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Picture This is a crowdsourced scavenger hunt app for iPhone photographers
Picture This is a new iPhone app for social photographers that presents you with a different photography challenge each day. Though the daily scavenger hunt challenges are a blast, there is more to the app than the app itself. Picture This has a unique background. It was a crowdsourced effort that emerged from Dandy, a Canadian mobile development firm. Dandy allows people to submit app ideas to a community of users who vote and offer feedback on the project. The most popular app ideas then will be chosen for development. The startup's first project is Picture This, a photo scavenger hunt app idea submitted by Niger Little-Poole, a 19-year-old Columbia University student. Dandy coordinates the development and shares the revenue with the people involved in the app, including Little-Poole. The Picture This app provides you with both daily and ongoing photography challenges like the "Office Whiteboard Doodle" or "View Out the Window." You can submit your photos to a challenge and have the community vote, leave comments and share your creative efforts. You earn badges for your photos if they are the first in a challenge or become popular among the community. Like most crowd-enabled apps, Picture This requires an active community to keep it going. The app launched following a successful beta, which had a dual purpose -- it helped the developer work out the last-minute kinks and worked to build a small, but growing community. The trick in the coming months for Dandy will be continuing this momentum so the community continues to grow. You can check out Picture This for free from the iOS App Store. It requires an account if you want to participate in the community, but you can skip the account sign-up step if you prefer to poke around the app and see what it's all about.
TomTom opens up MapShare to all 60 million of its GPS units (video)
TomTom has seen the inexorable rise of smartphone navigation and decided that it needs a cheaper way of updating its head units. Its cunning solution has been to open its MapShare community to all 60 million TomToms in the wild -- which was previously limited just to smartphone apps and select devices. MapShare works by allowing users to update their, erm, maps, when they spot a change has been made, which is then uploaded when they get home. It'll now be aggregated and pushed out as a free daily download. Users can filter updates, deciding if they want ones submitted by "some," "many" or those officially verified by the company itself -- so don't bother trying to game the system to make your morning commute easier.
The Daily Grind: How do you feel about Kickstarter MMOs?
Kickstarter is all the rage these days, particularly when it comes to indie sandbox MMORPGs. Recently both The Repopulation and Embers of Caerus unveiled crowd-funding drives, and we're always pleased to see other in-development MMOs join the parade. Massively's inbox has been flooded with tips about these games, and yet as of press time, EoC's drive boasts under 300 contributors while The Repopulation's has yet to top the hundred backer mark. Due to the way Kickstarter works, the devs are still able to meet funding goals thanks to large donations, but we have to wonder if hundreds of backers quicken the pulses of venture capitalists who know that MMOs need thousands of players to flourish. What say you, morning crew? Are you encouraged by crowd-funding initiatives, or are you a bit skeptical? How do you feel about Kickstarter MMO projects? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Kickstarter details the year that was: 27k projects, almost $100 million in funding
Just how big a year was 2011 for Kickstarter? Very nearly a $100 million dollar year. That was the total amount of funding pledged on the crowd-sourced site during the year ($99,344,382, specifically), which is up considerably from the $27.6 million pledged in 2010. That was generated by just over 27,000 projects, 11,836 of which reached their funding goals (a success rate of 46%, up from 43% in 2010). What's more, while tech-related projects may generate the most attention 'round these parts, film and music projects were actually the two biggest cash draws on the site (netting $32 million and $19 million, respectively). Hit the source link below for the company's complete wrap-up.
In Iceland, constitutions are written on Facebook
Ah, Iceland -- home to the Blue Lagoon, Sigur Rós and, most recently, crowdsourced constitutionalism. With its economy still reeling from the 2009 financial crisis, the country has begun hammering away at a brand new constitution, and is asking its online citizenry for help. The draft is being prepared by a democratically elected, 25-member council, but any Icelanders with an internet connection can add their own suggestions, engage in online debates, or follow the proceedings in real-time on Facebook. All suggestions are moderated to weed out the really dumb ones ("FEWER VOLCANOES"), and those approved by the board will be directly added to the draft, due to be completed at the end of this month. It's a fascinating social experiment, but one that could probably only happen in a place where nearly 90 percent of all households have a broadband connection, two-thirds of the entire population is on Facebook -- meaning their politicians are always within poke's reach.
