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Maggie Shiels

Best App Awards 2008

  • Maggie Shiels
  • 9 Jan 09, 10:53 GMT

The is such a runaway success that it has spawned a whole industry, with developers beavering away to produce applications that will not only delight users but also make money.

The most recent success story is of course the . Yes, for a mere 99 cents it does what it says on the box!

It has made thousands of dollars for the creators, got its own website and given birth to all sorts of iFart sounds, including the cheekily named "silent but deadly," "bombardier" and "Jack the Ripper." iphone_203ap.jpg

But while it remains one of the top downloads at the App Store, one thing iFart failed to do was get nominated for a "." Is that sniggering I hear in the background?

The awards are the brainchild of Jeff Scott who runs the website , so named because that is the total number of apps you can download at once on your iPhone or iPod touch.

His aim is to "recognise the best apps, not just the best selling apps, during the last year."

Well, what about iFart?

"I'm protesting all farting apps," declared Mr Scott, who told me that the nominations were submitted both by the public and a panel of industry experts.

"What is interesting, despite my own view, is that the public didn't even vote to have them included. It shows this app is a one trick pony.

"Sure you will laugh at it for five minutes and after that you will probably never look at it again," he said.

The awards are about more than that, and Mr Scott said his real reason for doing the whole thing was "to shine a light and raise awareness about some of the apps that are fantastic but not so well known."

"It's hard to rise above the noise. Unless you are highlighted by Apple or get into the top 100 list, it's hard to be found," he explained.

The supreme winner of the competition, the Best App Ever for 2008, was . This listens to a song playing on the radio, in a store, on TV, wherever, and it can tell you what the song is.

It was a triple whammy for Shazam, which also picked up the Most Innovative App and the iPhone Wow App.

High praise indeed.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    My favourite Apps for my iPhone:

    Touchgrind - amazing skateboard game
    BeatMaker - music app
    Enigmo - great game
    Low Grav Racer - Wipeout on iPhone
    Last.fm - free music!
    iStylophone - retro stylophone App
    Shazam - music recogniser
    SimCity - port of the classic game to iPhone
    Wikipanion - great wiki App

    There are too many to mention here, they are just my favourites.

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)

  • Comment number 2.

    Shazam is excellent.

    I suspect that iPhone users are coming to the same realisation those of us who've used S60 or WinMo phone have for a while - 98% of applications are rubbish and 2% worthwhile!

    I still think the App store is a great means of distribution though.

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)

  • Comment number 3.

    148 - the limit on the number of apps you can have installed.

    Triple whammy? I thought this was a curse.

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)

  • Comment number 4.

    Fascinating as farting sounds may be, how about a blog about this?



    Seems to me to be one of the most important technology stories for a long time. And very scary indeed.

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 4)

  • Comment number 5.

    #4

    I totally agree. The priority should be

    This news story has significant privacy implications to EVERYONE in the UK but I think the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ techno-journos are all too busy checking out the gadgets in Vegas...

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 5)

  • Comment number 6.

    1. App store is great. Its also useless. Full of crap. Havent scrolled over to the 'second' screen of my ipod in 2 months. Yawn.

    2. The 'priority' story, about email gathering.
    Not significant. Its garbage. Its unworkable and pointless and wont collect anything of use. I use gmail, all my friends use webbased emails, or facebook. No one (except older/clueless people) uses ISP mail and especially no one WHO CARES ABOUT THEIR PRIVACY INCLUDING "terrorists". Anyone who signs up for an email account using their own names, connecting it to THEIR OWN HOUSES and then, uses it for "terrorism" is probably not that bright and will be caught by far simpler mechanisms.

    The vast majority of it will be spam - hell I'm thinking of encouraging spam as much as possible to skew the stats - and the "government"/EDS are going to capture all of this, index it, and mine it for some evidence of nefarious wrongdoings, and somehow, make it legally sound to be used in court or whatever? Not a hope. Move on.

    I'm far more worried about how much crap is in the Appstore to give the problem some context.

    Disclaimer, i work in IT security, and specifically with email systems. Dont think for a minute this will affect you.

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 6)

  • Comment number 7.

    #6 Amen , brother! Most useless piece of legislation ever and a massive waste of taxpayer money and security service time that would be better put to other uses.

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 7)

  • Comment number 8.

    My personal favourite is RjDj - you can scratch, sample and create music using sound and movement from the world around you

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 8)

  • Comment number 9.

    There's certainly some utterly useless apps out there! But some are pretty cool too. iSteam is one of the better ones (in my humble opinion). It's hard to know where to look though!

    Complain about this comment (Comment number 9)

 

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