ubuntu-appstore-developers team mailing list archive

[Martin Albisetti <martin.albisetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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> Martin Albisetti wrote on 21/04/14 20:04:
>> ...
>>
>> Currently, and for a little while until we hit critical mass,
>> we'll be lacking apps that people expect their phones to have. We
>> will, however, have similar apps that may help bridge the gap.
>>
>> I'd like to propose we add to empty search results the possibility
>> for the server to return "related apps".
>
> Applications often show up in search results only incidentally, so
> whether the search results are empty isn't relevant to whether related
> apps should be shown.
>
> For example, if someone searched for "Spotify", and it wasn't
> available, you might want to show streaming music services X, Y, and Z
> that are available. Airfoil isn't a streaming music service, but it
> happens to mention Spotify in its description. So if Airfoil was
> ported to Ubuntu Touch, the search results for "Spotify" would no
> longer be empty. But that would not change whether X, Y, and Z should
> be included in those results.

Agreed.


>> We can change over time what the server uses to calculate what to
>> return, we just need to agree what the changes to the API would
>> be, and make sure the server and the client can represent this.
>>
>> On the server side, Fabian is ready and eager to work on this.
>>
>> Who can pick up the scope side of things, help define the API and
>> make this change?
>>
>> ...
>
> Ubuntu Software Center already has this capability (though the
> database has never been populated), so it may be worthwhile looking at
> its implementation.

Yeah, it doesn't look like something we should use.

-- 
Martin