On the Gadget Show this week they had an interesting challenge. Suzy and Jason were pitted against each other to produce an application for a mobile device. The winner would be the one that got the most downloads.
After almost 30 seconds of deliberation they both chose to develop an application for the iPhone, simply because this was the most mature of all and was likely to give them the widest possible audience. And with a couple of billion downloads under its belt who can blame them for going this route?
Suzy elected to create a game while Jason wanted to go for a utility. Obviously neither of them actually did the development – this was farmed out to a team of developers to put their ideas into action.
Not being a big gamer I haven’t downloaded “Biker Blast Off” but I have used Jason’s “Social Beacon” which allows you to post to Twitter through a simple interface and posts a pre determined response based on a series of inputs, such as location and mood. It also allows things such as posting by blowing on the device but since using it with your finger is so devilishly easy I am not sure of the point of that.
The posts it produces are pretty banal, such as this one “Sitting at my desk. Should I be working?” but it fun, quick and easy.
However, as you can see from the picture above, which shows the top free games in the App store at present, Suzy is winning but, ironically, Jason’s app has the higher rating.
Why am I interested in this? Well other than that I like the Gadget Show, love gadgets and the iPhone in general, I am also about to start a project to develop my own iPhone apps. I have already developed a web based app, an interface to the online service Unfuddle, but this would be a downloadable app available from Apple’s app store. It’s top secret at the moment but check back on Spoken Like a Geek for updates and progress.