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iPhone 3GS - Source: Reuters -
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You never think you're in the middle of an outbreak of public lunacy until you realise that everyone around you is doing the same thing, or talking about doing it.
The moment occurred to me last night, sitting at a restaurant in Tribeca alongside my statuesque and fragrant sweetheart. In the adjacent booth, a sparsely, but ambitiously, bearded young man was importuning his mates about his latest attempt to get rich. This is not a novel New York conversation, though given the state of the economy in the US, getting to be middle class might be a more reasonable goal.
The guy seemed like a common-or-garden hipster blowhard, fulminating with sperm, pride and bluster. He had just finished boasting about some 400-year-old (okay, I may be exaggerating) bourbon he'd bought that "really puts you on your ass" when he rolled out his next grand scheme: An iPhone application (or "app" to its friends).
Confused? An app is a piece of software that you put on your phone that performs a small but novel function.
For example, you may recall being less than intrigued by people waving their new iPhones about, and having them emit sounds like a light sabre out of Star Wars. That was an app.
On Saturday morning, while waiting to do a live shot on Tiger Woods in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, my cameraman, a hairy and powerful Italian, brandished his iPhone. "Say something," he said. I did. A large bug-eyed red rectangle on his screen repeated what I'd said, only it sounded like Donald Duck. That was an app.
Suddenly I realised another Italian colleague is developing an app. A Tibetan colleague has an app out already. My mate from Havelock North who now lives in New Jersey is developing an app.
In the restaurant, the hipster held his device up; I peeked across the chasm of my Dewars and soda. The screen of his iPhone displayed a gibbous hunk of that luminous piece of cheddar that orbits our globe.
His app allowed you to tap into a live feed from a telescope, and look at the moon.
"God," I snorted, "why don't I make an app that allows you to look at the telescope that allows you to look at the moon?"
"I want to make an app," my beloved observed, between spoonfuls of ice cream.
The app-god is Ethan Nicholas , whose tank game iShoot reached number one on Apple's App store earlier this year, selling 37,000 copies in a day. iShoot costs three US dollars.
Apps have been around for some time. There are around 130,000 of them out there, so the market is bulging. The latest generation is less about Donald Duck quacks and more about business use, or social networking, or what experts call " augmented reality ". You point your phone at an area, it takes an image, holds it, and displays information about your surroundings. Sort of like pop-up video.
"Augmented reality" - it's insisted - will be colossal this year. In fact, I've discovered an app for augmented reality myself, and I'll give it to you for free. Lie in bed; read; drink scotch. That augments all kinds of things.
Editor's note: But if you want to check out a *good* iPhone app, check out TVNZ's one.
Read more of Tim Wilson's blogs.
