3.5 KiB
| title | date | location | tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| B1.14 Armchair App | 2011-04-06 | /B1.14 | Pro Tanto, idea, apps, RSS |
Armchair App
In our increasingly busy lives, we no longer have the luxury of time to sit in an armchair in front of the fire, reading the newspaper. Besides, the news is already a day old by then; we want to know what’s happening now. Enter Armchair, an app idea I just cooked up.
It simulates a crackling fireplace, not unlike many other iPhone relaxation apps already out there. While watching the fire, you can swipe up to pick up the newspaper to read the latest news. The news in the paper is pulled from the Internet by RSS (and you can choose your own feeds, possibly including Facebook and Twitter) so you’re always up to date. You swipe left or right to turn the page and go to the next or previous story respectively. An important part of this app would be to get the graphics and animation looking right: the pages should turn realistically, for example. Also, you Tap an icon to start the pages turning automatically after a small delay, so you can set the Phone down on a desk or in a dock and just glance at the news occasionally. When you’re done reading, you just swipe down to put down the paper and go back to watching the relaxing fire.
Apart from the obvious drawcard of nice graphics and relaxing atmosphere, I thought of another idea to set Armchair apart from other news apps: an rss search-and-alert feature. You can set up a particular phrase or set of words to look for in specific or all feeds. When new posts appear in the app (and maybe on a dedicated server for push Notifications), they are searched for the words/phrase, and if found, an alert is shown in the app. To this end, in the graphical environment in-app (I.e. The armchair and fireplace setup) there will be a phone sitting on the arm of the chair. Tapping the phone brings up a screen with an image of a generic smartphone with app-like icons for news alerts and options. A music player would be nice, too, so you can listen to your iPod music while watching the fire or reading the news. I was even thinking of putting a small game on the “phone” as a nice touch. Just something simple, like snake.
Armchair would be extendable via customization. Simple things like armchair color, which hardly matter. Newspaper style could be changed to be more like a glossy magazine, or old book. Perhaps certain elements of the fireplace could be changed. Or (the big one) the entire environment could be changed. Via in-app purchase, you could switch sitting by a warm fire for sitting in front of an aquarium, or out on a beach, or any number of relaxing, animated environments. They’d have to be stored in some format that could be downloaded so they aren’t included with the app and can be added to later. Seasonal and sponsored environments could be created if the app succeeded.
The main problem with this app idea is that it involves a lot of graphical work. It HAS to look nice, or it bombs. It also has to be somewhat universal (I.e. Have an iPhone and iPad version at least). A free version could be ad-supported (unobtrusively in newspaper ads, and perhaps above the fireplace in place of a painting) and limit customization options. This way a paid version would be worth something to users, but still be a decent free app. Plus there’s the in-app environment purchase for another avenue for income.
The app would require a significant investment, especially when it comes to graphics, but if done right, it could easily pay off.