Since the Nike+ doesn’t work for the iPhone, how about an app that you click start and it starts a timer and uses the gps to track your distance. At the end you click on stop and it tells you how long you ran, how far, and shows your trail on google maps. You can save this info to your computer to have a running log. I’d pay for that!

Merlin:

I don’t believe that the current iPhone optics will read standard UPC/EAN product codes since the camera has to be: (a) close enough to get enough pixels on the code to capture the linear barcode detail (b) in focus so that the image is not blurred; and (c) far enough away to capture the entire barcode at once (unless you have some image stitching capability on board). This usually requires the device to have: (a) a swappable macro focus lens; or (b) macro autofocus capability; or (c) other macro focus optics. Optics should work fine for “2D mobile codes”, like QR, since: (a) they have larger elements and (b) they include error correction that allows you to calculate botched elements that you capture using the good ones that you capture (assuming that you have enough good ones).

Will check.

BTW, if this does work a great application would be to scan a UPC/EAN and then check for availability on eBay. They already have a WAP front end up that you can submit a UPC/EAN to ( m.ebay.com )

Ok i know lifehacker did an article on this using mail2web but i think there must be a better way:

What i would like to see, is a web app where you create an account, give it your gmail username/pw and it then creates a sort of “Exchange proxy” between gmail/gcal & your iphone. All automated and without any annoying filters & rules in gmail.

iParked sounds really similar to G-Park (iTunes link), which is in the app store and I have not tried.

SSH - I expect someone will do this shortly. If this phone is running OS X, it is there somewhere to begin with. I want a nice app for this, not a jailbroken command line.

SlingPlayer - Watch my slingbox on my iPhone

Qik - Live video streaming

Traffic Ping - Three buttons to designate current road conditions that gets transmitted over 3G and can be inserted as a layer over Google Maps. Similar to what the dash is doing now, but with one time snapshots.

iTether - Use my iPhone 3G to get a tethered data connection to my laptop.

iLowJack - This would require background services running, but once a day (or every 48 hours or user designated time) prompts me a for a pin. Don’t get the pin right, it transmit the current location to me via email. Might also have an option for a remote wipe of the phone to get rid of personal data. Application checks into a web site every X hours and if “wipe = true” wipes the phone. Obviously, only I should be able to set wipe=true.

iAlert - Location aware program that checks for Alerts in your X mile range. Tornado warnings, severe weather, AMBER alerts, terrorism alerts, traffic warnings, etc. When it notices you are in a new location, it could ask how long you will be there (e.g. I am in Texas for 3 days) and offer an option to push new alerts for that region via SMS for the duration of your trip.

Could also display local news stories by running location aware queries against Google News and returning the results in a nicely formatted RSS feed.

iTag - location aware tag/mock assassination game. Get a dossier of folks in your area and a target to eliminate for adhoc RW role-playing gaming. Modeled after games that are run now without the iPhone nexus. Could also be called iStock.

iScavange - User generated or sponsored scavenger hunts using clues and location aware services.

iQ - Braintraining games.

Use the barcode scanner from Prime This (if it’s practical) but instead of ordering from Amazon, the program figures out the name of the product and adds it to your grocery list. So you finish a bottle of milk, scan the barcode before throwing it away, and it adds it to your grocery list automatically.

… at least if you consider you can get the same functionality with Jott.

I use my Amazon wishlist to keep track of books I want. It would be cool to have easy, editable (AND OFFLINE) access to it when inside regular bookshops.

I obviously wouldn’t expect AZ themselves to do this.

iRestain

Tracks the space between me and the people I have a restraining order against, or vice versa. It sure would help with the ackward surprises at the local Costco.

First off, let me mention that I wrote a short article on my blog about using the iPhone as a game controller. It’s just an idea for an app to create a customizable controller for playing games on your computer.

Other dream apps I’d like to see would include:

Voicemail deluxe- upload outgoing messages from your own mp3s. download voicemail messages as mp3s.

speaker amp- because the ringer is so freaking quite.

blacklist- a simple program to block calls from “unknown number”. Blacklist could also access and store numbers of known telemarketers and block them as well.

A Craigslist app would be great. You could flag items and have a saved search so that if new listings appear that meet the criteria, a badge appears on its icon. The ability to take a picture and list items in a snap would be sweet.

I would love an app like TRM. Might suck down a lot of GPS to keep it effective, though. You should be able to “snooze” things that you can’t do this time you’re there, but still want to do next time.

I want an app that is like Netflix but for the library. Call it NetBoox. In it, you make a queue of all the books you want to buy from Amazon Prime but can’t afford. Then, when you’re at the library, you bring it up, browse through your queue, and check off the ones that you check out. This would put a couple of reminders in TRM or iCal that go off when the books are coming due.

