ReadWriteWeb had a list of six awesome apps, three of which I thought were particularly cool. And they certainly show the power of what can happen when the internet leaves computers and enters our every day lives, as we're starting to see with things like iPhone apps. Of course, when you think about things like MIT's Sixth Sense, and you can only imagine what will be possible in the future.
So, if you could have someone develop an application just for you, what would it be? What are the pressing needs you'd like fixed? Or what would you like to see happen that would just be cool? If I get some good ideas, I'll post them here and see if we can get someone to make them happen.
3. Multiplayer Augmented Reality Social Gaming
A few months ago, we found out what Crash Corp was up to, and that bee has been in our bonnet ever since. Augmented reality mobile gaming is definitely the frontier of its space. It's a gamble getting gamers away from their hotly-defended consoles, their PCs laden with expensive video cards, and all the games and ways of game playing they know. That would be, shall we say, a game changer. Ha ha. But we feel the coolest, most hardcore application of AR gaming can be achieved through multiplayer, socially enhanced, RPG-type games as opposed to the kind of casual games that isolate rather than connect users and don't tend to induce hours of Mountain-Dew fueled play. Something like foursquare is the embryonic, interface-free, back-end concept for what mobile gaming will become. We predict that in five years, all gamer geeks will have farmer's tans. Also, the addition of semi-virtual currency in marketing promotions that are location- and proximity-based make AR mobile a brand's most fantastic dream.
4. Real-Time Social Streams as Gesture-Responsive, Dimensional Displays
It's 2009. We don't have any flying cars. We don't have a moon colony. We've waited this long, and we want SOMETHING, damn it. Give us our Minority Report-esque gesture-controlled holographic displays, or at least a BumpTop-like 3D app that can handle concepts such as relative size and weight of discussions, apps, and other users. With existing apps such as Seesmic Desktop and its ilk becoming real-time and constantly present, we see our entire social graph's firehose glutting the data stream with absolutely too much information until it truly becomes the time-waster the mainstream claimed it was all along. We now need an app that can imaginatively and radically simplify statuses and microblogging and how we receive and parse them, and we're talking TED-level imagination. Why anyone that brilliant would want to work on social media projects is anyone's guess, but hey, it's our wishlist.
6. Personal Inventory and Shopping App
We've seen several trade-and-barter apps lately, such as NeighborGoods and OurShelf, that allow users to catalog items they already own and request those they need. And there are a few good shopping applications, such as Alice, out there, both in terms of inventory control as well as social shopping. But coming back to the Internet of Things, what we want is more inclusive and integrated than anything we've seen yet. We would like someone to develop a way to manage multiple home shopping lists, including groceries, book/DVD wishlists, etc., that sync with retailer inventories and send mobile alerts. It would also require a mobile app that allows shopping to be completed and automatically updates web-based lists accordingly. Eventually, this is the kind of tech that could be used to create truly smart shopping carts, as well.
Y Combinator's getting pretty fancy with their very detailed Request for Startups idea, which was somewhat like their "Startups We'd Like to Fund" post of yesteryear. Basically, rather than suffer through the dissatisfaction of loving the apps they're with, the good folks at the aforementioned accelerator program decided to give developers a little insight on what their startup wishlist might look like.
Never ones to be outdone, we at ReadWriteWeb have labored intensely and discussed among ourselves to produce this app wishlist. We can't offer funding, but it would make us picky little Internet geeks terribly happy if someone developed any of the six apps listed below. You know, while we're waiting for the flying cars and food replicators.
6 Awesome Apps Begging to Be Developed.
