Monday, June 3, 2013

Shutting down Live Score Card Android App

Last year, out of boredom I wrote a Live Wallpaper (Android) which would display the live scorecard. I scrapped data from a very popular site.

Wait, allow me to explain. I'd no intentions to steal data. Or, I didn't have any intentions to create something like this.

In my opinion, I followed a proper way

- I tried contacting several teams (sites) asking if they offer any APIs. Many didn't respond and few replied stating that they offer only paid solutions which start at a minimum of 5K per month (* Refer attached mail chain).

- The other URLs that I got from Stackoverflow spoke nothing about restricted access (even their robots.txt said nothing). At the same time, the data that they provided weren't enough to build a fully featured app.

At that point, I thought, "Why let trivial things such as access and data bother app development? Let me finish building it and then I'll decide whether to continue it or not. Anyhow, I'm not going to make money."

All things said, the scraper was pretty light weight and given the scale of the website, a cron accessing the site and scraping a single page is no big deal (Technically, of course. ;-) ). So, I went ahead and scraped their URL. Apart from a handful of my friends who helped me out with testing app in their devices, I extensively used it for 3-4 months, totally forgot about it until recently when I was asked about the app in one of interviews :D

Now, out of sheer guilt I have disabled the api which pulled data from their site. :'(

Sorry guys.
Nothing personal.

Happy coding :)
~ cheers.!

---
* mail chain

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pankaj Chhaparwal 
Date: Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 5:51 PM
Subject: RE: RSS Feeds to get live scores
To: karthick r 

The smallest pkg we have is for rs 5000 per month. 

Regards,
Pankaj
 

From: karthick r [xxxx] 
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2012 5:35 PM
To: Pankaj Chhaparwal
Subject: Re: RSS Feeds to get live scores
 
Hi, 
Thanks for the prompt reply.
Please let me know the applicable rates. It'll help me decide. 

Regards,
Karthick.R

On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Pankaj Chhaparwal  wrote:

Hi Karthick, 
We can provide you this content, but we only offer a paid solution. 
Let me know if you would be interested. 

Regards,
Pankaj Chhaparwal



From: xx@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2012 2:36 PM
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RSS Feeds to get live scores
 
Hi, I am working on an android app to display live scores. Just want to know if you are providing any API to pull the match/score data. Once developed, this app will be available for others to download from Google Play for Free. Please let me know if you provide any such APIs. Thanks, Karthick Website: http://about.me/r.karthick 
Company: Developer
-- 
regards,
r.karthick

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