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Shareprice iPhone app goes live

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Tim
Filed Under Technology |

I’m pleased to announce the release of our live share price application, now available from the UK iTunes app store : search for ’shareprice’ or directly link to iTunes page.

The application is true first from a technical perspective, being the first approved native iPhone application to integrate with Lightstreamer (www.lightstreamer.com) in order to stream prices between the ‘market’ and the iPhone.  All other apps to our knowledge poll for their data (and 15 minute delayed data at that), so being able to offer real-time tick by tick streaming is a massive leap forward.

This app wouldn’t have been possible without the work of Gianluca Bertani, who wrote a Cocoa-native set of classes to interface with the Lighstreamer server (using its ’generic’ adapter).  More can be read about the proejct at http://code.google.com/p/istreamlight/.  Thanks Gianluca.

Also, the guys at Lighstreamer have been very supportive.  We are rolling it out across all of Interactive Investor’s streaming services and it’s already in use on the web at www.shareprice.co.uk.  A great ‘comet’ style solution for users that want reliability and scalability.

Finally, it transpired quite late in the development that streaming style connections weren’t happening over the O2 3G network. Many mobile operators use transparent proxies to block and control traffic between handsets and the Internet and we were falling in to that ruleset due to the need for the iPhone to maintain a persistent connection to enable the streaming.  A big thank you therefore to O2 for modifying their rules to allow our app to stream both over wi-fi and also 3G/GPRS.

NB. The app is only available in the UK iPhone store due to data licensing / distribution restrictions.

Comments

3 Responses to “Shareprice iPhone app goes live”

  1. Comet Daily » Blog Archive » iPhone, iStreamLight, SharePrice, and Lightstreamer on November 11th, 2008 6:14 am

    [...] is a comment from Interactive Investor: The application is a true first from a technical perspective, being the first approved native [...]

  2. The News before The News » Market ticks streaming to your iPhone on November 13th, 2008 7:10 pm

    [...] be made by sending the historical data down to the client. That said it is very impressive for a first release and now you can watch your life savings evaporate whilst sitting on the [...]

  3. Stephen on December 29th, 2008 11:15 am

    A FANTASTIC piece of software, especially for a 1st release !

    Plus….Its Free !

    Thank you !

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