Mambo Taxi

I got this today in response to an email to the originator of the My Dream App project, who just wrote a glowing review of Cha-Ching (which looks a heck of a lot like the app I proposed). Fair 'nuff. He said they got dozens of quicken-killer apps. I guess I get a funny story out of the deal. And, of course, the app.

On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Phillip Ryu wrote:

> I can tell you without a doubt in my mind that the Cha-Ching creators
> created the app on their own track. (I know this because the app has
> its roots in a stalled project suggested by a friend of mine a few
> months back involving the same people.) I remember one idea being
> thrown around very early on was a tagging system, which is pretty
> much the thing to do these days, as I'm sure you're aware. The name
> is an unfortunate coincidence but I'd write it off as such... it's a
> nice name, but not obscure enough to blame them for ripping it off.
> (In my mind there's a great chance they came up with it themselves
> along with you. Great minds think alike.)
>
> If you'd like to pursue this further with the Cha-Ching developers,
> that's up to you, but this is the insight I can offer into the
> situation. At the least, you definitely have solid ideas for this
> type of app, and I would think you could potentially make a great
> beta tester for the app and get some credit that way as an alternative.
>
> Glad you enjoyed the contest as a whole!
>
> -phill

[ Edit, November 2018: here's a perfect example of "put the idea out into the universe and see what happens". Here's the whole story, in reverse chronological order. ]

Holy cow. It's possible that someone thought My Dream App (Quicken, but more intuitive) was worth building.

Exhibit A:

My Dream App description: Ka-Ching. I put this up on August 27th.

Exhibit B:

Cha-Ching. The domain name was registered September 2nd.

It got announced on some entrepreneurship site yesterday. The guy says they wrote the app in three weeks. ...and I know that at least one of their devs, Jakob Wells, knew about MyDreamApp.com. Awesome.

It's going to be tough to wait until 5ish to go home. It feels a bit like Christmas!

I wonder if I get a free copy.

People on my friends' list have given me a helpful critique of my idea for My Dream App, which I'm quite grateful for, and I am looking forward to seeing how my idea does in the first round of the contest.

Something's bugging me, and it partly goes to the core of my belief in open-source development as a workable system.

This contest, of course, isn't open-source; it's an idea competition to generate shareware. Winning ideas get prizes, and the winning three ideas get 15% of whatever proceeds get made. I've said the biggest prize for me would be the development of this application. Because I really need something like it.

But. My ego's involved. I want my version of it to be made. Of course, right? But how much do I want my version instead of a version?

Open-source reasoning goes that good ideas will bubble to the top, and interested people who can implement them, will do so. Everyone wins. At the same time, there's a letting-go involved; accepting that your idea may be shot down by the project manager; or people will laugh at your code; or other semi-rational things. I've contributed code to various projects, but I sit on a lot more code, for all of those reasons. I also sit on ideas I think are viable, just because I don't want to lose the control.

The contest site is set up with a forum so people can share their ideas and drum up support in advance of voting. And a fair number of people have; it looks like 355 out of 2000 ideas submitted. A few of them look somewhat similar to mine, though I think mine still has lots they haven't talked about publicly.

Of course other people will take ideas from the public posts, for their own app. So I wonder whether I should go public with the good parts of my idea. If my ideas are as good as I hope they are, they will be spread into everyone else's apps, guaranteeing a spot in the second round (when the field is narrowed from 2000 apps to 24, when everyone who's submitted an app can vote). And maybe the added ideas will improve the chances for lasting the 3rd through 5th rounds.

But only three apps will ultimately be made in this contest. The others will revert to the author. I think parts of my idea could be commercially viable. But what are the chances I'd end up using them anyway?

Aren't I better off trying to make a version of the idea get completed?

P'shaw. Ego makes things complicated.

[edit: and indeed, isn't this a bit navel-gaze-y and don't I have better things to do? Oh wait, yes I do. Hm.]

Grumble. I had hoped that getting a mac would make everything easier.

I want an accounting program for Mac that will download transactions from my Canadian bank. I have accounts for my small-business and personal accounts going back to 1997, in Quicken format.

Options:

• Buy Quicken Home and Business for US, Windows version, under an emulator such as Parallels. I've not investigated this thoroughly; I've gone this route with Quicken and Linux and it wasn't much fun.
  
  
• There is no current Quicken for Mac, Canada Version. There is for last year's version (2006, I suppose like cars), but that stopped being sold three weeks ago. My understanding is that stores don't carry it. Perhaps I could find it somewhere. I'm not inclined to, though, since it's been discontinued.
  
  
• Buy Quicken for Mac, US version. Theoretically, there is some Canada support. But not enough that Quicken's list of supported banks includes any in Canada. Also, support for importing from an old version of Windows Quicken is terrible. Also, I understand that new versions of Quicken ('06 on) won't import .QIF files, so there is no migration path back to Quicken if you migrate away. I do not want to support that kind of non-support.
  
  
• Flee the annoyance that is Intuit software and buy moneydance. It supports import from .QIF, it's written in Java and supports win/mac/linux. It doesn't support Canadian institutions either. Possibly, I could import QIF files. For that matter, I could write a plugin myself, since it's got a Python interpreter.
  
  
• Stop the race, get off, and balance my checkbook on paper. Hm. Looking more appealing, at least at the moment.
  
  

Grr.

[edit, oct. 15, 2006: added tag for mydreamapp, since that's where this discussion took me.]