Every now and then i post an idea i think is worth exploring, but that i don't have the time or the skills to develop. If someones knows anything equivalent or want to jump on it feel free (but remember me if you get rich with it...)
The idea is very simple: in our digital life we have more and more services that we use. Some of them are on our desktop and some of them in the cloud. I find myself installing more and more apps on my mac. Apps that are really well done but that i am not using on a daily basis.
I end up with tones of apps on my computer, but can't remember their name and what they do. Sometimes the name is explicit enough and i can deduct what it does just by crawling the app folder: AppCleaner for example speaks for itself. But many times i have no clue. And i find myself going to the app folder trying to remember which programms does what.
I recently found a method that solves that issue: i add a few keywords description in the "info folder" (avail on right click get info). Those keywords are then indexed in spotlight, the mac search engine and i can find them just by writting the keywords i need. For example: photo editing would give me "Gimp" or "PhotoShop"
The problem
In a word the problem is to find more easily what you have already used.
There are 2 problems to the prior method described above: you need to do that manually for each single soft. And you need to be good enough at guessing the keywords that characterize your needs.
The idea: An automated application tagger
A simple app that detects all your installed soft and populate the description and keyword in the file information about the soft which would be indexed in spotlight. That way i would not need to search for a soft but browse by need.
A kind of internal delicious for applications. This idea is worth for Windows too. And i am not even mentionning the iPhone where you get easily lost. It can be built easily by crawling the app directories out there that have already done the job.
As an extension it could become an personal app search engine, with results taken from your desktop and from your delicious account. If for eg i need photo editing, it would serve me desktop results: Gimp or Online > picnik.
Those results could be split in applications i have already used/tagged and those i don't know, which could become the revenue model (lead generation)
Do you like it? Anything equivalent out there? Someone wants to jump in?
Technorati Tags: mac application software delicious productivity search
