My Dream App Contest

Well, I'm not sure how many of you fine folks here at the Apple portion of NBR forums are up2date on this contest.

However, it is currently in the final round, and tonight at 8pm eastern everyone votes for the final winner.

Anyways, thats not the entire reason of this post.

If you go and vote you get licenses for free to a couple of the top applications in the contest.

"after voting get free licenses to both Overflow 2 and the Apple Design Award winning PhotoPresenter."

I might and might not use them personally, but hey its free! I better get in on them now rather than later where if I might like them I'd have to pay.

Anyways heres the link.
http://mydreamapp.com/

 

I voted a few days ago. PhotoPresenter is not really useful, but Overflow is a pretty nice little app, especially for new switchers. It kinda is like the Programs part of the start menu in Windows. I really like Hijack btw!

 

I think it's finished. =S

 

I hope Whistler wins; I actually sort of like the idea of Whistler; the other finalists don't seem all that interesting to me.

 

Wow, lame, the winner was Atmosphere of all things. Give me a break. An app to show you different desktop backgrounds based on what the weather is outside? Sort of nifty, but I don't see how this is all that great.

Looks like Whislter didn't do well, essentially came in 5th. Looks like they are actually going to make apps out of the Top 3, Cookbook, Portal and Atmosphere.

Really disappointing.

 

I agree. Atmosphere is useless. Portal is not really anything all that new. Cookbook may be kind of cool, but I think Hijack was really cool. And it only lost by 5 stinking votes!

 

Yeah. I mean, if someone went ahead and made Atmosphere I might download it and check it out, but it seems like such a gimmicky idea, and it's disappointing compared to some of the other genuinely cool and interesting ideas.

I guess that is the problem with a vote system like this though.

I really hope that some of the runner ups like Whistler and Hijack might get to team up with a developer anyway to realize their apps.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Atmosphere and Portal aren't going to make much money (I just don't see them being cool enough that a lot of people will buy them).

I could conceivably see Cookbook do well though, as there certainly are a lot of people who probably would be interested in it.

 

So is HiJack available for download or what?

I wanna try this program out.

 

Nope. None of these are actual programs, they are program ideas (very detailed ones, with extensive mockups, etc.). The main point of the contest was for people to come up with ideas, and then people would vote on their favorites, with the top vote gettings being turned into actual programs (with the person who came up with the idea sharing in shareware revenues).

You'd kind of think that, given that HiJack at least was only 5 votes away from the top three, that they'd make it too, but who knows.

Hopefully some software developer will make some of these runner up ideas.

 

Yeah I figured that out after searching a bit, I agreed with many of the developer comments on the ideas presented, however I felt whistler really stood out the most after looking over it a bit more.

I'd love to see some of these become actual programs, so yes I agree I hope we see that other developers from various companies keeping their eye on this to go out and contact the non-winners they like and talk to them.

 

I wanted Blossom to win. It may sound like a silly idea, but I like the idea of an app that monitors and provides feedback on productivity. After using the Dashboard Chia Pet widget, the idea of caring for something as a motivator to keep that thing healthy makes a lot of sense to me.

 

Blossom is technically an interesting idea, although I think Woz's criticism of it was a pretty valid one. Namely, that the only people who would benefit from this app would really be the ones who already don't have much of a problem getting work done. Those who do would be pretty likely to quickly ditch the app, and those that don't would also eventually ditch it as well because the novelty would wear off.

Not to say that Blossom doesn't have any merit, and I'm sure it would be a fun little gadget if someone decides to go ahead and make it. But I think that is one of the ones where it is probably right that it wasn't a finalist.