have given up on :)

Categories for Transport, TV Radio (web TV/Radio), Entertainment (eg cinema listings, TV listings), Games, Music, Finance, Weather, Automotive/GPS/Mapping, Social networking would be great.

Then additional to these you'd have the phone related categories like ROMS, backgrounds, ringtones, skins, browsers, email and SMS clients, phonebooks etc.

I can't wait to see this become a reality, it's a great looking project.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] vodnok:
:D

Maybe before making advertising, waiting to launch the paltforme in alpha then Beta.

I think making a marketXDA website is more easy then making an app like marketplace.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] stefanclark:
im sure there are plenty of people here that can write wm apps, just need to agree an api to feed data to and from the website, probably just some http requests which return some xml data, app can then display this in a nice finger friendly fashion.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
Thats the plan :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] yngvebn:
Teaser...

Thought I'd just tease you guys a little bit before it's time for bed....

Now, everything on the page you see actually works.

The apps in Featured applications are just dummys, but that's just because I didn't bother creating enough projects to get the scroll-effect working (yes, the buttons work, and the dropshadow is mouse-over effect :D)

the "Free software for your XDA phone"-banner is just a picture, so no action there... But the Menu-tabs work, and I can see the Admin-tab ... well ... because I'm admin... :)

Tomorrow I'm gonna have a day off from developing (been working 24 hours since friday now, not including my dayjob, so I'm gonna drink beer instead... :))

But as you can see, things are progressing pretty fast...

EDIT: Noticed the screenshot ended up being quite small, but that just adds to the excitement, doesn't it ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Exlo:
Lovely....

Damn this is going fast! Keep up!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Kjohnsen:
Looks real good. Love hte design, even tho Its a bit HTC rip off'ish. :p

But thats just a website right? What about an actuall Store App thingy?