Poll: What iPhone apps are you waiting for?

I haven't seen any traction of thought behind this -- but, how cool would it be to hack the photo album and create a password protected album... maybe even a password protected email folder too. I know the phone has native support for the password protection (lock screen) but, every friend wants to play with this - there could be stuff (in both places) I don't want them to see.



oh.. btw - You do amazing work Erica.

This is my first post, so please bear with me here.

I, like many others, love the iPhone and think there is great potential for the device. However, I am also troubled by the lack of native third party applications due to Apple’s locked system. I have seen numerous posts from iPhone users begging to have their favorite Mac widgets ported over to the iPhone. While I think that would be great, I don’t see Apple rushing to do this until they can somehow monetize these widgets. Well yesterday, as I checked out Amazon’s new iPhone-specific web portal, it dawned on me that Apple can create a huge revenue stream by getting into the ad business, while also giving us all the other widgets we love so much.

Imagine the following:
You plug your iPhone into your computer one day and discover a new tab called myMall. Under this tab is a listing of popular retailers, whose online stores you’d like to have synced to your iPhone. Think ‘bookmarked,’ but much better because when you next turn on your iPhone you find a button on the home page called myMall. Clicking it leads to a page similar to the home page, but each new button is a native widget for the retailers you’ve chosen to sync with iTunes. Now, the appeal here is the absolute ease and pleasure in maneuvering these widgets to carry out purchases.

Imagine now that you have chosen to sync the Barnes & Noble widget with your iPhone. Then, one day, you’re sitting on the bus and see someone reading a book you have been meaning to read yourself, but kept on forgetting. Well, instead of making yet another mental note, what if you could do the following:

1. Click on your B&N widget.

2. Type in your search into a VERY simple and elegant page.

3. Have all of your results come up in the Cover Flow format, with only product pictures showing. (let’s face it, Cover Flow is great, but wasted on the iPod).

4. Scroll back and forth through the result and click on a cover to make it flip and reveal product details (synopsis, ratings, review, other formats, etc.)

5. Quickly add items to your shopping cart.

6. Pay for your items using one of the credit cards saved on your iTunes (this is already done with songs so it can’t be that difficult to build on), or enter new credit card information.

7. Have your item(s) shipped to an address that is saved in your iTunes account, or enter a new shipping address.

8. Enter a pin number of sorts to confirm my order and finalize the transaction.

I realize the process listed above ‘appears’ long, but anyone can see that the actual use of this ‘widget’ would be as fluid and simple as the google maps interface that is currently present on the iPhone. Further, with something like this generating revenue for Apple they should have a greater incentive to provide the non-retail-oriented widgets (like AIM, To Do Lists, lyrics search) that we all been clamoring for.

That is the idea, and I would love some feedback from any and all on its feasibility and:

1. How it can be refined.

2. The ideal pricing structure between Apple and the participating retailers.

3. Security issues regarding the storage of private financial data on iTunes, and any holes I'm not thinking of right now.

4. How Apple’s relationship with Google can be utilized here.

5. The potential reaction from ad giants such as Google.

6. Possible legal ramifications.

7. A list of stores that would work well as iPhone widgets. Personally, I would love to have the following store widgets on my iPhone: Barnes & Nobel, eBay, JetBlue, 1800Flowers, Nike, Best Buy, Cirtcuit City, Walmart, Apple Store, Game Stop, Puma, Pottery Barn, Ikea, Amazon, Ticketmaster, Yankees (team specific widgets?), Fandango, Moviefone, Gap (simple retailers, but no giants like Macy’s?), Expedia, Hotels.com, Sephora.

8. Oh yeah, good idea or bad idea?

Native widget to control my Yahoo! Fantasy football teams.

GPS using the new sim card with a mini-gps built on to it.

The Register reports that Blue Sky Positioning has announced their GPS enabled SIM card at SIMposium, in Berlin. The company has apparently managed to fit an entire GPS receiver onto a SIM card. The entire system, including the antenna, fits onto the card, but processing is done by your phone. The unit had to be an A-GPS (Assisted GPS) system because the SIM card is standardized “to draw six milliamps, which was a challenge,” explains Risto Savolainen, Blue Sky CEO. That sounds just fine by us. If they manage to get decent reception out of the tiny GPS SIM card, we’ll gladly hand off the processing task to our CPUs.

iPhone Bootcamp for Windows Mobile 5.0..

GPS based map navigation with turn-by-turn directions

Easy to configure alarm clock that uses MP3 playlists (with random song order support).
And NO, I won't use my MacBook for that because the DVD Drive makes a noticeable hardware sound when it turns on, which makes me wake up BEFORE iTunes starts.

One that allows it to be used overseas without roaming :-)

A SIP (best VoIP) application.

Hands down -- GMail.