We ranked Second at Start In Paris!

Start In Paris is a monthly event where 5 startups have the opportunity to pitch their service to the Paris startup community. After a first selection and then a public vote, we were selected as one of 5 finalists of the #22 edition that took place yesterday, January the 28th!

Algolia has greatly evolved over the last few months, so it was an excellent occasion for us to test a new pitch! And the response has truly exceeded our expectations. After a 5 minute pitch we received a rush of questions, displaying interest and insight from the 400-strong audience!

Sharypic benefits from Algolia Search!

Demonstrating how Algolia Search functions in the wild, in this post we will discuss a recent integration with sharypic, another Paris-based startup focussed on photo sharing at events.

Sharypic is a web and mobile app dedicated to collaborative photo sharing, focussed on enabling users to easily gather photos from attendees during and after an event. The platform allows users to collect and share photos from all devices, including mobiles (via Twitter and Instagram), cameras, and computers, and from already existing albums on Facebook, Picassa, and Flickr. One of their killer features is the ability to stream photos to a live PhotoWall at the venue and to an embeddable slideshow widget. This increases engagement both with event attendees and with an online audience. On sharypic one of the primary ways that users discover events is via a search bar, in addition to pages highlighting recent and popular events.
Continue reading…

Why Android APK Format is a Mistake

When I started to develop for Android it appeared to me that an APK file was just an archive, a simple approach that you can find in many systems today. Files are extracted from the archive at installation and you can access them via the file-system.

This seemed even more reasonable since Android uses Linux which is very good in respect to POSIX standards.

But I was completely wrong! An APK is not a mere archive: the application starts from and uses the APK at runtime! This is a horrible decision that will probably hurt Android for a long time…

[Edit 28-Jan-2013] The goal of this post was to express my point of view about the bad properties of using directly the APK file at runtime versus relying on the file system. I used memory-mapped file to illustrate this but the post is incorrect on that topic. There is in fact a way to memory-map a file directly from the APK: you can use an extension for which files are stored uncompressed inside the APK (mp3, jpg, …) and use the AssetManager.openFD() or Resources.openRawResourceFD() to have offset/length inside the APK file.

All my thanks to Jay Freeman for his excellent feedback. His comments helped me to understand my mistake and to improve our Android integration!
[/Edit]
Continue reading…

Seedcamp: Tips and Advice From a Finalist

About one month ago, we were given the opportunity to participate in Seedcamp Paris 2012. In this post I’ll try to think back to that time and provide feedback, along with some advice if you’re considering going in that direction. In short, I can already say that this experience has revolutionized the way we drive the company!

The Application

Everything starts with a good application… or a rushed one in our case! At that time (end of October) we were fully focused on product development and finishing everything needed for our launch (documentation, video, etc.). While we knew about Seedcamp coming to Paris in early December, we initially saw it as a potential distraction from more important stuff… we could not have been more wrong!
Continue reading…

Android NDK: How to Reduce Binaries Size

When we started Algolia Development for Android, binary size optimization was not one of our main concerns. In fact we even started to develop in JAVA before switching to C/C++ for reasons of performance.

We were reminded of the importance of binary size by Cyril Mottier who informed us that it would be difficult to integrate our lib in AVelov Android Application because its size. AVelov is 638KB and Algolia was 850KB, which would mean that AVelov would more than double in size with Algolia Search embedded.

To address this problem we managed to reduce Algolia binary size from 850KB to 307KB. In this post we share how we did it.
Continue reading…

Two new Platforms in beta: Mac OS X and Windows Phone 8

After the launch of our Windows 8 beta (desktop and tablets), I’m pleased to start the year with still new platforms support! And this time it’s directly two new platforms that we launch: Mac OSX and Windows Phone 8.

Desktop Continued Support

Following the mobile trend, “app” stores are becoming more and more popular on desktops. OS X started first with its App Store in January 2011 (already 2 years ago) while Windows joined the trend only recently.

With the release of this beta, we now support both environments! Get ready to build fantastic search in your apps! Continue reading…