SSD Needs a New App – And You Can Help. As many of you already know, the SSD app for iPhone is no more. We need to get a new one up and running, and we’d like to expand access to the Droid users of the world. Here’s the issue. Our old app was effectively a very specific RSS feed reader that only read our feed. iTunes no longer accepts apps like this. This means we need to offer something more. If we are going to undertake the thousands of dollars required to produce this app, we’d like it to have added value for our readers. So what we’d like to know is what kinds of functionality would you like to see in an SSD app? One thing we can tell you that we are NOT going to do is sell anything through the app. Also, if anyone has special expertise in developing Multi platform apps please let us know. Finally, if any companies are interested in sponsoring the app please tell us.
We look forward to your input in the comments section of this post on SSD. Thank you!
i would be nice to see a selection screen that says
Daily Feed
Weapons
Clothing
Survival
and a couple other major topics.
with this type of main screen it will be a lot more effective at loading and users wont have to scroll through a treasure trove of things to get to a specific article (ie they want to read about a certain weapon system and they wont have to scroll through the daily feed to get to it)
just my .02
my thoughts are that it would be nice to have some advertiser integration, although not often some times i see an ad on the site that are for things that I am actually interested in and it would be nice to have that even if its on its own tab. my other thought is that having a method to comment via the app would be nice.
I like the comment idea.
Searchable archives would be great, so would comments, sharing on FB/twitter, and categories.
some people own blackberrys too 🙁
And some people are still on non-smartphones, but they are irrelephant (=D) like blackberries haha
If it were a catalog of sorts kind of like a library of all past articles and maybe have a portion for ideas and topics we would like to see written about.
Maybe have a shopping list for items that you spotlight guys can have a one stop wish list for stuff and give it a order of merit ability
Integration to iPhone calendar for upcoming events so say ads east is coming up, you post it I select the link and it populates on my calendar
Have your iPhone on a track so we can all see where you are at any time!!!! Kind of like NORAD Santa for SS
Maybe a scanner app so when I’m at a tactical store I can scan an item to see if you have written about it, at the same time you can see what guys are looking at and give you an idea what to write about
User video upload for items you write about. Give a time window like 48 hours from the time the article posts for guys to submit their own videos then you choose the best and post it with that item
Ok good idea fairy is tapped. I’ll have a bill in the mail to you tomorrow!
+1 for the Android app.
My browser isn’t fond of loading all the ads on the right side, especially the animated ones. Also, I know a Seattle company that might be able to make your app. They just released a cross fit tracking app too called WODzilla. Enterthestudio.com
I second Maxwells suggestions!
Would it be possible to integrate something like EUDs or Garmin’s RINO series where other users of the app can locate each other (if a service is turned on) on a map and communicate with each other through text in addition to leaving comments on specific articles. If you wanted to SSD badge a few of those EUD admin cases as well I’d like to buy 20 😉
I would suggest making the app similar to the Facebook app. Pull down to update, and essentially have a news feed as the primary page. Swipe to the right to access the menu. The menu would contain some of the items mentioned above, ie. categories or sections (weapons, gear, news, etc)
Add in a similar functionality to comment on news articles and you would have yourself a winner.
I wonder if the website could be optimized for mobile viewing? might be cheaper
If you make an app consider giving it the same look and feel as the Drudge Report app on iPhone
Apps are a fad, especially when they’re basically used as a portal into a website.
If you really want to innovate, I would suggest a properly optimised mobile website based on an open standard, such as HTML5. This will allow you to deliver content to ALL mobile customers, while remaining device agnostic – at the end of the day this will be a better experience for everyone and remove the requirement to maintain a number of device specific applications.
If you’re genuinely interested in doing something like this, I could probably put you in touch with a few decent developers.
Which platforms can’t read the site now?
I’m not aware of any products that can’t access the site, but they are rendering a full website within a mobile browser. If you had a fully optimised mobile website version of SSD, then you would have all of the functionality of an “app” without it actually being an app and would therefore offer a more streamlined mobile experience without the overhead of maintaining a number of binaries for different operating systems.
In fact, given that it appears that SSD is powered by WordPress, the hard work may have already been done for you:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/
SSD renders fine on mobile devices. The site is pretty streamlined. And, that kills the ads. We aren’t adopting it.
Being able to view by categories would be nice. I also like the idea of being able to comment. Also it might be cool to have a page or tab to view the links for all the companies that advertise on the page