I was playing around with Google Sky, and it inspired me for another application idea. One of the biggest problems with digging holes around your property, is knowing where the utility lines are. Best case, you’ll simply uncover something you shouldn’t, and worst case you’ll damage it. What if, rather than calling a utility company and playing them X amounts of dollars to mark your yard, you could simply buy a phone application that would plot it out for you.

Imagine a Google Sky map application, that instead of showing you star constellations, would instead show you the gas, electric, and water lines running under the soil in your yard. You could simply launch the app, stand in your back yard, and march around until you find that appropriate place to plant your new fruit tree, without cutting power off to your house.

This application idea is one that I’ve been wishing I could do for quite some time. My mother happens to be part of a large bird migration study on lake Ontario, recently reported on Science Friday. Having gone bird banding many times, I can tell you that they are doing things practically in the stone age. Building a smartphone application to assist them with the banding process would be extremely helpful, but completely unprofitable.

The Bird Tag application I have in mind would help facilitate the entire process of bird banding. The application’s features could include:

• Geo-tagging net locations. So you know where your bird nets currently are, as well as where you placed them last time you were out banding.
• Net cataloging. Since you know where your nets are, and which net you caught a bird in, you could start building a map of where you’re most successful at netting birds.
• Photographing and sizing. It would be great to build some kind of dock that a smartphone sits in, so that you can just photograph a bird’s wing, and the camera distance is all worked out to measure it.
• Real-time data syncing. Currently, all records are hand written on paper, then mailed in to be data entered somewhere. Having data entered and transferred digitally would be a huge improvement to speed, and data accuracy.
• Bird recognition. Facial recognition software could be used to figure out the type of bird your banding. Often, non-bird fanatics (like myself) assist in banding the birds. Helping them classify the birds would be a huge help, and free up the leader’s time.

The goal would be to find ways to assist and improve both the ease, and accuracy of bird banding data collection.

If you’ve had the G1 since its initial release, chances are you’ve heard of, or downloaded the game Zombies Run. The game has to be played in real time and space, so many people expecting a plane flight game were disappointed. But, of you want to make your morning jog interesting, the game can be a log of fun. The one thing that the game lacks, is realism.

Zombies Run AR (augmented reality) would make the game a little more interesting. Imagine a blend of the current Zombies Run, and Layar. So, by holding up your phone and looking through the camera view, you would actually see the invisible brain eating swarms chasing you.

Zombies Run AR could also incorporate the crazy virtual reality goggles, and solidify your geeky-ness.

One of the magical moments that I think is lost with online dating, is the chance encounter. You don’t get to have that special feeling of meeting someone when your out with friends, grocery shopping, having lunch on your work break, whatever. The Blind Date application would facilitate a way of reintroducing that experience.

How it might work: a person would leave the application running on their phone. The application would track where they are, and then notify them that they are some proximity away from a compatible individual. If they decide to try a chance meeting, it would allow them to hone in on them. When they get close enough, it could provide them with a picture so they know who they’re looking for. Inversely, the person who is trying to be met, could also be notified, and accept or reject the encounter.

The goal would be to allow single people to chance upon a compatible partner, rather than actively seek them. It might also provide a level of excitement and anticipation knowing that at any moment throughout their daily routine, they could become part of a blind date.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m way behind on my goal of 52 apps in 52 weeks. I’m going to try and catch up this week, and post a bunch of ideas.

A few weeks ago, I was up in the New York Finger Lakes Wine Region touring wineries. I was the designated driver, so I only tasted a few wines. Still, I found myself loosing track of the wines I liked as we hopped from one to the other.

The winery buddy would help you with your wine tour. It could:

• Scan barcodes of wines you like, and archive them.
• Check wines for recent awards in competitions
• Compare winery prices and inventory against those at your local liqueur store.
• Help you plan a route through wine country, so you can visit as many as possible.
• Track how many tastings you’ve had to keep you sober.
• Allow for some synergy with your recipe assistant application, and suggest wines that would best go with your favorite meals.
• Track your purchases, and hold you to some predetermined credit limit, so you don’t overspend in your judgment weakened state.

The goal would be to create a tour with a unified experience, to what is largely a highly competitive and privately owned winery area. It would assist people in tasting and purchasing wines, who may know little about how to go about it, and give them an enjoyable tour and confidence that they’ll like what they’re buying.

One of the things my grandma struggled with in her old years, was when – what – how to – and how much medication to take. There are many solutions out there that help the elderly with this burden, but none (outside of a person) that can offer a dialog and step-by-step assistance. As more and more accustom cell phone users enter old age, a phone based solution for medication assistance may become viable.

