07.09.08

My Dream iPhone Application Wishlist

Posted in Computers, Social Networking, The Future at 1:28 by Tom Reynolds

Like I suspect many others in the UK who were looking to upgrade their iPhone, I’ve been left disappointed by the O2 website.

But it matters not – for the thing that I am most looking forward to is the Apps Store, the thought that I’ll be able to download additional software for use on my iPhone is the real thing that fills me with excitement.

And I can do that on my ‘old’ iPhone.*

Now, were I a clever person I’d be coding my own applications for the iPhone, unfortunately I am a bit thick at the moment so I’ll have to resolve myself into being the ‘ideas’ man.

So here are my ideas for the ideal iPhone application that I’d be willing to lay down cold hard cash for. There are more obvious ones but I would imagine that everyone and their dog has a chat or IRC client in production. (I would rather obviously love to get involved with number 2 if anyone has a job for me).

1) A MMORPG, something fairly lightweight, perhaps with the majority of the heavy lifting done not by a server, but by the combined mesh computing power of all the iPhones running the software. Otherwise similar to Runescape. Imagine being able to grind levels while sitting on a bus.

2) An Augmented Reality Game, perhaps crossed with social software overtones – consider if you will a game that is location based to where you *really* are. Using the location services in the phone (either original iPhone, or the AGPS of the 3G iPhone), you would be able to interact with the players that are around in you in physical space. I see it being based on a similar story to the old ‘Highlander’ TV series, or based around a secret society of wizards hiding in the modern day – or spies, or superheroes, or aliens looking to infiltrate Earth. I believe it is obvious how the social networking system would fit in on this.

3) An application that links up with Trustedplaces.com So I could use that location detection to find decent food places near where I am, read the reviews and decide where to eat. Again you could integrate the social aspects of that site into the application easily and have people filing their reviews immediately after eating.

4) Meetup – Yet another location based application. Let’s say that you are going to meet a friend, by sending out a ‘ping’ you could see the location of every friend near to your current location. Integrate the camera into it so you could send them a photo of where you are from within the application itself. Have it integrated with websites like meetup.com or Upcoming. This may be what Fire Eagle does, I’m not too sure as I don’t have an invite.

5) Lightsaber sound effects based on accelerometer input. Because I am a geek.

6) Two player board/strategy games like chess or backgammon. I’d be extremely surprised if these aren’t offered at launch or pretty soon afterwards. You meet up with a friend and pull out the board of a thousand games…

7) Voicedialing – possibly tricky with the access people have with the APIs, but it’d be a great upgrade. Now the Americans are having handsfree legislation introduced I suspect that Apple might include it with a firmware upgrade.

8) The iPhone camera able to take a picture of an object’s bar code and look it up on Amazon or similar comparison sites. Delicious library does this for the tabletop, but it’d be great to have that functionality on the go. Oh, and QR codes as well please.

9) VNC into my home Mac, because I am that sort of geek.

10) A copy of the BNF for offline reading, and not for £100+ please.

And generally I would give up a significant organ of mine if I could get a foldaway keyboard working with it, or use it as a modem for my Macbook Pro.

*Actually it’s my mum that is most annoyed, as she is the one who is getting my ‘old’ iPhone – and she is very much looking forward to it…

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

16 Comments »

  1. Gordon said,

    July 9, 2008 at 7:14

    Nice list.

    3, 4 and 7 make it onto my list, the others less so. And having had a look through the app store my main request would be to get some UK centric content in the apps!

    re: 8. – http://mashable.com/2008/05/19/scanlife-iphon/ – perhaps?

    [Reply]

  2. Ori Inbar said,

    July 10, 2008 at 7:02

    yes, the iPhone is a formidable contender to become the lead device for augmented reality games. In fact it made it to the top 10 devices for augmented reality games in my list at http://www.gamesalfresco.com

    [Reply]

  3. Jim said,

    July 11, 2008 at 14:13

    Number 5 seems to be sorted:

    http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=283265667&mt=8

    Jim

    [Reply]

  4. Tom Reynolds said,

    July 12, 2008 at 11:55

    @Ori I’d never come across that site before – thanks for the link to it, it looks very interesting.

