My Dream App

[da_lj]

[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

Comments

[earthling177]

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

[da_lj]

Yeah. The OCR might be tough to do properly, especially if it's via low-res like the iSight. It's definitely the toughest part (other than generically deciding which extra features go into the first release, and which should be plugins.) OCR might rely on a dedicated scanner, for the first version (though that sucks too. Open scanner. lay down receipt. close scanner. press button. Lather/rinse/repeat.)

I like Delicious Library a lot, I downloaded it just to play with the iSight scanner thingy. I decided my time was better spent on other things than making a (very pretty) db of all our books. But yeah, it was one of my inspirations when I was thinking about this.

It would totally kick ass if machine-readable receipts were bar-coded so we didn't have to muck around with OCR.

[earthling177]

OCR might rely on a dedicated scanner, for the first version (though that sucks too. Open scanner. lay down receipt. close scanner. press button. Lather/rinse/repeat.)Well, yes and no. I guess the part that sucks with the scanner is the overhead (it will take about the same time per linear inch of the flatbed whether you have one or 4 receipts). That part can be solved by allowing multiple receipts to be scanned at once, at least one app (CanonScan) does that already for the picture part, I have not tested the OCR part, but I'm almost sure that the OCR part just takes documents, so the scan part can just break say, 6 receipts into 6 docs and feed them consecutively to the OCR

[da_lj]

Getting off the topic a bit... but: have you seen the newer wand scanners? I heard of one a few months ago, but I don't think I wrote down the brand name. That would be wonderful if they worked well..

[earthling177]

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]

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.

[da_lj]

I agree about the name, too. ;)

[da_lj]

On the opportunity for customers:

I'm quite amused to discover just now that Intuit has a blog for Quicken. The most recent entry was Oct. 13, 2005, an announcement of an update to Quicken 2006.

http://quicken.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/10/new_quicken_200.html#comments

It was taken over by mac users complaining politely about how badly they're being treated.