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

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

'Tweek' is a bad name. It doesn't connote finance, and is likely to be confused with either setup-tweaking or crystal meth.

I've never really understood the point of programs like Quicken. I don't have a problem keeping track of how much money I have, or where I spent it; I buy basically everything with a credit card, and I can download my transaction history at will -- ditto with checks. The credit card also buffers money, so my exact account balance at any particular moment isn't ever really important.

The thing that would be really useful would be to have all the purchases categorized, so I can see how much total I've spent on, say, groceries. And from what I can tell, that's something you have to do by hand, on top of entering all the data, and it's a gigantic amount of work, which is why I never do it.

Could this program help with that kind of thing?

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

I agree with dr_tectonic that Tweek is not a good name. Especially since what you're describing is more of a money genie.

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

I would use this because we manage several different accounts which must be merged. One thing to mention (it might make the folks less likely to pick your choice, not sure on the politics of such things) is that we are a Mac/PC household. Interoperability with other programs, or publishing to an editable generic format (.pdf and .html are not terribly editable, if you see what I mean) would be nice. But as I say, I sense there might be some annoyance with that kind of thing.

[ancawonka.livejournal.com]

This is the kind of idea, where, if they don't accept it into the program, you can get together with three friends, built it over a couple of weeks, and either open source it or sell it to some company (apple, quicken, google, etc)...

I would totally use this kind of thing. Anyone who does budgeting and tracking of detailed expenses or is managing property or runs a small business could use this.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

I think that of the names mentioned, "Ka-Ching" is definitely the most attractive. If you have to explain why it's named Tweek or Reggie, some part of the population won't even look at it twice on the shelf -- with Ka-Ching you at least get a second look, even people who don't ordinarily use apps like that will at least want to know what it is and will have basically no problem remembering the name to tell their friends who are looking for one.

The OCR is very interesting. Why enter stuff by hand when the computer can do it for you, even if you have to then correct a few characters? And your description of Quicken makes me happy I've never used it -- it is just asinine to make users enter all their transactions before you import the .qif, WTF?, it should prove much easier to download the file and let people point and click to transactions and maybe even drag and drop them in the right places when they find the paper receipts than entering stuff by hand.

I have not looked at Delicious Library in a while, but the guys there used to describe in general terms what they did to read the UPC thru iSight so they can enter the book in the library. I have the app, I like it even though I have not really used it a lot, but I ended up buying a dedicated, hand-held UPC laser scanner that uses Bluetooth because holding books to the iSight gets old fast. On the other hand, books are heavy, receipts are not.

Either way, I love your idea, and I figure once it's out, one mention on the Mac sites should get you plenty of customers, particularly if you use a portable file that can easily be converted to/from Quicken, like ng_nighthawk's example.

Good Luck!

[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!