My Dream App

Gus Mueller develops the award-winning wiki-based organizer VoodooPad. VoodooPad won the O'Reilly Macinnovators.html">Mac OS X Innovators Award in 2003 in the U.S. category, and received a 4-mice rating from Macworld Magazine. You can view his personal blog here.

Desktop Wars sounds insane. Fun, but insane. I think that’s why I like it. It’s such a stupid idea, but it’s crazy and that just might work.

Games these days seem to be missing a bit of “magic” that makes them fun. Have all the ideas been done already? I don’t know but I think someone should try another approach and that is why Desktop Wars could work. Bonus points if there was a screen saver involved as well.

This is another one of those apps that I think we already have solutions for, such as Hazel or Chaos Antidote. I realize that the ambition behind SweepIt is greater than what some of the current applications out there provide, but every app must reach version 1.0 before 2.0. (duh). So what I’m trying to say (in a failed zen-like way) is maybe this dream app already exists and if you want to see it do more, then just ask the developer to do it. For the most part, we (developers) don’t bite!

I think a GTD app would be killer. In fact, I think lots of other programmers think this as well and I can think of 3 different companies off the top of my head that are working on GTD apps right now.

So while it’s a really cool idea, it’s one that is currently being worked on by lots of folks and if you want a “Dream App”, you might as well make something that isn’t already out there. Plus, I’ve got a little insider knowledge and know of a very talented mac company that is working on this problem right now and you’re guaranteed to be happy with whatever they produce.

I’m not sure why I like this idea, but I do. It must be some suppressed caveman dislike of online forums, and any effort to make them better has to be good. Right?

Feature wise, archiving of the data is a must. Search using Spotlight or Search Kit would be super cool as well.

But how would the interaction with the online bits of it be done? Each forum software does things a little differently, so I’m thinking there must be some sort of plugin architecture to get the most bang for the buck. I’m also thinking that most forum software probably has some anti-spam measurements and will make developing Hijack a bit of a pain in the butt. The programmer in me fears writing this app.

This is cool, and the programmer in me sees exactly how Bubble Fish could be done in a very reasonable way. Since I think the implementation wouldn’t be too difficult, that leaves lots of time for cool UI tricks. Yay!

I’d also suggest that the applets/modules for extending Bubble Fish use Objc as a base, but then also have the ability to use your scripting language of choice (Lua or Python or *gasp* AppleScript). Flexibility is good.

I like this idea as well. In fact, I’ve considered making such a product myself in the past and would be very grateful if someone else would take the idea and run with it! .Mac syncing is cool, but man- 99 bucks a year is a major turn-off for lots of people.

The different syncing profiles is a very cool idea, but I wouldn’t implement all four of them for Portal 1.0. I’d pick one or two, and develop the app around that and see how well it works. Since file syncing is a very hard problem to solve (as we’ve seen over the years by the various attempts), my suggestion for Portal is to have a basic 1.0 with a solid foundation to grow from. I also like the idea of animations depicting the transfer, and I say go with the stargate / wormhole idea instead of tornados (which tend to destroy things, don’t they?). Plus, I’m just a fan of Stargate.

I think just about everyone who ever used HyperCard misses it, and if Pile o’ Cards can fill in the hole then that’s a sure hit. Right?

Hey, it might not be flashy or über cool, but I think it would be useful to a large group of people and that counts for a lot. Is this moving the power of creating little applications into the hands of the average user? It could be.

Wow, I really like this idea, and I can’t think of anything else out there like it. Nothing is cooler than an untapped area for programmers to explore.

Where I think Blossom would take root (haha) would be in the UI obviously. There’s so much room for neat ways to get the point across that you’re not living up to your own standards. Wilting, flowers, little bees could pollinate across plants. Can I get this on my desktop like Konfabulator? What about if I’m _really_ productive one day? Can I get little nitrogen tablets to use at a later date when I’m feeling lazy? And the programmer in me says “this is reasonable, go for it”. I say go for this one.