Mobile Apps (link)

My colleague Dave wrote a post about mobile apps on his blog that fits perfectly. And he's right, those apps would make a lot of sense.

"Demotion" Plugin for iTunes

Even though my willingness to listen to a specific piece of music on my iPod depends heavily on my mood and I would ideally want to iPod to know that and stuff, I think that is a pipe dream and I need something else mid term.

So what about using the good old "4-5 stars" playlist and helping it a little?

There is songs that I skip a lot. They are on the list but somehow I mostly don't want to listen to them just now. On the other hand, they are good enough and I do not manually change them to 3 stars.

So what I need is a plugin that checks play count, skip count, last played date and last skipped date and demotes stuff that I have skipped too often or consistently.

The icing on the cake would be if it remembered and later promoted those back up when I have forgotten about them.

A Cards & Banking API

Now this one doesn't really fall into the category "I will never write", but it sure would be nice to have: an API for banking and credit cards.

What would I do with it?

• First of all I would write my own interface to consolidate all money in one view. 
• I would create a tool that automatically pays credit cards just before any interest is due, making them safe to use.
• I would write a tool that handles regular payments like rent, TV license, council tax, ...
• The tool would automatically move all available money to the account that currently promises the highest interest rate, of course.

Would be nice, wouldn't it?

"Semi-Shuffle" for iTunes and iPod

I would love to have a plugin for iTunes that allowed me to create "suggestions", "connections" or "musical journeys".

Would work like this: after song A, I would normally (or often) like to listen to song C and sometimes to song F. So in iTunes, I drag a line from A to C and another one from A to F and I tell iTunes to use these when shuffling, one or the other.

Thing is: I think stars and playlists are fine but they do not come close to capturing the way I listen to music. There is no "mood" in there. No concept of memories attached to songs and the string of memories in my head. So we need more!

This being 2009, I would probably also want a way of importing those "connections" or "musical journeys" via social networks like last.fm, facebook or whatever else I am using.
 

A Screenshot Plugin for my Parents

Standard situation: My wife is on skype with her parents. Something on the other end doesn't work. They discuss for 20 minutes before my wife even knows what the issue is.

What we need is a plugin for pidgin, skype, adium and others that allows someone to take a screenshot with one button. A preview would then pop up and the user could touch (or click on) the region where the issue is. The screenshot would then be sent through and displayed on the other end.

My stepmother would push the button, click on the area of the screenshot and my wife would then see the screenshot with an enlarged set-in.

Alternatively, my wife could hit a button and the screenshot would be requested on my stepmother's machine.

Would be a life saver. Or at least a good time saver.

A Betting System for Drivers

Occured to me this morning in cab while cabbie and I discussed which way to take:

There's always more than one way to go to Rome. There's also almost always a debate about which one's fastest.

So why not put our money where our mouth is and bet on it?

It would work like this:

1. I decide to take route a over route b.
2. I tell my onboard computer that I bet 5 pounds that route a is faster.
3. onboard computer tries to find cars in my vicinity that go to same place (or roughly same place)
4. onboard computer sees if any of those use different route
5. onboard computer sees if any of those are betting
6. both onboard computers transfer bets to central server
7. cars go to destination
8. at destination, first to arrive wins money

Now obviously there's some hardware needed in the cars, but I'm pretty sure that'll be around fairly soon. GPS is fairly widespread already, so all we need is inter-vehicle communications. Let's wait a year or so and see...

Or is this a stupid idea?

A Feed Reader Plugin for Pidgin

Pidgin is my favourite instant messaging client. I have been using it when it was still called gaim, mostly for Yahoo and XMPP messaging (like Twitter).

I recently discovered the Skype API Plugin which makes pidgin even more useful as we use skype chat a lot at my current work.

Now the only thing missing is a feed reader!

I am using SharpReader for my daily RSS fix, but having two different UIs pop up every now and again is beginning to be too disruptive.

Wouldn't it be great if my feed updates could be displayed in a pidgin chat window?

And no, I do not want to switch to Miranda. I am used to pidgin, and I am too old to change habits :-)