Why?

The more people that rate an application, the higher its position in the app store. The higher the position, the more users we get. The more users we get, the more money we have coming in to spend on improving the application according to your suggestions.

Long story short. If you spend two minutes reviewing Second Shootr now, we can spend cash making it better for you.

I'd like to encourage you to rate all your favourite apps on the iPhone, not just Second Shotr. Most iPhone developers are independent groups (like us) and they rely on good word of mouth to succeed. Why not rate one app every Friday?

So I apologise in advance if this doesn't interest you. We'll have more news on future Second Shootr as soon as we're ready to announce it.

Whilst Second Shootr was the brainchild of myself and my wife Helen, we specialised in Photography, not logo or application design and development. So we were kinda out of our depth when it came to producing Second Shootr. We very quickly realised that we'd need to hire someone to build the application for us, but we had some very strong ideas about how Second Shootr should work and we wanted to make sure we could get those ideas across to a developer.

With that in mind, we used Photoshop (something we know pretty well) to design each individual screen and show the user flow through the system:

Here's a larger version of the main client screen to give you some idea of just how crudely we designed the app (yes folks... that's a drop-shadow you see there!):

As you may have spotted, the current Second Shootr app shares some similarities to the design, but has taken it many steps further. The main two differences being the logo design and the colour scheme.

We didn't design the logo ourselves, nor did we come up with the colour scheme to use. Instead, we enlisted the help of an old friend, Tom, who just so happens to be a graphics designer.

He fairly quickly decided upon the black and yellow colour scheme for the logo and application, in his own words:

"Yellow as a camera equipment tie-in - like the Nikon strap? It also looks very functional (like rugged outdoors stuff you depend on) and like a help in an emergency, like a photography emergency!"

We figured that was a good a reason as any to stick with black and yellow, so Tom sent through some initial ideas:

Whilst it felt like a good start, we didn't feel that it was quite right. We liked the use of the camera aperture in the logo, but didn't quite feel that it was strong enough. Tom went back to the drawing board and came up with this:

© 2009 Tom Probert

We felt that this was much closer, we decided to drop the 3d-effect for simplicity and stuck with the black and yellow idea. The result is the logo that you're all familiar with today:

As for turning my half-baked ideas into a reality? We eventually decided upon a small, local company called utopia 365 to do the work. They were awesome - just took our ideas, combined them with Tom's graphics and added their own flair to produce the app you know and love today.

Second Shootr's come a fair way in it's first year (I recived Tom's initial logo designs this time last year), I guarantee Second Shootr will go much further in it's second year. It's an exciting time!

Testers will be required to have at least one non-jailbroken device and will be required to put Second Shootr through it's paces for a few hours over 3 days or so. They will then be required to articulate any errors in the form of an email to us so that we can fix them. We work fast, so we'd need our beta testers to be fairly snappy at responses.

Ideally, beta testers would be professional photographers who have real client data to put into the app, they should be UK-based, or willing to work to the UK timezone. Testers will be required to sign an NDA ensuring that information about Second Shootr isn't passed on to anyone else.

The beta phase is currently scheduled to begin around the end of September 2010, so you'd need to be available around then.

In return, we'll give our testers a free copy of Second Shootr, a chance to get first glimpse of what we're working on, and a few other goodies that we can't mention right now because we don't want to give the game away.

If you're interested in helping us out, please get in touch and let us know your device(s) UDID number and your device type (eg iPhone 3GS, 32GB, iOS4.0.2) - we'll let you know if we'd like to use you

If this isn't your thing, Second Shootr's coming... just sit tight for now.

In fact. Second Shootr is staying at this price (or maybe even lower!) until we release a new version of the application. Any updates to the iPhone app will be free if you already own it, so now seems an ideal time to grab Second Shootr if you haven't already taken the plunge.

Is £1.79 still too much for you? Perhaps you'd like a free copy instead? Just retweet THIS tweet in the next 12 hours, and you could win a free copy of Second Shootr.