RootMetrics launches Cell Phone Coverage Map, uses crowd-sourcing to test networks' lofty claims
When dealing in Soviet relations, President Reagan impressed upon a generation the mantra, "Trust, but verify." Decades later, this skeptical method is being applied to mobile carriers thanks to RootMetrics' Cell Phone Coverage Map, a crowd-sourced application aiming to provide reliable, verified information on network availability and performance. The app, now available to iPhone and Android users, provides a convenient way to determine which provider has the best signal in your area, and also happens to be great for spite, if you felt a coverage map wasn't telling the full truth. Yes, let's get it out of the way right now -- Root collects your stats and then sells it to the networks -- though given the purpose of the service, we're inclined to let criticism pass on this one. If you're undeterred by that caveat, hop on the bandwagon and share your results for the benefit of all (even if your battery doesn't thank you).
Waze still has a 'waze' to go
The free nav app for the iPhone, Waze, has just been updated with a new 2.0 version that sports some new features and some of the same old problems. Waze is basically a navigation app with some crowdsourced features. If you are using the app, Waze keeps track of your location, and if you get stuck in traffic, it will tell others along or near your route that something is amiss. It's a good idea, but only if there are a lot of people using the app on your route. New to this version are commuting groups, which allows you to create groups of drivers and see them on the map. There is an improved 3D view, and a better, simpler, search menu. The app works in landscape as well as portrait mode, and does give voice directions.
Ridley Scott, YouTube announce 'Life In A Day' crowd-sourced feature film project
Is the future of cinema truly this democratic? We dunno, but if you want to find out there's probably no better person to ask than Ridley Scott, who is teaming up with Kevin Macdonald and YouTube to produce Life In A Day. The idea is to get people from all over the world to submit videos taken on July 24, 2010. From here, director Kevin Macdonald will assemble a feature length documentary, to premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. What's more, if your footage makes the cut you can be one of twenty lucky folks invited to the festival. Pretty wild, huh? Hit the source link for info on submitting your masterpiece. Trailer after the break.
HTC Wildfire hands-on (update: video!)
Some eager beavers went ahead and busted through the embargo dam this morning, so you should already be up to speed on the Wildfire's specs and vital statistics. For the latecomers, this is an Android 2.1 device with the same processor as HTC's fabled Hero, a 3.2-inch capacitive QVGA display, and an ambition to sate the market for an affordable, socially connected Android smartphone. It's slated for a release in Europe and Asia early in the third quarter of this year, and you can see all four of its tasteful color options in the exhaustive gallery of intimate photography below. Skip past the break for the full spec sheet and our early hands-on impressions of the Wildfire.%Gallery-93137%
Nokia's Design by Community makes smartphone concepting a multiplayer game, with limits
Nokia's community blog has opened up the crowdsourcing floodgates, at least in theory. For "Design by Community," users will be able to vote on smartphone features via a series of sliders, although within an arbitrary point allotment system. A new poll opens next week for size and shape, followed by materials, operating system (Symbian or MeeGo being the only choices, unsurprisingly), and so on in the weeks that follow, with the last poll starting April 26th. After that, a concept sketch will be voted on and later rendered -- but no plans to ever have it made into an actual retail product (boo). We can't exactly say we understand all the selections here: why is a touchscreen keyboard less ambitious than T9 text entry? Does saying capacitive is more ambitious than resistive serve as a subtle hint of trends to come? What in the world is the difference between hot key and one touch? It's interesting to see how X6, N900, N97 all come out as a Perfect Mixes, while last year's E75 and the more recent C5 all straddle the "less than ambitious" line. Oh, and just so we're clear... a 5-inch, 21:9 ratio display without touchscreen but with a touchscreen keyboard is a perfect mix. Go figure. [Thanks, Pratik V]
CrowdSpirit gadget development project goes into beta
It's been quite a while coming, but the ambitious CrowdSpirit project has finally moved from the hype-building stage to the beta testing stage. For those that missed it the first time around, the project aims to apply crowdsourcing to the development of gadgets and consumer electronics, with individuals able to submit ideas for products that then get voted on by the community at large. If a product makes it all the way through the process, the contributors to it will then earn "a share" of the product revenue. Judging from the current pace of things, however, that possibility seems to still be quite a ways off.[Via MAKE:Blog]
