Whistle Some Tunes, Play Some Cards, Travel... Take A Break!
Thanks to today’s sponsors: iClip, the multiple clipboard solution for OS X, Awaken, the iTunes compatible alarm clock, and macZOT!, for daily deals on Mac software.
Congrats to James, Bob, and Richard for making the cut!
Destinations, by James Badcock: For those of you who dream of traveling extensively someday, you’re going to want Destinations by your side. Destinations streamlines the trip planning process, plus it acts as a sort of journal while you’re traveling, letting users attach photos and journal entries to locations on the map as they travel through. When you want to share the experience or relive the memories, Destinations will be there with a virtual history of your trip. You can read the full idea here and check out James’ first blog post here.
My personal thoughts: In my opinion, Destination works best when it’s acting as a travel diary. UI wise, I’m thinking a map of the world with dottted lines showing travel route, and markers on each destination. Click the markers and you’d be able to see all related journal entries and photos, or you could simply click “play” and have an instant slideshow of the trip in chronological order. And, of course, the possibilities for sharing. One click website creation would be great, as would easy importing into iDVD, etc. Overall, a lot of great possibilities.
Pile o’ Cards, by Bob Conlon: Bob’s Pile o’ Cards is probably the most nebulous finalist we’re letting in. What can you do with a pile of virtual cards? The possibilities are nearly endless. It can be as simple as playing some card games, or as complex as an application. (Remember, Myst was a Hypercard app.) You can use them for flashcards, or to brainstorm a project, shuffling cards around the ‘table’ and creating a sort of loose, visual outline. Pile o’ Cards is nebulous, but in a good way. You can read the full idea here and check out Bob’s first blog post here.
Development Manager John Casasanta: “This is one of those rare apps that makes you think, ‘what if?’ If it’s done well, it has the chance to be a revolutionary app. But the danger is that it turns out to be a concept that people don’t easily get, which would make it hard (pretty much impossible) to market.
“Ultimately, I feel that if Pile o’ Cards is one of the three winners, it’ll either be a huge hit, or a total flop…there’ll be no middle ground with this one.”
Whistler, by Richard Whitelock: Whistler is for those of us with musical aspirations, but without the uh, musical talent. Don’t know how to use a synthesizer? Lacking guitar skills? With Whistler, all you need is a great tune and some rudimentary whistling or humming skills, and you’re golden. Your melody will be analyzed and extracted using your Mac’s built-in microphone (or even a drum beat detected from tapping through your laptop’s motion sensor) and exported as a Garageband friendly midi file. You can read the full idea here, and check out Richard’s first blog post here.
Developer Judge Jason Harris: “This one grabbed me right off the bat since I’m a conga player and I like to geek out by drumming on all the random stuff on my desk. And I think fourier transforms are the knees of the bees.
“So as soon as I saw this one, I was like “awwww yeah, I get to bang on stuff AND write fourier transform code??!! Whoootie!
“There was some concern with this one about whether it could actually be implemented. I’m pretty confident that it can be. I’ll post again later, if this one sticks around for awhile, on how I think it could be done. In the meantime, I’ll just whistle about it.”
That’s 15 down, 9 to go. Stick around, because there are some real gems coming up!