Obligatory Small Print:

The free copy of Second Shootr is only available with a US iTunes account. If you're not from the US, you can easily set up a US account for free by following these instructions. Setting up a US account does not affect your already purchased apps from your regional app store.

Competition ends at 03.00 BST (GMT+1), 18 August 2010.

There are 5 free copies of Second Shootr to give away.

UPDATE: The competition has ended, but Second Shootr remains at £1.79 until we release a new version.

So, if you're from an educational institution, consider purchasing Second Shootr to help your photography students organise their shoots.

We have no release dates yet, but rest assured we're working as hard as we can to get this out to you folks. At the same time, we want it to be right, so we're going to take as much time as we need over this.

For those who need a little bit of visual proof, below is a screenshot of the development so far. Bear in mind that it's a work in progress, so the finished result is likely to look very different, but it might give you an idea of what's to come!

As I've said all along, once this is ready, the email newsletter subscribers will be the first to know. If you want to be one of those people, head to our main site and scroll to the bottom to sign up for our email newsletter.

On July 1st, Second Shootr cost US$6.99 (i.e. £3.99)

On July 2nd , Second Shootr will cost US$0.99 (i.e. £.59)

July 3rd: $1.99, £1.19

July 5th: $2.99, £1.79

July 6th: $3.99, £2.39

July 7th: $4.99, £2.99

July 8th: $5.99, £3.49

July 9th: $6.99, £3.99

So the sooner you download Second Shootr, the better the bargain! Please tell your fellow photographers, and feel free to tell the world via Facebook or Twitter.

Please note: Apple dictates when the prices change - presumably it follows American time, but we're not certain. Always check the price before you buy.

What's new in this release?

• iOS4 Compatibility Changes
• Multitasking support for iOS4
• Bug Fixes

As always, please ensure you have a suitable backup (or even better, backups) of your data before upgrading.

Since its launch in the latter quarter of last year, Second Shootr has been a roaring success – rocketing to the top 100 in a number of app stores worldwide and being used on a daily basis by thousands of photographers internationally.

Here lies a problem. No photography business is ever exactly the same (if they were the same, we'd be rubbish artists!) so I've got to try and please thousands of photographers with my decisions... never an easy task.

The decision process is made a little easier with the feedback page – hundreds of you have nominated and voted on feature requests and this has given me a better idea of what the hive-mind wants. It's clear that people would like some form of backup option (be that a pdf that's emailed to you or something more complex), others have mentioned that they don't like using the iPhone/iPod touch keyboard to key in information and others want new menu sections.

Apple's also changed the game too. The advent of the iPad has opened up potential doors for Second Shootr to be 'inflated' onto a larger device – but this needs some thought. iPads don't work the same way as iPhones, you can't just make the UI bigger, you've got to consider how the application will be used. The announcement of the ultra-high resolution iPhone 4 has once again changed the way we use a mobile phone and there's certainly some possibilities there too.

I can't promise to please everyone, but I've now got a plan going forwards. I'm not going to divulge anything here yet because I don't like to make promises I can't keep (although the astute amongst you will probably work out what's planned) plus it all depends on boring things like money and feasibility.

In summary – yup, I'm still alive. Second Shootr is still very much alive and there's some big plans this year to take it much further than it already is.

Keep an eye on the blog over the next few months for more updates – better still, sign up to our email mailing list and be the first to know what's going on – I'm gonna try and find some goodies for you email subscribers too.

The fix should also work with iOS4's new multitasking feature, allowing you to easily and seamlessly flick from Second Shootr to other applications.

If you rely on Second Shootr for your business, do not install iOS4 until after the Second Shootr update (1.1.1) appears. Please be aware that Second Shootr may not work on the iPhone 4 (we've not got one to test with yet).

Update 21/06/2010

I mistakenly labelled the new release as 1.2. It will be 1.1.1.

Update 18/08/2010

We forgot to mention that Second Shootr 1.1.1 works fine on the iPhone 4 with no reported issues.