    @Jim Genius, I tried it out last night and my crewmate wants an iPhone *just* for that application. She is of course quite right about that.

    [Reply]

    Jim Reply:
    July 13th, 2008 at 9:18

    LOL, I loaded it onto my iPod touch and then sat there wondering WTF I was thinking – it has no speaker. You’d look mad enough waving it around as it is, but if you have to do it wearing headphones…

    Jim

    Ps. I went to the Brent Cross apple store Friday night – they had loads of stock of iPhone 3Gs of all types … but no way of selling them! (o2’s servers were still stuffed). This morning (Sun) they have 8Gb and 16GB White ones, but the black 16Gb is sold out. Argh! With it only opening at noon, I might have stood a chance in the mad scrum for the door when they opened. Ah well…

    [Reply]

  5. Lottie said,

    July 12, 2008 at 22:20

    I don’t know if this is any good but #10:

    http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=281935788&mt=8

    [Reply]

    Tom Reynolds Reply:
    July 13th, 2008 at 0:04

    Heh, I just posted about that over on RAOR

    [Reply]

  6. vivdora said,

    July 13, 2008 at 12:05

    And what would you like for pudding?!

    [Reply]

  7. Dave said,

    July 13, 2008 at 16:58

    Ooh, we likes ARGs, yes we does. But surely it only takes using the device to include it in an ARG; I’m sure unforums or Immersion Unlimited or someone will have people willing to use the extra-magic features of your iPhone +3- sorry, I mean 3G – in the wider context. And if not, gosh, I’d like to know about the project if you go through with it! :)

    ~D

    [Reply]

  8. Peter Nofelt said,

    July 14, 2008 at 15:32

    Hi Tom,

    I’m with Perk Mobile, we’re developiong a zombie themed Location Based game call Mobile Dead (www.mobiledead.com). Sort of similar to what you were asking for in you’re post. We presented at Supernova and were featured on tech crunch:
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/16/supernova-mobile-connections-forum/

    We developed the initial version for Android and have been porting the game to Blackberry (and J2ME compatible) devices. We hope to begin iphone development soon.

    Feel free to email me if you want any details.

    [Reply]

  9. Jim said,

    July 16, 2008 at 11:40

    That’s number 9 crossed off the list as well now:

    http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2008/07/16/free-vnc-lite-client-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/

    Works to a linux vnc session. Not been able to try it on a mac yet though…

    Jim

    [Reply]

  10. alleldemusia said,

    August 3, 2008 at 1:40

    Thanks !

    [Reply]

  11. Ken Cutts said,

    August 23, 2008 at 3:01

    I want to share these ideas that are a little out of the ordinary:

    NON-INTERNET APPS
    -CPR Instructions with timing and alerts
    -Emergency/Survival guides
    -Real-life RBG photo color picker (for paints, fabrics, etc…)
    -Pocket Project Manager with preloaded sample projects
    -Dinner wine pairing
    -Printing via Wifi/networks

    INTERNET/WEBSITE APPS
    -MusicNotes mobile player that scrolls sheet music
    -eCard sender
    -Translator with pronunciation

    August 22, 2008
    listed by: kencutts.com

    [Reply]

    Tom Reynolds Reply:
    August 27th, 2008 at 23:11

    Some nice ideas there, although I think the RBG picker might be a problem just based on the physics of colour generation on a LCD screen.

    The scrolling of sheet music is inspired, as is the dinner/wine pairing. One being quite unlike anything else on the phone (yet taking advantage of it’s display), the other is so obviously perfectly suited for a phone.

    [Reply]

  12. Livia said,

    October 28, 2008 at 18:19

    Well said.

    [Reply]

  13. noora said,

    December 23, 2008 at 20:21

    To get to your number 2: augmented reality game…

    metaio has “Virtual Santa” – the Augmented Reality Christmas Special from metaio for free available in the App Store.

    Visit http://www.metaio.com/iPhone for a direct link to the App, screenshots, movie, description etc.

    Enjoy and Happy Holidays to everyone!

    [Reply]

Leave a Comment