Things Not Quite Yet

Ideas we have sketched and not yet built. Some are close, some are far off, and some may never happen.

pctrs

Joining from the app

A free folio begins on the website today. The same door on the iPhone, so a photographer can arrive, claim a name, and start showing work without leaving the app they just downloaded.

Following and favourites on the iPhone

Both already work on the website: subscribe to photographers you admire, and star other people's work into a curated exhibition of your own. The app can read neither yet.

The four super themes, on the phone

Architecture, animals, botanicals and landscapes gather everyone's work into four rooms. They are on the website now; the app has no way in.

Moderating your own pages from your pocket

A comment can be hidden or pinned by the photographer who made the picture — but only at a desk. It should be possible from the phone, where the notification arrives.

The photographer's locker, and series

A kit page for current and retired gear, and a ribbon linking a named set of photographs together. Both live on the website and need a way through to the app.

Calendars, and books

Thirteen photographs, prices set by the people who made them, printed and posted — and coffee-table collections where a photographer is paid when their work is included. Both wait on a printer worth working with.

A gear exchange

The locker knows what you shoot with and what you have retired. A quiet place to pass a retired lens to someone who will use it is the obvious next thought.

A private folio

Photographs kept on your own iCloud account rather than ours — visible to you, and to whoever you choose, and to no one else.

SchriftOhr

Lending a book

Pick a book you own, pick a friend, pick a length of time, and send one link. Your library shows the book as out on loan and when it is due back, and their copy knows it arrived as a loan and says so. The file is sealed on the way across, so the server carrying it cannot read the book.

Books straight from Mail and Messages

An EPUB arrives as an attachment. Tap it, choose SchriftOhr, and it is in your library, with no detour through the Files app and no wondering which app will claim it.

CarPlay

The book you are in the middle of, on the car screen: play, pause, skip back, jump to a chapter. Long drives are where a book being read aloud earns its keep, and the phone should stay in your pocket.

Pronunciation that reads the sentence

English spells different words the same way. He read the letter yesterday; I like to read. A lead pipe and a lead role. Many of these are handled already; the ones that remain need the reader to weigh the sentence around the word rather than the word alone.

Pronunciations that stay taught

Correct a name once and have it stay corrected, across restarts and across your other devices, so a family name or a place name is learned a single time.

Another voice, and more languages

Apple's voices and the neural voices cover English well. A third engine and further language packs would widen what can be read aloud, weighed against keeping the reading entirely on your own device.

MarkSchrift

Collaboration for a larger group

A study group or a committee writing in one document at once, seeing each other's cursors, with the text encrypted end to end so the server passing it along cannot read a word of it.

Windows and Linux

The same plain-text workspace outside Apple's platforms, so a shared project does not depend on everyone owning the same kind of computer. Researched and costed; a substantial piece of work.

Longer views of a week

The weekly file is the unit of work. A month or a year would be a way of looking across those weeks, rather than another pile of files to keep.

The Bible tools at rfrmd.com

More translations

Six are available today, five of them fully offline. Others could join as licensing allows.

A native app

The reader, the daily plan, and the Psalm prayer guide as an app on the App Store, with notes and reading progress following you between devices.

Reading together

A family or a small group following the same plan and seeing one another's progress, without turning a devotional habit into a scoreboard.

Supporting a piece of this

The apps pay their own way. The Bible tools at rfrmd.com are free and carry no advertising, and the server behind them is a monthly bill.

If you would like to put something toward one of these in particular, write and say which. A gift supports the work; it is not a purchase and carries no features with it.

john@rfrmdwordlabs.com