My Dream App: More Contestants

It looks like My Dream App has announced all the contestants now. Let's see...

Bob: Pile o' Cards: use piles of cards with anything on them: text, media, widgets, pictures and more. Looks like this could become a handy little app.

Cameron: Atmosphere: 'a virtual outdoors for your desktop' - an enhanced weather application. This can prove handy for a lot of people but personally I wouldn't use it (since I can just look out of my window).

Dan: Blossom: 'a virtual plant that responds to productivity' - wow, this is a cool idea. Withering plants will correspond to lazy, game-playing computer sessions, thriving plants to a good productive day in Excel. Everyone will have different looking plants, awesome.

Dilon: Bookroom: reading e-books in a beautiful interface, looks good, maybe this will give some people an opportunity to read more again.

James: Destinations: the ideal app for the travellers. 'Plan vacations and trips with ease' sounds really useful to me.

Jeff: iGTD, Getting Things Done on the Mac with integration with iCal, IPod and more. Looks like this will also prove to be handy.

Josh: iGotPets: 'keep track of your pet's well-being'. A shame I don't have pets. So personally I wouldn't consider using this, but I can imagine that the 'pet-freaks' out there would love something like this.

Kevin: Hijack: Cocoa interface to browse and participate in discussion forums. Not sure what to make out of this. I'm curious how this will turn out.

Marshall: SweepIt: cleanup messy desktops with simple rules. I would love something like this (on all my machines, on all platforms). Since I spend a lot of time keeping my desktop and folders in clean, pure condition.

Mickey: Supplemental: 'Photo Booth for videos, with easy to use video logging'. If you're into videos (a lot of Mac-people are), then this could provide you with some extra help.

Mike: iSightSee: control your Mac using the iSight with hand gestures and movements. If this works (meaning: it actually does a good job at recognizing the different gestures) then this could also become a handy tool.

Raven: Telepath: push mail, news and more from your Mac via SMS. I wouldn't use this (it probably would be difficult to setup in some countries and/or it would cost a lot and my phone inbox is currently more than full), but some people might love it.

Richard: Whistler: 'ever had the urge to create a song'? With Whistler: you just tap, hum or whistle something into the app. Wow: if this works fine this would be amazing!

Rusell: Ground Control: 'Dashboard done right'. What can I say about this one? Let's see how it develops...

I think I have them all now. Again: all ideas are great and it looks like the competition will be hard! Check out MyDreamApp for more info. Nominating the contestants will be fun but difficult.

My Dream App finalists...

My Dream App - "Idol 2006" for Mac developers, has begun announcing finalists with - at this moment - still 15 people to go.

All the ideas are looking pretty neat at the moment:

Anders - Stick-It: 'A modernized sticky solution that lets people use virtual stickies just as they do in real life.' Sounds really cool and handy, but I think this app will have a hard time to compete with existing or comparable apps.

Andrew - Desktop Wars: an RTS game played on your desktop. As a matter of fact, I once tried to make a similar game when I was younger and when I had almost no programming experience. I never completed it. So I'm pretty exited about this idea.

Bogumil - Herald: a virtual newspaper app, using RSS and other technologies. Looks promising and it would be a great app if it can introduce the concept of RSS to more people.

Farzad - Portal: 'File syncing from the future.' I almost never use file-syncing apps (mostly because most of them are a pain to use). So if this app works out, it will make a lot of people happy!

Joe - Puppet Constructor: Flash for beginners: manipulate and animate 'puppets' with the ease of a toy. This is great, everyone who starts working with a complex app like Flash, or Photoshop or a 3d animation program wants to imitate 'all that cool stuff' they saw online or in magazines, only to be dissapointed with the steep learning curve. This app will probably provide hours of fun.

Michael - Chatboard: a virtual whiteboard. Has the potential to turn into a great collaboration tool, but it will again be a challenge to compete with other products in my opinion.

Michael - Cookbook: a lovely idea. Of course there already are cookbook applications, but this one will do online shopping, voiceovers, sharing, and more, the concept screenshot looks really neat.

Peter - Bubble Fish: 'Bubble Fish is the friend who knows everything, but without the annoyance factor.' With the abily to search on Flickr, Google and Wikipedia, this could turn out as a very handy little research tool.

Windy - iStyleIt: a 'virtual closet for your Mac', pick out, arrange and rate clothes and combinations. Sounds like a silly idea? Not really when you think about it. Share combinations with friends and save time in the morning when choosing what to wear. Even me (a guy!) like this idea... a modern life-app.

Be sure to check out mydreamapp.com, this whole 'contest-concept' is very entertaining and I will surely keep an eye on further development.

The only downside? Mac only, but it's better than Windows-only (now maybe some apps have the chance to get ported to Linux, one can hope).

See you next time!