Delivering a Mobile Application for Remote Control of a Multimedia Player

Summary

The solution is a client application that is installed on iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad to remotely control multiple customer’s devices and switch between the favorite Internet radio channels. The application can be installed on multiple smartphones, so that each family member can control their music from their phone.

The need

The customer develops software, embedded solutions, and web application services that enable their customers to broadcast media content. This means giving the users instant remote access to view and share photos, music, videos, live television, and other digital content stored on their home PC from any web-enabled device. The service can be utilized on a mobile phone, PDA, laptop, or DMA devices/game consoles (such as Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3).

The company needed to develop a remote controller app that would enable smartphone owners to use their devices to browse, search, select and manage the Internet radio channels of their interest.

The challenges

Since the customer guarantees that all author rights for the media content are reserved, the Altoros team had to develop authentication for the controller with the required level of security. Thus, the standard login/password authentication was not suitable in this case.

The solution

To provide secure authentication, the developers implemented the support of SSL certificates. This ensures that all data transmitted and broadcast will not be intercepted and illegally used by unsubscribed users.

The team implemented Three20, an open-source Objective-C library for iOS used by dozens of well-known brands (including Facebook, Posterous, Pulse, Meetup.com, and SCVNGR) to develop the UI of the application, which helped customize the interface.

The outcome

Using the designed application for iOS devices, users can enjoy their favorite Internet radio channels anywhere in their homes. The customer is the first company to offer a single solution for enjoying virtually all of home digital media remotely, utilizing the devices that users already own.