Getting Windows 8 Contact Info Without Picker - windows-8

I have reviewed the few number of windows 8 contact questions on here, as well as the MSDN Contact picker sample and couldn't find an answer to my question.
It seems like, from most answers, the only way to get contact information from the people contract is to have the user manually choose the people they want the information for.
That doesn't seem completely right, since in the mail and messenger apps, they have found a way to get contact information for people that email or IM you without me choosing those people.
How do you go about accomplishing this programmatically? I would like to be able to pull either all contact data at once or get contact data by looking up specific emails linked to those users.

I would assume that in the Mail, People and Messaging apps, they are using details pulled straight from the users Windows Live account. I think you should be able to do this in your app, look here for documentation on the Live SDK: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/

I don't think it is possible to do this right now without a Picker. This would vioalate some security restrictions. But if you find a way, please post it here.

Related

Wechat : does an SDK / API exists?

I'm online on wechat (an instant messenger, not to be confused with weechat, that is an IRC client) and following a lot of groups for work. I'm searching for an SDK, an API set, to be able to automitize info collecting from groups and or individuals.
But i'm not aware of any way to do it.
Please, this is NOT an 'opinion' question, I'm litterally asking you if you know a way to receive data from weechat, because I cannot find it.
I see the area on weechat website where a company can ask for accces to API, but, really I cannot find other tools.
Edit 1: Chinese DOC, I think: https://open.weixin.qq.com/cgi-bin/showdocument?action=dir_list&t=resource/res_list&verify=1&id=open1419318183&token=&lang=zh_CN
Edit 2: Chinese DOC more similar to a JS api :http://work.weixin.qq.com/api/doc#10029/%E5%A4%96%E9%83%A8%E8%81%94%E7%B3%BB%E4%BA%BA%E9%80%89%E4%BA%BA%E6%8E%A5%E5%8F%A3
Obviously, use google translator !
As from my OP, there are some docs, official docs, but the real problem is that to create even a simply Mini Program, we need to subscribe (paid) and also paying at one point a chinese-only page asks by country and the list simply does not include Italy, so I simply cannot subscribe.

How to register for Fandango API key

I feel stupid asking this, but does anyone know how to register for a Fandango API key?
I'm trying to make a silly little app that pulls up available movie tickets on Fandango. There's tons of documentation on the internet about how to use their API, but nothing about registering. I tried their registration link on their site, but it just says "Registration is currently disabled":
https://developer.fandango.com/member/register
Do they not allow anyone to get a new API key anymore? Or am I just doing something stupid?
From Fandango:
Unfortunately we don't currently provide direct access without significant anticipated scale of ticket sales. We do offer a couple of alternative options.
You can access a variety of links and widgets via our presence on Commission Junction.
Alternatively, you can license showtime data from Gracenote or CinemaSource, and through that license, you'd be able to link directly to our site.

Make sent email functionality like github

i'm using Rails 3.2 and i come cross a problem to find solution like github email system.
I want to make functionality in my Rails app Forum like if there are 10 members of one forum group and if any one reply through email the reply quotes should be post on all forum groups.
For example if we are 4 persons work on a github repo. And when one email come to all persons and if anyone reply of mail using gmail reply link the email goes to all persons who are working on this repo.
some forums also use this functionality.
But i'm thinking that how control come to my app through gmail when anyone reply through gmail or anyother mailing server. i'm using gmail account currently.
Any ideas , blog posts ,refrences?
Thanks
Basically you're asking, "how can I have dynamically generated and maintained email lists?", right? This is a deep, deep problem space. I built just such a system a few years back, and it was a nightmare. Email is very complicated. Doing mailing lists right is very, very hard. You need to deal with:
Filtering out out-of-office responses
Re-writing the emails to resend them
Setting the proper mail headers
Dealing with attachments
The hundred and one types of email encoding
Outlook... oh god, Outlook
It's not an easy problem to solve. My recommendation would be to google around for a 3rd party provider with a good email list management API that you could pay to handle this for you.
Rolling your own would be a last resort...

How to access Contacts in Windows 8 People app from another app

Does anyone know how to access Contacts in Windows 8 Store apps?
I know that because of the sandboxed nature, Windows Store apps cannot access AddressBook from files such as Outlook Express contacts or Outlook, but since there is already an app called People that comes pre-installed, I figure why not let users make use of whatever Contacts the user has already allowed the app to see, rather than creating separate list of Contacts for my app. It seems silly to recreate the wheel by asking the user to re-import all the contacts again.
I have seen Contact Picker example but I still have no clues how to get list of Contacts/People as in that People app.
I have not developed for mobile phone, however if the device is a mobile phone, surely the app is expected to use local contacts rather than keeping separate list of contacts. So I am thinking there's got to be a way to do the same thing on a PC or any device really, rather than each app managing its own contacts. I have not seen any guidance on how to do this. What are your thoughts?
I asked a similar question a few days ago and, after a lot of research, it looks like it's just not possible to get that information from the people app outside of the contract. The reason that it works within calendar/mail/messenger is because they're all technically contained within the same app and are able to use each other's data and violate normal rules.
A lot of people have pointed me to look at the live SDK, but it still seems like it's not at all possible to get people information in your app, since the SDK doesn't support it anymore.
Look at the ContactPicker class :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br224913.aspx
Another way is to share your resource or whatever you want to send and user will choose an app that will send or on any another way use your shared resource (url, image, whatever)
IMO the latter is preferred way since then user will have a choice of applications that can send mail or post that resource on facebook / twitter.
Check this sample on ContactPicker

How to get in touch with the users of your WP7 apps?

This is a problem that every developer will face when building their apps: how to contact the reviewer of your app to notify them of an update, new release, help topics, etc?
Some things I am thinking:
Include an RSS feed in your app which you can update to notify the users of the app.
Include a twitter feed regarding your app. How to go about this?
Include a way for the users to subscribe to a mailing list. This way, I can send a mass-email to the users who opted-in? Any suggestions here?
Any other ways that you think this can/should be done? Any existing solutions you can point me to will be great. Thanks in advance.
One way, for contacting a specific user who created a review of an application is to go to Zune Social (at http://social.zune.net/home) and create a new message. You can then enter the Zune Tag of the user who created a review.
Personally, I'd try to do all three - have a web page/site, with an RSS feed, and a subscription link (so they can subscribe to the RSS feed via email) and then post any updates to your twitter account as well.
You can't really force a user to do any of these, but having the options available, and linked from inside your app on the about page is probably good practise.
You could also include some kind of "Update Available" feature inside the application. Try to make this as unobtrusive as possible obviously. Obviously if they've still got the app installed they'll get an update notification from the marketplace anyway.
Sam
Besides the suggestions made by samjudson, I'll also recommend having a support-page with a direct option to send a email to you. Here's a example of a support-page from one of my applications. I've received lot of emails with suggestions for improvements, or complains about bugs. And since it's by email, it gives you the option to respond directly to people.
Another thing about reviews. Don't take them to serious. Most people only rate negatively (since humans like to complain), and by such a lot of reviews are often misinformed, outdated, or the users just been plain ignorant.