Parse (YC S11) adds User Accounts to Android. | Hacker News Reader

Parse (YC S11) adds User Accounts to Android.

parse.com

47 pointsNemisis765423 comments

Just to be clear, these are User Accounts for apps built for Android using Parse, akin to iOS's single sign-in using Twitter?

I was anticipating someone had built multiple user logins for Android devices, which would've also been fascinating.

It's per-app user accounts that people can integrate with just a few lines of code.

It would be cool if there were custom support for linking accounts, such as with facebook. That code is never fun to write, but common.

Coming up!

Somewhat off topic:

This page has a beautiful javascript effect if you scroll. The index follows the page smoothly and highlights the displayed section. Does anyone know if this is a public library/function?

You should look into jquery waypoints --> http://imakewebthings.github.com/jquery-waypoints/

I use it on my blog to change how social buttons behave once you scroll past a certain point.

That is so amazingly sexy. Thank you :D

These sticky elements seem to scroll with the page (or stick?) much more smoothly than I've seen on other pages. Are there crappy versions out there or could I just be experiencing a newer browser optimization?

It's a simple trick. Instead of using JavaScript to stick them on the page, you change their positioning to fixed when they hit the window's edge. Then the browser takes care of the rest.

I wish the title would've meant the solution to the Android tablet multiuser problem¹ as well.

¹: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=15030

Hey we were just about to blog about this but you beat us to it! We also have some other good stuff we're set to announce this week so keep an eye out.

Who is we? :)

"We" is Team Parse ;-) Right now we have four people, HN usernames csmajorfive, jamesjyu, tikhon, and lacker (me). If you ever have any questions or feedback on Parse, feel free to contact us at feedback@parse.com directly.

Ah, nice. Good luck with the launch!

just one , it sucks when API returns null for not found instead of some form of NullObject IMNSHO it would be nicer and semantically more pleasing to eye to have if ( user.isLogged() ) { } else { }

Haha. Sorry about that. Keep up the good work. :)

what's the business model here?

It's a platform as a service. Most hobbyist and small apps will be free. Those needing more resources will pay us for usage - similar to Heroku, AWS, etc.

I sure hope this ties into Android's existing account management APIs. The one that already provides push notification support, automatic controllable data synchronization, etc.

Wow, not even 10 seconds and it's been shot at. What am I missing here?

Not only should it tie into the existing account management API's, but I can't figure out why they're offering their own push notification API when Android has one built in!!

We've heard from a lot of people who weren't happy with C2DM. We think our push API is easier to set up and use. It's also compatible with pre-2.2 Android and with Android devices that don't have an attached Google account. You can also can send push notifications to both iOS and Android with one API call. That said, if C2DM works for you there's nothing wrong with using it directly.

As a user, I'd certainly prefer for apps that I download to use the built in system functionality (like C2DM). One of the advantages of C2DM is a standard listener that used by all apps, rather than have multiple listeners (each potentially causing battery life impact). If the C2DM API is hard to use, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to write a helper wrapper around it, rather than add another listener.

No idea why you're getting downvoted. No application that uses their own push technology is as nice to my battery as C2DM is. Facebook and Twitter can't even get push notifications right, though Google refuses to put Google Voice through the push/sync that Gmail/Calendar/Contacts have. It makes no sense to me. It's there, it's easy to use, it's really battery friendly...

I think Parse user management is aimed at a different use case. The AccountManager is a more heavyweight library that is useful for many complicated things. For example, if you are Facebook or Foursquare and you're implementing your own api for third parties to use and you want third party apps to be able to use your service's account, definitely use the AccountManager. Whereas the ParseUser is designed to be the simplest way to add your own user accounts to your application. They're both useful; use the right tool for the job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com