App for film buffs is a great idea with flawed execution

I am a pretty major film buff. I even wrote a book on a sixties movie producer. So I was pretty excited to hear of Spott, an app that uses augmented reality and your iPhone GPS to find the nearby locations where films and TV shows were shot.

It's a great idea for an app. You can enter Al Pacino and see where his movies were filmed. You can also search by title. You can even get a map that will point you to locations anywhere in the world.

Alas, the app is pretty thin in the data department. While there are lots of movies listed, there is an awful lot missing. Here in Southern Arizona, endless westerns were produced. Tombstone, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Trial of Billy Jack, Easy Rider. The list goes on and on. What does Spott list for this area? Nothing. Nada. Utah is completely empty, and Utah has been the home of hundreds of films.

As I said, this is a great idea for an app. The developers let you sign up and add data that is missing, and even submit photos of yourself at movie locations but frankly, it's not my job to do that. Even though movie locations are not the main purpose of the IMDB app, you can get that information from there, but it's not designed to let you search by location in the iOS versions.

I would say Spott is a good start, but at US $2.99 I'd like a more complete database, and more images. Spott bills itself as the 'ultimate tool for film fans' but it still has a way to go to meet that description. I'm hoping the developers will step it up a bit and make Spott all that it could be. Spott runs as a universal app on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and requires iOS 3.1.3 or greater.