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My Dream App Aims to be the American Idol of Software Development

My Dream App Aims to be the American Idol of Software Development

by , 2:25 PM EDT, August 21st, 2006

Self-described software entrepreneur Phill Ryu on Monday launched My Dream App, a competition of which he said: "My Dream App will do for software users what American Idol did for aspiring singers. All it takes is a really great idea, and you don't even have to use a Mac. We're democratizing software."

The 40 judges in the contest, which lets anyone submit their ideas for their dream software application, include Digg.com founder Kevin Rose, New York Times columnist David Pogue, former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The initial slate of entries will be narrowed down to 24, which will be voted on by visitors to the Web site until three are left.

Jason Harris of Unsanity (ShapeShifter), Austin Sarner (AppZapper) and Martin Ott (SubEthaEdit) will turn the three finalists into shareware applications, with all royalties going to them. Each finalist will have a blog on the site through which they can explain their vision. In addition, they'll receive MacBooks and video iPods.

The submission process is open now and ends Sept. 1. User voting begins Sept. 21.

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Close Name:geoduck Posts: 1922 Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:13 pm Subject:

I like that they aren't asking for people to develop their dream app. They just want people to suggest what it would be. A lot of people have an idea for an app they would like to see but have no idea how to build it (myself included). Conversely most people who do serious coding don't use the apps the way the rest of us do so they often don't understand what we think makes a great app (did anyone ask for a dancing paperclip?).

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Close Name:jimothy Posts: 612 Joined: 04 Jun 2004
Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:06 am Subject: Dancing paperclips

As a software developer myself, I can say with a high degree of likelihood that the dancing paperclip was not a developers idea. It probably came from marketing (who are known to employ tea leaves and chicken blood in their decision making process), who passed the requirement to the developers, who then wrinkled their noses and reluctant gave birth to Clippy.

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Close Name:geoduck Posts: 1922 Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:44 am Subject:

That very well could be. I remember a few years back at some conference there was a demo for developers of a small software package that not only got rid of Clippy, (that wasn't an option in Office at the time), but graphically Killed him.

They gave the guy a standing ovation.

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