
ISteam for iPhone earns a bunch of 22-year olds $100,000 in one month - brk
http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40982-140.html
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jbarciauskas
I feel a lot of the reaction here will be, man if only I could come up with
something like that! The reality is, though, they probably spent a lot of time
on this project, and when you divide the $100k up between the people who
worked on it and the number of hours they worked, it does not come out to a
ton of money. Also the $100k in a month seems unlikely to be repeated - a
bunch of people downloaded it for the "coolness" factor, but it will fade and
drop off, as happens with so many apps that are basically tech demos rather
than truly useful and productive apps. To summarize, this is likely not a good
business model.

However, that's not to say the project wasn't worth it for the people who
worked on it - just a caution that while the headline is catchy, the upside
for these guys is probably the resume / VC pitch bullet rather than the money.

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gravitycop
I.e., <http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ideas+are+worthless%22>

_How do you get good ideas for startups? That's probably the number one
question people ask me.

I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard to come
up with ideas for startups?_

~~~
eelco
Indeed. In fact, we had almost exactly the same idea when brainstorming about
cool iPhone apps with a couple of people, but thought it was too lame and that
we couldn't pull it off in a high-quality way ;) Ideas don't matter, people
(with their skills, enthusiasm, etc) do :)

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davi
Upvoted not for the $100K/mo, but the cool use of microphone, gravity sensor,
touch screen, and speaker to simulate a surface with condensation on it.

~~~
diN0bot
same here. the $100k/mo made for a catchy title. read further and you see the
tech and user vision (drawing space) and implementation are hot.

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AndrewWarner
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why it took iSteam barely a
week ... to briefly become #1 entertainment application in the App Store."

I'm not so sure it's so obvious. Why is playing with steam so popular? I
downloaded it and liked it, but I still don't know what was so compelling
about it.

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Tichy
Any pointers as to why suddenly there has been such an improvement in water
simulation effects? Is it just that computers have become faster, or have some
nifty algorithm ideas emerged in recent times? Even the iBeer stuff impressed
me.

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delackner
This is the reason I was fascinated by the app! Simulating steam believably is
quite a feat. Any papers or rough algorithmic sketches out there?

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fgimenez
I haven't seen the app, but a really good fog/water maker is Perlin Noise:
<http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/models/m_perlin.htm>

There is a faster implementation of it, as perlin noise is pretty expensive,
that get's used a lot in game design.

Hope that helps.

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nihilocrat
That's a clever use of the iPhone, but why are people so eager to be parted
with their money to buy some eye candy app?

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adamhowell
Think about what else in the world costs $.99 -- can't even get a 20oz soda
for that anymore -- and then think about what cool software -- like games --
normally cost.

This is a cool little piece of technology for less than the cost of a soda.
That's a) something you can't really get anywhere else and b) possibly the
beginning of the micropayment revolution for things other than music that
we've been waiting on for awhile now (unfortunately self contained to the
iphone for now, but I'm sure coming to the rest of the product line soon)

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davi
Interesting -- in the end, _inflation_ is what will let us make
micropayments...

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ntoshev
How so? The problem with micropayments is not that the absolute numbers are
low (in many currencies the numbers are always pretty high).

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davi
Because of the difference between deploying infrastructure vs. maintaining
infrastructure already deployed.

Companies seem to be willing to deploy infrastructure to collect e.g. 1 dollar
payments, but not 10 cent payments.

I'm guessing that they'll be willing to maintain that infrastructure even as
the value of the payment decreases due to inflation, since the per transaction
costs are low and likely to get lower, and there's little risk in maintaining
existing infrastructure.

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danw
Other iPhone apps that make excellent use of the devices features for
innovative UI are Ocarina and RjDj, worth checking out.

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statictype
What do you call a hack that's simultaneously extremely clever and extremely
useless?

I'm sure there's some phrase for this that I'm missing.

~~~
brk
_What do you call a hack that's simultaneously extremely clever and extremely
useless?_

Hmmmm. Profitable?

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iDeveloper
iSteam is definitely a cool app. I'm an <http://www.dreamworldsol.com> myself,
but I must say I'm impressed.

Sam Shaw <http://www.dreamworldsol.com>

