My Dream App

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.

Today we have three finalists for pet owners, forum addicts, and Mac power users. That covers most of you guys right?

Hijack, by Kevin Capizzi: With news sites and blogs covered by RSS apps and email set up in Mail.app, there’s one huge online time sink remaining to be Cocoafied. That would be the lifesucker known as discussion forums. Hijack aims to make the addiction all the more pleasant, consolidating all of your favorite forums in a Cocoa interface with support for all popular forum engines. You can read the full idea here and check out Kevin’s first blog post here.

My personal thoughts: Who prefers checking their email on the web vs. a dedicated email app, or chatting in a web browser vs. iChat? I’m guessing there aren’t many hands in the air, because let’s face it, if we’re going to spend hours browsing and interacting with something, a nice app UI is going to be much more pleasant to use than a bunch of websites. Which is why Hijack just makes sense. Consolidating the forums I visit into a nice Cocoa UI is something I’d use daily, and I suspect many others would too. I’m definitely keeping an eye on this finalist.

iGotPets, by Josh McGuire: Josh’s iGotPets probably would’ve sounded ludicrous a decade ago, but during times when pets are checked into $1000 a night dog hotels and sent to spas, iGotPets sounds entirely sane. Who isn’t concerned about their pet’s health, and who doesn’t want to show off their pet online? You can do all of this and more with iGotPets through an easy to use interface. You can read the full idea here and check out Josh’s first blog post here.

Developer Judge Jason Harris: “This idea interested me right off the bat because I’ve never seen anything similar. And a girl I know had just finished telling me about how she made a MySpace page for her dog.

The point is that people freak out over their pets, how cute they are, how well they take care of them, and so on. iGotPets gives them a way of formalizing that freak-out, a place where they can track their pet’s health, size, behavior, and so on.

And even more, it gives pet owners a systemic way of bragging about their pet to others! No more showing people pics of the puppy around the water cooler, show ‘em your iGotPets profile!”

Ground Control, by Russell Heistuman: Ground Control is the shortcut app for power users. A sort of hybrid of the Dashboard and the Dock, Ground Control offers extremely easy access to commonly used apps (such as Mail or iChat) as well as general information (news feeds, weather, etc.) in a pro-styled bar across your screen. Forget about the Dashboard’s funky widgets and performance issues. Ground Control is all about the full, professional, functional package. You can read the full idea here, and check out Russell’s first blog post here.

Development Manager John Casasanta: “Ground Control was an entry we received on the last day of submissions. And I’m really glad it came in. Considering that I’ve been involved in developing several Dashboard widgets, this will sound pretty blasphemous, but I think that Ground Control has the potential to be Dashboard done right.

What I mean is that for one, the Dashboard pretty much takes over the system when you pop into it. If you’re actually getting work done, this is one of the easiest ways to pop out of a “flow” state. Ground Control has the potential to significantly reduce this since it’ll have more of a Dock-like UI. You’ll be able to quickly slide it out, access what you need, then have it slide out of your way.

Another good thing about this is that the “UI purists” will love it compared to Dashboard. This could (and probably should) be done in such a way that each module has a relatively consistent look and feel since they’d all exist in the same panel. Compare this with Dashboard where every widget looks very different and things begin to have a free-for-all, cluttered feel.”

More finalists tomorrow… we’re halfway there!