I say cease development of the ammo function completely. In 95% of the country ammunition is not an item thats tracked or recorded in any way. No ID required. (Provided you look old enough)
I'd suggest you focus your development efforts on features that will appeal to FFLs and collectors. Resist the urge for feature creep.
Here's the thing; MGDB isn't just a bound book. It's for average Joe shooters -- MyGunDB is kind of a play on words. It doesn't mean a DB for guns, it means a DB for gun stuff. Ammo, reloading data and a range log are the top 3 things asked for by most users.
I DO need to organize it all better though, and I have ideas for that I will be implementing.
The other key is that providing features that make a user open the app regularly is a good thing -- users use the app twice right now. Once where they decide they like it and the second is to enter their data. After that they forget about it.
Also, once you go to 1.0, I'd suggest you split it into 2 products with different feature sets.
1) Simple product with low cost of entry for C&R FFLs.
2) More sophisticated product for 01 or 07 FFLs.
3) I don't know the answer to this question, but are there any features missing that an 07 (Manufacturer) might want??
That's the idea, actually. Plus a Police version, and one for Ranges.
Think of it this way, in this era of "free" software, how much will an average joe gun owner pay for something like this?
Now contrast it with what an FFL is willing to pay for something like this.
All the large dealers already have software from established players. I don't know what they cost, but if you could come in with a solution that cost less, you might make inroads.
$500-$10,000. heh Big range.
By "solution", I mean software as well as hardware integration (you don't have to sell the hardware) and most importantly, backup.
Small dealers major barrier to using electronic bound book systems is their fear of maintaining a system that meets the ATF's backup and data retention requirements. To get the small dealers, you need a way around that.
I'm not going to provide any support for hardware. But everything else is cake.
Finally, if you could sit down with your friendly local ATF person and get a letter saying that if implemented as recommended, it meets their requirements for an electronic bound book. That would be great.
I recently met with an ATF agent from Hartford who covered CT and MA, and maybe more, and he was surprisingly relaxed. He was also VERY helpful with the questions I had. When I mentioned the MA government and their draconian requirements he literally rolled his eyes.
Heh yep, already plan on doing that. Once 1.0 is out I'm going to be sitting down with an ATF agent for that reason.
Don
(Currently unemployed IT Project Mgr. who used to run development projects from needs analysis out through rollout, training and data migration)
p.s. Once you begin selling software and offering paid support, remote access to the hosting systems are essential. I'd suggest you look into teamviewer. ( teamviewer.com )
Yeah, that's a great app. I use reverse VNC to do the same thing normally, but yeah.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! It's a lot to think on heh
