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My Dream App Winners Announced

by , 11:35 AM EDT, October 27th, 2006

The My Dream App contest is officially over, and the three winners have been announced. Participants in the multi-week contest were competing to get their application concept developed into a real shareware application.

First place went to Cameron Westland's Atmosphere, a dynamic desktop application that represents weather conditions. Farzad Sadjadi took second place with Portal, a file synchronization utility with wormhole visual effects. Third place went to the recipe and meal management application Cookbook by Michael Yuan.

The winners all get to work with development teams to produce their applications. They also get a new MacBook and earn royalties on sales of their applications.

The development process for the winner's applications will be chronicled on the My Dream App Web site.

Digg!

Observer Comments

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Close Name:mahuti -   TMO Staff Posts: 377 Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Subject: Ultra yawn

All unnecessary NON-DREAMY apps.

They all sound fine... but not very unusual, interesting, or necessary. A good synchronization util would be nice... but effects are unnecessary.

Close Name:geoduck Posts: 1922 Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Subject:

Agreed. All of the apps, such as Chatboard, that I was interested in were out early.
I'm looking forward to the next time they try this, assuming they do. I believe the organizers learned a lot about how people can use DIGG or /. to skew the voting. Maybe next time by controlling this sort of thing they will come out with a true "DreamApp", not this drek (I mean come on, the winner was a Cookbook for crying out loud. On what planet is that anyones DreamApp. Handy for a small segment, but there are lots of them out there.)

Close Name:metavurt Posts: 163 Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Subject: hey GEODUCK - learn to read

The winner was Atmosphere.

You obviously only looked at the header, and didn't bother to read the context.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: seriously?

These are dream apps? A weather reader? Seriously? A recipe book? Garsh. Why not something that charts if the household pets have been fed? A bluetooth enabled pet-dish or something? Chyaa..... And now quirk is doing another HTML extension on their 'ware? Maybe you can use quirk to chart the weather on your desktop now....... ugh. I'm disgusted. Really.

It's not as if i expect a public contest to reflect how i use my machine. But really. I weather charter? Have you ever heard of a FREAKING WINDOW?

Close Name:gslusher Posts: 2088 Joined: 13 Nov 2002
Subject: Winning and whining

Quote
mahuti wrote:
All unnecessary NON-DREAMY apps.

They all sound fine... but not very unusual, interesting, or necessary. A good synchronization util would be nice... but effects are unnecessary.


and


Quote
Guest wrote:
These are dream apps? A weather reader? Seriously? A recipe book? Garsh. Why not something that charts if the household pets have been fed? A bluetooth enabled pet-dish or something? Chyaa..... And now quirk is doing another HTML extension on their 'ware? Maybe you can use quirk to chart the weather on your desktop now....... ugh. I'm disgusted. Really.

It's not as if i expect a public contest to reflect how i use my machine. But really. I weather charter? Have you ever heard of a FREAKING WINDOW?


Why didn't you submit an idea?

Close Name:mahuti -   TMO Staff Posts: 377 Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Subject: Because...

Because I can't think of anything better than something lame and retarded like a cookbook application. This is also the reason that I didn't set up a contest called "My Dream Application" with the idea of coming up with something good.

If I had created a contest called "My Dream Application" and decided the winner was a cookbook, I'd be comfortable with heaps of derision. As it stands, I'm more than comfortable to stand back and mock the creators of the contest for their terrible finalists & "winners."

Close Name:geoduck Posts: 1922 Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Subject:

Quote
metavurt wrote:
The winner was Atmosphere.

You obviously only looked at the header, and didn't bother to read the context.

As it said in the article "The My Dream App contest is officially over, and the three winners have been announced." The last three were all "the winners". I singled out Cookbook because it was, to me, the least like a DreamApp.

Close Name:horvatic Posts: 102 Joined: 27 Jun 2003
Subject: Re: My Dream App Winners Announced

Quote
admin wrote:
The My Dream App contest is officially over, and the three winners have been announced. Participants in the multi-week contest were competing to get their application concept developed into a real shareware application.

The cookbook should have been eliminated. Atmosphere is just another weather app, there are tons of them. I would have picked Portal sync as a dream app. Today as it stands there are many sync apps but none of them are reliable.


http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/10/27.6.shtml

Close Name:macmikey Posts: 22 Joined: 18 Feb 2005
Subject:

Quote
gslusher wrote:
Why didn't you submit an idea?

Why should they? Just because we all have a political opinion doesn't mean we should all run for president. Being able to analyze something does not by definition necessitate some creative contribution beyond the analysis itself.

Close Name:Jonkun227 Posts: 238 Joined: 02 Mar 2004
Subject:

I was really excited about this when it was announced. I didn't submit any ideas (though I had a few) because I knew that they were such limited market-segment ideas that they wouldn't make it past the first round.

Goes to show what I knew.

I like the cookbook app. I've wanted something that does exactly that for a long time. Integrates a database-driven cookbook with shopping planner, etc. But My Dream App? Not even close. I like this about as much as I like Comic Life. Pretty cool, but not the stuff from which dreams are made.

And the weather thing is an interesting concept. What most people didn't seem to catch is that people don't always want to see what's directly out their window. Many people don't even have windows. (Too many jokes, too little time...) This app gives you a pretty picture of something. Maybe it's what you're experiencing. Maybe it's what the opposite hemisphere is experiencing that you wish you were experiencing. Whatever you want it to show. That's very insteresting.

But a dream app? Dream on.


- Jon

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