I’d like to see an app that will let you photograph a receipt (like a restaurant, store, etc.), tag it with text and or location, and then OCR and upload it to a financial app (quicken, mint.com, etc.). The app would then auto-reconcile the receipt with my bills and eliminate yet another annoying paper trail.

I hate the fact that my extremely old Ericsson T60 used to have a calling card feature that allowed the phone to call a number, wait 5 seconds (or how many ever), and then send a bunch of numbers on … this was such a convenience when dialing calling cards, conference bridge numbers, and so on.

I would totally pay to have that feature on the iPhone, since the only option right now is to try to memorize ugly strings of 8-10 digits , or write it down someplace (no point making a note, or contact entry on iPhone - I still have to look it up, memorize the numbers, switch back to the phone app and enter the digits)

I love those ideas, and I have others myself but the problem is that your application can’t keep on running in the background… so there’s no way for an application to check your GPS location regulary and then alert you for some reason. same for the parking idea… once you open something else than your app, return to the menu, take a phone call or anything else, your app is closed by the iphone…

I understand the battery issue that would imply to keep apps open, but since they’re running osX there must be a way to allow/limit apps to get a few computing cycles here and there without fully running…

hopefully they’ll allow this in a futur release.

The parking application is already available here. It doesn’t have all the features you want but it does have some.

I would also like a basic GPS tracker. I would open it up, hit start and it would track my path. When I sync it would sync the new routes up to the desktop where they could be used by other applications or its own desktop client.

I've created a web application for the iPhone like Prime This, the problem is that Amazon's User Agreement for the Associates (AKA Affiliates) API does not allow developers to use the API in connection with a mobile device, so I was unable to release my app. You can read it here under Usage Guidelines:

http://www.amazon.com/E-Commerce-Service-AWS-home-page/b?ie=UTF8&node=12...

I've contacted Amazon numerous times to get their permission to release my application but they always deny my requests. So thats why we haven't seen it. You can read a blog post I've written about this subject here:

http://webtrech.com/?p=23

I tried to build Prime This, and I can confirm that the camera can’t focus close up enough to scan a bar code.

Too bad really, I was going to make MIllions in referral fees!

A lot of people I spoke to at WWDC considered doing PrimeThis (at least half a dozen). As people have noted, the two big issues are the camera, and the fact that it is against Amazon’s terms of service. I know there are a few apps using AWS, but they either have special permission from Amazon, or more than likely they are (unknowingly) violating the TOS, and could be turned off if and when Amazon notices.

As for the camera… The iPhone’s camera has a fixed focal length that prevents most naive approaches of barcode scanning from working. There are some more complicated techniques that work directly on the image as opposed to trying to clean it up optically. The catch is that writing such a decoder is a major undertaking. There are a few companies who have code like that for grabbing barcodes using low rez fixed focus webcams. I know of one person has such a codebase running on iPhone at least well enough to demo, though I have no idea if it works reliably enough to ship an app, and I have no idea what he intends to use it for.

My List (For anybody that’s listening)

(These aren’t really productivity related, but I’m hoping they get churned out eventually.)

SimpleComic for iPhone (or similar)

A lightweight CBR and CBZ reader for reading comic books on the fly. Nice features would be bookmarks, multiple view options, sending and receiving comics by email, etc…

Suggested Price: $5-10

Text to Speech

I’m not sure if this is possible on the iPhone, but some kind of text reader would be marvelous, particularly if it had the facility to read web pages, text documents, emails, etc… Bonus points for audiobook-like place saving.

Suggested Price: $5-10

VLC

Self explanatory. I saw that somebody had it on a jailbroken phone here a while ago. Save everyone the time of transcoding video.

Suggested Price: $0 (it’s free software after all…)

Podcast Aggregator

I always thought that an iPod with WiFi would be able to snatch new podcast episodes over the air. That much desired feature has yet to materialize. I’d love a way to either update my iPhone’s normal podcast structure over the air sans iTunes, or if that’s not possible, use a dedicated program separate from the “iPod” to do the listening.

Suggested Price: $5

Remote Video

This is probably a pipe dream. I’m envisioning something like what Sony has done with remote play between the PS3 and the PSP. A Mac-side program transcodes videos on the fly and streams them over the internet on demand to the waiting iPhone. The program automagically handles IP Addresses and so on, and chooses video quality to suit connection speed.

Suggested Price: $20

A final desire, though I believe this would have to come from outside the development community:

Hulu/Netflix Watch It Now/Google Video/etc…

Individual per-service apps ape-ing the YouTube app, providing streaming video despite the lack of flash support on the iPhone. Preferably they would be able to handle links in web pages and emails, as the YouTube app does.

Suggested Price: $0 (add supported)