My Dream App

[da]

[edit: unlocked b/c round one is over and I didn't make it; maybe someone will take the ideas and make this anyhow?]

Yesterday I entered My Dream App, a contest to propose a new Macintosh application, judged according to its novelty, use of Mac OS features, feasibility, and marketability. Three winners will get to see their applications developed commercially, plus they get royalties. In a week, the contest closes to new submissions, and they weed the bids down to 24 semi-finalists. (Go check it out; I'd love to see what my friends come up with as their ideal applications! Plus, I'd love to bounce ideas off everyone, and help come up with something else as your bid!)

The initial bid is limited to 800 characters (eek!) and they're up to over 1,500 submissions in the first 48 hours (eek!!) So
I don't suppose I'll make it to the second round. But who knows.

People who've read my fuming about Quicken on Mac may guess where my thoughts were this week. So sue me, my dream app is... a Quicken-killer. Yah, boring. How many people would use something like this?:

Title: Tweek or Ka-ching. (Maybe something else. I've got a week to decide.) [Edit: how about 'Reggie' short for Register?.. ]

Description:


A modern money-tracking program. We've got email receipts, paypal, bank and card transaction downloads. Checkbooks are 20th century. Automate!

Default interface presents eye-candy for your chosen important items (budgets, recent transactions, balances).

Use spotlight to find emailed receipts. Attach web receipts and web proofs-of-purchase. Download .qif and OFX data. All automatically, & via task scheduler.

One goal: minimize manual entry. OCR paper receipts via scanner/iSight. Automatically reconcile where possible. Learns your behaviour well enough to make money-tracking effortless.

Another goal: use the network. Open scripting API for plugins (IO/storage/control). What if it worked with billmonk.com? What if joint expenses carried to other person's view on their mac?

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(Please don't share this beyond my friends-list; I locked it b/c I don't want someone else to submit the same idea.)

Critiques welcome. After all, I have 12 characters to spare. ;)

Comments

[psychedelicbike.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure I like the Ka-Ching name. It seems, um, kind of trite and childish for an application that performs such a "serious" task (no offense intended). What about something that follows the Apple branding conventions, like:

iBank
iBalance
iBudget

Anyway, the app does sound very nice. Good luck with your entry!

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I like iBank.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

So do they. ;)

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Oh...hm.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Their software is OK but it oversells. You can't actually import from quicken properly, and you can't compare accounts with different currencies. But it shows promise.

It's actually quite useful for illustrating how this putative project shouldn't be done. ;)

But too bad they got the name first. :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

thanks. Ibank would be my first choice if it weren't already taken by a piece of mac software. Hmmm.

http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/

I haven't tried theirs out yet, maybe I'll decide theirs is really good enough after all.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Well, theirs nicely illustrates how an attractive mac application can be semi-useful. And, what a big job producing a money app actually is, if it's supposed to be compatible with quicken QIF files..

[psychedelicbike.livejournal.com]

Curses! Foiled again!

iFinance? iFi for short :)