Yawn yawn yawn. He wants Apps for his favourite Google products and social networks. How unbearably dull and unimaginative; quick quick, I need a link to the top 10 knitting patterns from 1897 to liven things up a bit!
Apps (or WebApps) for the iPhone?
I'd like to write one or see one that would do for cars what Shazzam does for music - photograph a car, it recognises it and tells you what it is. Bonus if it does other forms of transport and near-matches too. Totally useless, thoroughly cool.
One that I've mentioned in almost every post here for ages, a service that I can take a photo, it does OCR and feeds the text into Google translate. Bonus points if it does source-language-detection. More bonus points if it is actually usable in a foreign country on real live things like signposts, menus, timetables, advertisements, book covers, leaflets, etc.
How about some over-the-top cool statistics and analytics for next week's London Marathon and July's Tour de France?
How about a Shazzam-alike for ambient noises? Natural stuff? Wave your phone around and it tells you which birdsong that is, photograph something and it tells you which tree has that shaped leaves, what flower or bird or insect you're looking at. Bonus points if it's in any way accurate.
How about a grass-roots weather data feed? Wave your iPhone about and upload some GPS-specific current weather data to everyone's favourite mapping and mass-data crunching big brother, GOoooooooOOooogle and see if they can compete with the Meterological offices. Google Maps with satellite photo exists, why not Google Maps with live (and predicted) weather info overlay? Bonus points if there's a hardware sensor-array accessory for iPhone 3.
Maybe a city or museum tour guide app - go somewhere and pay to download an audio tour. Better if it can pick up data from where you are and guide you to nearby points of interest, and has photos, videos and text too. Even better if it's not that, but this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492789
Some decent mesh/local networking for iPhone 3 would be brilliant as well. Imagine a megaphone where one person could speak but only other people with tuned in networked phones could hear. Cross between a a shared walkie-talkie channel and a very short range radio broadcast.
"How about a grass-roots weather data feed? Wave your iPhone about and upload some GPS-specific current weather data to everyone's favourite mapping and mass-data crunching big brother, GOoooooooOOooogle and see if they can compete with the Meterological offices. Google Maps with satellite photo exists, why not Google Maps with live (and predicted) weather info overlay? Bonus points if there's a hardware sensor-array accessory for iPhone 3."
You just described the idea behind my (not an iPhone app) startup: OtherWeather.com Would love someone to write me an iPhone app for it though, I've been trying to convince my developer friend to do just that for months.
I used to work over at iWindsurf and iKitesurf and we had planned on doing something like that but it never went through. WeatherUnderground has been allowing user's to upload data from their personal weather stations (PWS) for years. The niche, I think, in this idea is allowing anyone, anywhere with or without special equipment to issue a weather report. There's a massive data storage and standardization challenge with it though.
Apps (or WebApps) for the iPhone?
I'd like to write one or see one that would do for cars what Shazzam does for music - photograph a car, it recognises it and tells you what it is. Bonus if it does other forms of transport and near-matches too. Totally useless, thoroughly cool.
One that I've mentioned in almost every post here for ages, a service that I can take a photo, it does OCR and feeds the text into Google translate. Bonus points if it does source-language-detection. More bonus points if it is actually usable in a foreign country on real live things like signposts, menus, timetables, advertisements, book covers, leaflets, etc.
How about some over-the-top cool statistics and analytics for next week's London Marathon and July's Tour de France?
How about a Shazzam-alike for ambient noises? Natural stuff? Wave your phone around and it tells you which birdsong that is, photograph something and it tells you which tree has that shaped leaves, what flower or bird or insect you're looking at. Bonus points if it's in any way accurate.
How about a grass-roots weather data feed? Wave your iPhone about and upload some GPS-specific current weather data to everyone's favourite mapping and mass-data crunching big brother, GOoooooooOOooogle and see if they can compete with the Meterological offices. Google Maps with satellite photo exists, why not Google Maps with live (and predicted) weather info overlay? Bonus points if there's a hardware sensor-array accessory for iPhone 3.
Maybe a city or museum tour guide app - go somewhere and pay to download an audio tour. Better if it can pick up data from where you are and guide you to nearby points of interest, and has photos, videos and text too. Even better if it's not that, but this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492789
Some decent mesh/local networking for iPhone 3 would be brilliant as well. Imagine a megaphone where one person could speak but only other people with tuned in networked phones could hear. Cross between a a shared walkie-talkie channel and a very short range radio broadcast.