My Dream App

This sounds like a fun idea and nice extension of the Delicious Library idea.

I could see this being very useful for storing clothes out of season (”that coat I like is in ‘Box 9′”). Although, as a hobo, I wear basically the same thing every day, it would be really cool to figure out how to pack for a trip based on season, bag size, etc.

Nice idea.

This idea is really powerful to me. But it’s biggest problem is that it appeals to a genre of user who is unlikely to actually show up on My Dream App to vote for it. It’s the same market that Nintendo is targeting - people who don’t care about computers (or games) for their own sake, they just want something slick and easy to use that’ll help with what they DO care about.

My problem with iStyleIt is threefold:

• It’s not been well-developed yet on the forums, which makes me worry about its long-term viability. If the person with the idea doesn’t care enough about the idea to make it compelling, how am I supposed to code it compellingly?
• It requires lots of work from the user. The user needs to actually enter in his or her wardrobe, and all of its associated details. That doesn’t sound like fun, it sounds like work.
• The tech is hard. If it uses the iSight to scan barcodes, well, it’s not like Delicious Library where there’s one website (Amazon) with a public API that can be used to map the barcode to a picture of the product. It might be a designer label, it might be from Walfart, there might not be a picture of it online, and the barcode doesn’t tell you where it came from anyway. As I said, “hard”.

So while I like this idea a lot, I wonder if maybe I like the conception of it more than I’d like the reality.

I so want to like this application, but unlike Cookbook, iStyleIt is up against some nasty technical issues. A well-funded developer with a big team might be able to pull off something similar with pre-digitized clothing and a Poser-style virtual model. Such a developer would likely be beholden to a particular clothing company, limiting the application’s appeal. I doubt anyone not in the fashion industry would be willing to invest the time and money necessary to get this to work.

Unlike job listings, link ratings, and videos of people walking into sliding glass doors, creating useful digital representations of clothing is not something that the great, unpaid, unaffiliated masses can accomplish on their own—not yet, anyway. Give it a decade or so and revisit this idea when the technology catches up.

As crazy as it is, I think this app could fill the right kind of niche to bring more people to the Mac.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve probably spent more time dressing up Sims than worrying about my own wardrobe. Initially, a database of one’s clothes seemed like a silly idea, but when given the ability to discuss outfits with friends and try out new stuff, it becomes sort of fun. It will take a special kind of person to take the time to put their information in, but iStyleIt could lead to some interesting conversations with friends and help avoid major fashion faux pas.

That’s a new approach for using your iSight :-) Taking pictures of your clothes for your virtual wardrobe. Then take a picture of yourself and try different outfits and styles in your virtual dressing room. It’s probably not only for women. I might even use it :-) The dressing room could be a real challenge to code depending on what approach you’ll take. A more realstic 3D kind of approach might be very difficult. I would probably try a more playful and somewhat abstract approach, overlaying the various pieces just like you do when you hold a shirt or pants in front of you to see whether they fit or can be combined. I like the idea because it’s something new and not the usual stuff. It uses the Mac as a tool to create and share outfits and keeps a connection to the real world.

Unless I feel like dressing up for a fancy day, my wardrobe stress generally centers around which Panic t-shirt to wear today. I’ve also been known to optimize the dressing process by double-daying my outfits, which I’m ashamed to admit. But you can see why I wasn’t sure I’d be very qualified to comment on this idea — until my fianceé was checking out the list of My Dream App contestants and let me know that, actually, she really liked this idea. And that said a lot to me. For a long time I’ve actually been wondering how to make software that appeals to a broader range of Mac customers. It’s something we at Panic haven’t figured out yet. And not to get too videogame-y, but Nintendo has found a way to make video games appeal to all manner of new demographics. (Their latest killer app, actually, is an interactive cookbook.) Why can’t we do this with Mac apps? Is it even possible? It seems like a giant untapped market, one that is understandably tough to tap because we’re all just making the apps that we want, and, let’s face it, we’re all just a bunch of dumb guy-nerds. iStyleIt — which I suggest you could very safely rename to just “Style”, ditch the dreaded “i” and becoming catchier in the process — could potentially unlock a whole new audience of shareware customers. Or, it could only sell about 10 copies. Still, I’d love to see someone give it a shot, and a “virtual closet” that applies a bit of Delicious Logic and makes for a very specialized, very cool database, sounds like a great place to start to reach those potential new customers.

Macs are becoming fashionable, so the next logical step is to make Mac users themselves more fashion conscious. This is hand’s down my favorite one - fun, playful, and actually very useful. Jason Harris is a stylin’ fella, so I could see this turning out well.

Were I part of the target audience I’m sure this would sound like total fun. There is the potential for lots of eye candy and fun iSight stuff.

My biggest concern is that the target audience may be too small to make it worthwhile. You have to not only be into clothes in a big way but also have a ton of time to take pictures of your clothes via iSight. I just don’t know how many people have that kind of time and also have the extra money to spend on software.

The amount of programming effort it would take to deal with putting clothes on virtual models and so on makes this an expensive app to create. It’s way complex to properly fit a photo of a shirt on a photo of a person.