My Dream App

My Dream App creator and host Phill Ryu is a Mac entrepreneur, with GUI-enthusiast site MacThemes and software company Widget Machine under his belt. My Dream App is a culmination of years of networking in the community and will hopefully result in some insanely great software products. You can read about his projects (and possibly even get some insider info on the event) on his blog, at PhillRyu.com.

iGotPets isn’t quite the entry I thought it would be, but the rest of the team convinced me to let it on. There’s a lot of pet owners out there that spend enough time and money on their pets to warrant use of this app, so I think it’s a niche waiting to be filled.

I’m not in the target audience for this app (just have one Mac that I use), so I can’t say too much about this in terms of comparisons to existing solutions. But I will say this. Portal at its core is attempting to do file synchronization in a sexy, sleek way. (I love the portal visual concept.) And that goes a long way. See Disco.

I know there’s been feasibility concerns raised by many, many people, but the person who would be developing this (Jason Harris) has made a career out of doing impossible things, and he’s spent some time looking into how this would be done, and knows exactly how to do it. And if this wins and gets developed into an app, I will be using it daily. I’m tired of having to deal with the often clunky web UI’s of discussion forums, and with Hijack helping me manage all of them, I’d be able to keep track of things that interest me much more efficiently as well.

The mockup finally does the highly visual idea Herald some justice with eye candy, but I’m confused by the “torn out” section, and even the weather forecast. In my mind, Herald would work a lot better if it were more tightly focused on presenting RSS feeds, and RSS feeds only.

Unlike ideas like Hijack, Atmosphere, or Blossom, there ARE already Cookbook apps out there. But frankly, they all suck, which is why we let Cookbook in as a finalist. And throughout the event, Michael’s been consistently wowing us all with some truly well thought out UI mockups and a great eye for a tight feature set. This could take something that’s been done in a boring way previously, and make it into something exciting, much like how Delicious Library totally one-upped the rest of the media management market.

Stick-It is a modern update to the Stickies apps of old. Forget about their current implementation. Stick-It attempts to recreate how we really use stickies, by allowing users to stick relevant notes all over OS X, whether it is on apps, within menus, or attached on the desktop. Need to email someone? Add a sticky to Mail. Have someone you need to talk to? Place a sticky in your iChat buddy list. It’s just a very intuitive progression of where stickies should go.

Pure genius. What more powerful way to get you working (and stop playing World of Warcraft) than seeing something living start to die when you’re procrastinating? Here’s why I think this would really work well. Blossom has potential to get you attached to this virtual plant, by having it grow slowly, require some serious nurturing, and grow into something entirely unique for each user based on what they do. Once you’re at this stage, after your seedling has grown into your own flowering plant after a month, would you really kill it with a gaming binge? Or for that matter, by ending the trial period?

I see Telepath as potentially being very successful, as it’s basically a software upgrade for your phone for those without data service or data phones like a Blackberry. Sure, there’s text message fees, but unlimited text message plans can run as low as $5/month, and often data plans (at least in U.S. carriers) are much more expensive. So it’s pretty economical, and super useful if done right, pushing important emails, appointment reminders, and news to a regular phone from my Mac.

Love the idea, but I question the market for it. This is tough for me to say, because I really believe something like Whistler SHOULD exist in the market, and at an affordable price. But how many aspiring musicians with no musical ability (or the skills to use Garageband) are there really? Then again, I could be proven totally wrong.

That having been said, this one is a really beautiful and clever idea, and one I would be proud to see emerge as a winner from this competition.

Atmosphere popped out at me when I saw it among the thousands of entries we got, and among the other finalists, due to its potential to turn into something really, really cool. This is the type of app that’ll get your Windows using friends looking over your shoulder with jealousy.

I mean, speaking of potential coolness, just imagine showing your friends the forecast by literally fastforwarding the weather on your Desktop with a slider. Sign me up.

How cool is this? Lots of Leopard technologies have changed this idea from something I wish could exist into something I want done, now. With system-wide To Do support, RSS classes and VoiceOver, Minerva has suddenly become not only feasible, but potentially killer app quality. It could truly change the way I interact with my Mac. I’d love to wake up each morning, and while browsing the web, have Minerva report to me what I have to do, what appointments are coming up, and important emails that have come in. Or have Minerva’s morning report playing on my iPod while walking to classes. Here’s hoping this finalist goes far.