Another “million dollar idea”… I thought of a business card app where you would photograph physical business cards (then throw the damn things away) which the app scans and recognizes text and saves the image and keywords so one can quickly find the appropriate card in your image files. Say six months from now I need to call my plumber, I open the app and type “plu” and the result would autosearch and pull up that card.
Well, it already exists.
My husband used it to clear a large stack of business cards that had been collecting in his computer bag. It’s very cool to watch it work. That large stack of business cards is now sitting on a shelf in the living room that he had to walk PAST the garbage to get to. I need to remember to ask why.
I’ve been using an app like this for about 10 years now on the PC, however an iPhone app that uses the camera and does it on the fly would be pretty cool. I’m sure it exists but I’ve never thought to look for it until now.
backup.
Bet it’s a free app too, eh? To get people to shell out for an app these days it pretty much has to come with blowjobs and marshmallows.
I wouldn’t necessarily require marshmallows…
Evernote is probably the best general purpose application for this. It has a desktop client, too.
Not only does it exist, but whoever made it probably isn’t a millionaire. Hell, there’s probably a half-dozen competing apps on the app store. You might think that’s a bad thing, but I look at it as someone else took the risk and developed the product and by not making any money, they validated your “decision” not to make it.
My first “big idea” was when I was in junior high and those tamogochi things were everywhere. We also had, as part of the valentine’s dance or something, some school-wide matchmaking service, where you’d fill out a bunch of questions and get rated on compatibility with other kids in the school.
I thought someone should combine those two things. You fill out your little personality survey on the computer and send it over to your little pocket device, and when you came within x feet of a potential match, it’d vibrate or something. Almost like a primitive gaydar for nervous teenagers. Pure gold, this idea.
About a decade later I saw them for sale somewhere, exactly as I had envisioned. Apparently the whole idea was a dud, thus validating my laziness.