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11:18 am
November 12, 2009 |
sbressler
| | | | | Member | posts 15 |
| | Post edited 4:18 pm – November 12, 2009 by sbressler
Hi all, In case you don't know me, I'm the Online Editor of Student Life at Washington University in St. Louis. This is actually my first of two discussion topics that I'd love to get some input from you guys on. A few people in a software development class at my university are going to develop an iPhone application for Student Life over the next 4-5 weeks. We already have a mobile version of the site available, but I think an iPhone app would be a cool addition. They needed a project, and we were happy to provide one. I was wondering if you guys could weigh in on two things: - What functionality should be in this application, listed in order of most important to least?
- Under what license should the application be released? The students seem happy with either open- or closed-source. The biggest advantage I see to open-source is the ability for you guys to build on top of it and adapt it for your Web sites in the future. Then again, if this is a killer application, I don't want anyone to be screwed out of getting the credit/money they deserve.
Relating to functionality, here's what someone else on my staff sent to them recently: Basic Functionality: Display articles and thumbnails from StudLife.com by latest news and by section (likely the app's home screen would have latest news and users would be able to click to sections as desired); display images, bylines and dates along with articles; allow users to navigate between articles within the same section without returning to the home screen (ie arrows that advance to the next article in the category). More Advanced Functionality: Allow users to e-mail a link to the story from the article display page; give users the option of saving their favorite stories and return to them later; allow users to contact the editors/report news tips by e-mail. Dream Functionality: Allow users to comment on articles within the app by opening a browser directly to the comment form; take advantage of GeoCoded restaurant reviews and allow users to browse restaurants near them; display multimedia content within the app; anything you can think of. In terms of making this happen, we already have the RSS feed from each of the sections available and I can create a "latest news" feed tomorrow. If you think that pulling RSS is the easiest way of doing this, I'll get you all of the URLs; otherwise, we can set up a cron job on our server that will regularly generate an XML file with whatever custom information you need for this project. I'm not sure what else you would need to get this up and running, so let me know. I look forward to all your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks,
Scott Bressler |
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11:51 am
November 12, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | One somewhat random idea that I have is this: What if users were able to "check-in" with their GPS location? Other users could then be able to see where else people are reading Student Life (either on campus, in the US, or internationally). This could also be data that could be pulled and displayed on the main site as a cool realtime visualization of where your readers are. Not sure how practical that would be but it's one idea. | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
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12:58 pm
November 14, 2009 |
laurenmichell
| | San Luis Obispo, Calif. | | | Member | posts 21 |
| | Basic functionality ideas A photo gallery. You could pull the RSS feed from a flickr account or something similar, and every day users can thumb through the latest photos. I see this as being really popular functionality to have, especially if you have a few new albums a day Dream functionality ideas Another money-making idea would be to have geotagged ads. So, if you have the app open downtown next to a bar, an ad pops up that says, "$1 Beers across the street at Downtown Brew." I'm not sure that would be, but it wouldn't hurt to experiment. If that's too complex, there could just be an entire ad/business directory, and when a student opens it, it could be filtered by "nearest to me" to show coupons for places around them. Also, the USA Today app has daily polls and you can filter the results based on location. So, using Andrew's "check-in" concept, readers would then vote in a poll, then they could filter the results down by city and state to see what people around them voted. And finally, going beyond merely displaying where people are when they're reading on the app, it would be cool to also visualize what people are reading. So if I open the app, a notifcation that says, "Today's most-read story in your location: Headline of story." And that data could also be reflected on the web site in form of a map mashup. I know these all fall into "dream functionality," but I say set the bar high and see how far you get, otherwise your app is just a browser version of your site. Good luck. And I vote open source! | |
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9:32 pm
November 14, 2009 |
Daniel Bachhuber
| | | | | Admin | posts 102 |
| | Ah, an iPhone application. First off, nice work finding developers that are willing to build this for you. I really look forward to seeing the final product, regardless of what features make it in. In terms of features, though, I think you have two challenges to overcome. As Lauren mentioned, for an iPhone application to be worthwhile is has to have some sort of improved experience over the mobile-formatted version of the website. I'd also argue that it would be great if it provided a more interactive reading experience than what my RSS reader (Fever) already offers. With those things in mind, I do think there's tremendous potential for an iPhone application specific to student news. In it, I'd like to see the ability to: - Read and comment current content
- Search all past articles
- Recommend, save, and share articles. The recommend feature could power the "What's popular", and my friend's recommended articles
- Submit story tips and view the current database of story tips
- View all of the stories with geodata on a map
For this specific project, though, I think you should limit the functionality to as it relates to news. Restaurant reviews would be cool, but I think that's a different use for another application. The cool thing about iPhone applications is that you don't need to try to fit everything into one application; you build an application that's really good at what it does, and another application that's really good at doing something else. For instance, Andrew and I have talked about another location-based application before that might be cool too. Basically, the idea is that you check in where you're studying on campus and what you're studying. With this information, your friends can come bug you and your classmates can find you to bounce questions around for a test, etc. | |
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12:55 pm
November 21, 2009 |
Chris Ullyott
| | Fullerton, CA | | | Member | posts 66 |
| | Post edited 6:27 am – November 23, 2009 by Chris Ullyott
I agree with Daniel. Avoid trying to create an app that does everything—build it in stages and only offer more things when they work well. Our app right now has a lot of stuff, but only a select few things work and it makes me nervous that some people will begin to generally think that the app as a whole is lacking. One thing about images. Some apps will need to pull an actual image enclosure. To provide this, use the plugin called WP RSS Images and set it to include small thumbnails. | |
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3:27 pm
December 3, 2009 |
Bradley
| | Rochester, NY | | | New Member | posts 2 |
| | I also agree with what's been said. Prioritize the content that people would want on the go; restaurant reviews, sports scores, latest headlines… and take advantage of the unique features that come with working with a mobile platform. I would especially emphasize search… iPhone users are used to and really expect a quality search. I wouldn't expect a lot of people to browse old news archives from their phone, but being able to search them and everything else would be great. RSS also sounds like the right way to do articles. As for open vs. closed source… I understand the concern, but open source really offers a great opportunity for expansion that I wouldn't think is worth passing up. While it can be a pain to maintain, if you have a solid infrastructure will all of the core features your paper needs… upgrading to every new release isn't always necessary. | |
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