What’s all this about, then?
The Dossier began the night after Apple announced the iPad. I lay in bed with my girlfriend (who is, I might add, a hardcore Apple skeptic!) after showing her the promo video and asked her “what is your dream app? What would compel you to buy an iPad?”
Now, The Swede (as she shall be known in these parts!) is obsessive about the giving of gifts and cards. We often have our Christmas shopping done before Hallowe’en, we have birthday cards for certain people for several years, and a box that is is veritable stationery store with cards for all occasions. We send out boxes of cards over the holidays, which usually come in sets of 12, 20 or 24.
The problem with all this is keeping track of who you’ve sent what to and when. Or what you bought for someone for their birthday, since you got it six months ago. Or, if you’re out at a store and you see a T-Shirt that’s just plain perfect for Auntie What’s-her-name, but you can’t remember if she wears a Medium or a Large. Or if Dad has a 14 or a 16 inch neck.
The Swede wanted something to track all this. She’s wanted it for years, but never found something that was quite right. And from that desire, The Dossier was born.
Now, not everyone is as obsessive about these things as she is. However, most people do want to make notes about people and keep some basic information. So, we started small, and have some big plans for what’s coming next.
At its most basic level, The Dossier lets you effortlessly add notes to people who are already your Contacts. When you start the app, it shows you all your contacts with empty dossiers. Tap on someone and it’ll create a new dossier for them and open it up.
Once you’re in a dossier, you can tap on the photo to set what their photo should be. It lets you browse your photos, so it doesn’t need to be the same as the one you set on their contact record. You can also tap their name and put in their birthdate.
But that’s not all! You can also add new bits of information. By tapping the Add Item button, you currently add three different items: a note, clothing sizes or recent tweets. These items can be moves around, and will automatically keep themselves neatly tucked to one side or the other.
Notes let you enter in whatever you want to. Type a list of ideas for birthday gifts, reminders to yourself about the card you’re going to send them, or even just a funny quote they said.
Clothing sizes gives you a fashion sketch, and with a tap you can enter various common clothing sizes — t-shirt size, pant length and inseam, neck size, dress size, it’s all there. You can even select if you want men’s or women’s sizes and the sketch changes accordingly.
Finally, recent tweets lets you grab the last 4 or 5 tweets the person (or any person, really) has entered on Twitter. This is great if you don’t use twitter yourself, since you’ll get an idea of what your friend is talking about there every time you look at their dossier.
We have a lot more items in development and we’ll be adding them in updates that we plan to release every two or three weeks. More common categories of information, more social media, and even improvements to the blocks that are already there. We’re pretty excited about The Dossier, and hope you’ll take a look when it’s available on the iPad App Store. We’ll announce the exact date as soon as we know ourselves.
