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Tell HN: I'm willing to develop a free iPhone App. What do you need?

13 points by fara ↗ HN
I'm about to learn the SDK so instead of doing just a hello world I wanted to do a real application. Is there anything you think is missing, is too expensive in the app store or its usefull but does not exist because it lacks a business model? My intention is to do a real and usefull app, and being the first one I develop I'll publish it for free. You have my 30-point-karma word on it.

15 comments

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adelevie
An app that let's people perform Mechanical Turk tasks in their spare time. Your job will be to find tasks that are easy to do on a phone and streamline the process. Tasks like deciding if a picture is NSFW comes to mind.

The app would be free, but you'd charge some percentage of Turk wages.

With this app, people can finally earn spare change using a $200 phone and $30+/month data plan!

thenbrent
+1 this would be great.

Perhaps you could use mechanical turk to choose suitable tasks for the app. Unless you have the desire to create the wicked algorithm required.

fara
Great idea! I'm also considering a survey engine for Mechanical Turk tasks. If you have more input, feel free to contact me. (too bad HN doesnt have private messages)
adelevie
You mean something like feedbackarmy, but more generalized for other types of surveys?
fara
Yes. Actually I was expecting an answer to what do YOU hackers would like to have and dont want to pay for it. For the moment this is the most voted idea but I'm still open for more input if you have other ideas.
punchfire
you know how we have those calling cards and you have to call this long number and then enter in the international phone number you're dialing? anything that helps that process along would be quite cool. I'm using skype at the moment but it still can't beat the calling card price and carrying around the card or remembering long international numbers is a major hassle for their use.
mixmax
I've thought that a sailing app would be great.

Using the compass you can put your iphone on the deck and have an arrow point you to your next waypoint that you have plotted on Google maps beforehand. You can also record the route you've sailed and load it into a google maps mashup when you get back home. Or you could use the accelerometer to record how good or bad the weather has been on your trip (the more a boat rocks back and forth the worse the weather)

I haven't thought out exactly how it should be, but I'm pretty sure it would be a neat app. If you find it interesting my mail is in my profile.

There's no reason to publish it for free, it's probably something people will pay good money for :-)

kls
As an avid offshore fisherman, in Florida, I think about nautical apps all the time, the problem is that the iPhone is not safety rated at the level that you would want to use it for an app that you life could depend on. I don't know much about the laws but you could run afoul of safety regulation by simply creating an application with the express intent of using it for these applications. I know Navionics provides their map software on the iPhone so it may be possible, but it definitely warrants more research before investing the time to develop a product.
1ts
An app which allows me to control the music played by my iPhone from my laptop.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1228560

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Zev
That sort of app isn't exactly the best kind of app to use as an introduction to iPhone apps.. HTTP Live Streaming on the iPhone isn't the simplest thing to start with (and the server would be pretty big on the Mac/Windows/Linux/... side of things).

It is an excellent idea. Just not the type of idea that the OP seems to be looking for (right now!).

Also, not an app that I would release for free, if I were to be the one making it.

milkshakes
i'm working on that :) shoot me an email narf@(my username).org if you want a copy to play with
Zev
Some ideas that have been going through my head that I don't see myself ever getting around to working on (beyond the initial "jot them down in a notebook" stage):

1. An iPad interface for reMail. Not iPhone, but, definitely something that people would use and exposes you (the OP) to what a nice ObjC codebase looks like (personal formatting nitpicks aside). Might be able charge for this, if you wanted; reMail's source is now Apache 2, iirc.

2. Or maybe take the old Objective-C code from Tim Berners-Lee's original web browser and hack it up to the point where it works (don't know how big of a task this really is) and stick it into an iPad UI that looks how WorldWideWeb originally did. Might get rejected for having a non-WebKit-renderer. And not iPhone. But, I think that it'd be a fun project to hack on and something that you can show off.

3. If you use hg and bitbucket, an equivalent of iOctocat. Or maybe bzr and launchpad, whatever. Again, could probably charge for it, if you wanted to.

fara
I'm not planning to buy an iPad, so there goes 1. 2 would be fun but I'm liking the 3 idea, maybe for redmine which is what I currently use.
froo
How about a free crowdsourced talking tour guide app.

Basically, something that plots your location (GPS) and which direction you're facing (Magnetometer/Compass) and if there is anything interesting available on the server, play it.

Essentially make it so users can explore areas of interest (say a city) in their own way, instead of a predefined route.

Having a way for locals to upload their own audiotracks so you get the "inside scoop" on everything would be brilliant too.