The medication assistant would be a fully autonomous application that would help elderly with their medication. It could:

• Scan the barcode of each pill jar, and automatically build a pill schedule and alerts based one the pills instructions.
• Provide images with accurate sizes and colors of each pill they need to take.
• Alert them of what they need to take, and how.
• Report that they took their medication to family and doctors.
• Provide answers to frequently asked questions, and a way of communicating with someone if they need more assistance.

The goal would be to create an application that’s simple to use, provides necessary alerts without crying wolf, requires minimal interaction to configure and use, and gives a person peace of mind and confidence that they are doing everything correctly.

One of the few magazine subscriptions that I have is for Vegetarian Times. It was one of the first things I did when becoming more vegetarian in my diet. Without it, I don’t think I would have made it, not knowing all the yummy recipes available that don’t require meat. One of the issues I have with the magazine, is an easy way to extract – store – catalog – and use recipes from each issue.

The Recipe Assistant would be every food magazine lovers companion. It would allow a person to easily extract and use the different recipes from each issue. It could:

• Scan the barcode of the issue and populate the application with all of that issues recipes.
• Help you build a grocery list of all the ingredients you need.
• Cross reference other recipes that use similar ingredients, so you know what else to make with that 2 cups of left over almond milk.
• Sync with your magazines advertisers and give you coupons for items in your grocery list.
• Walk you through each step of your recipe, and provide a timer, ready to go, for that 30 minute bake time.
• Help you build a breakfast – lunch – dinner calendar of all the food you plan to prepare for the week.
• Flag your favorite recipes, and offer suggestions.

I know other recipe applications have come out. But, I haven’t seen one with this kind of synergy. The goal would be to interface as much as possible with how a person uses a food magazine, and facilitate the processes of making each meal from it.

Here’s another application idea.

Most car accidents are only minor fender benders, that don’t involve people getting seriously injured. But, they can be extremely stressful situations, and also very confusing as to what information you need to get from others involved. Wouldn’t it be great if your phone could help you through that process?

I propose an accident assistant application. It would step you through simple questions, and give you advice as to what steps you should take, and what information you should collect. For instance:

• It could tell you to take pictures of the damage, accident area, other driver, etc. and catalog each photo.
• It could call the police for you, not that 911 is all that difficult, but a single “call police” button my simplify things and be comforting to a flustered individual.
• It could record your description of the accident, while it’s still fresh in your mind.
• It could photograph the other person’s insurance and drivers information.
• It could even bundle all the information together and submit the report to your insurance provider for you.

The goal of the application would be to make the user feel they’ve covered all their bases, collected all necessary information, notified everyone they needed to, and can confidently go about their day without any lingering “I should have done…,” or “why didn’t I do…” question/concerns in their head.

I’ve been a little slow at coming up with application ideas. I have a few in my head, and I’m going to try to take the time this week to blog them, and hope I can catch up to my one a week pace. This one is a Zillow Layar concept.

By now, I’m sure many of you are familiar with the site called Zillow. It allows you to see what your home is worth, who else around you is selling and how much, and what the last sale price was on a home.

There is also an application for Android based phones called Layar. This is a virtual reality application. It creates overlays on top of the camera view to provide further information as to what you’re seeing.

My concept is a blend of these two applications. Using Layar, Zillow could create a layer of their information. People could walk around a neighborhood, and look through their phone’s camera to see what a house is selling for, what it’s features are, etc. For those looking into an area, this would give them a chance to stroll around and learn more about the neighborhood, while gaining valuable information about the homes around those they’re interested in.

As a Windows Media Center user, I thought that it would be really great if my Android phone could control my TV. It’s the perfect remote. It has a responsive touch screen that could be used like a track pad. It has a hard keyboard, and the ability for a soft keyboard for typing in search words into Netflix. And, it has Bluetooth, which could allow it to connect to my, already Bluetooth enabled, computer over HID.

The application would have three states. The states would be mouse/trackpad, keyboard, and remote. There would be a hard control on the top, letting you know what state you’re currently in.

The mouse/trackpad would operate the mouse. Sliding your finger over the screen would move the mouse some distance in the same direction. Tapping the screen would result in a click. Long-pressing the screen would result in a right click.

The keyboard could work two ways. The first, would be to submit each keystroke as they are typed out. The other would be to buffer what the user types in some way, and send it perhaps when the space is struck, or a state is changed. That way, you could take advantage of Android’s type correction.

The last state, the remote, would simply be a series of buttons. The windows logo button would launch, or return the user to the Media Center home screen. The rest of the button are pretty self explanatory.

It’s clear that I need to give the remote more thought. The highly used “back” button isn’t displayed. Also, I’m not loving the location of the record button in relation to the other playback buttons. Still, I think it’s a successful application idea, which fulfills my guidelines for one of the 52.