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

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing one model, in passing, at my local CompUSA -- I didn't even stop or see what brand it was either, my first thought was "oh, they're trying that one again". I sure hope they work well, or at least better than the previous couple of tries since 1986. The reputation is that it takes a very steady pace to get good results. Granted, now we have enough computing power to embed in them that they might actually be working well. Then again, if you skew the scanner just a bit, the distortion is hard to correct. I guess they are a little desperate, unless one is in a very specialized application, like libraries or journalism, scanners don't have as high an appeal as they once had, now that photography is digital.

PS: Google seems to point to a lot of different brands, like Wizcom InfoScan, IRISPen and Planon System Solutions DocuPen. They all seem like OCR pens, no pictures (not that I expected pictures).

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

hm. here's a mystery: the one I heard of was operated differently than those three: you waved the long side of the wand against the page. I'll see if I can figure out what it was.