Re: another plea! ShadowPlan for iOS? Seed-Money?

	Still a crazy world out there; outliners / to-do-lists / 
project-managers exist aplenty, from websites to apps; most apps are 
pretty lightweight these days (which is what most people need, but 
obviosuly theres the power niche who wants more!) .. heck, most of these 
apps don't do hierarchy, and no apps synchronize in many locations .. it 
always makes me giggle how iTunes is so painful about sync options .. or 
'cloud sync' which usually still means single sync target, but at least 
yit works anywhere; in a lot of ways, Palm and Pocket PC apps were far 
ahead of capabilities in many apps compared to these days.. just not as 
pretty or as connected :)

	Anyway, the trick now for such a thing is.. competing with Bascamp 
and the 10,000 pretty good websites that do this stuff, as well as the 
existing apps. There are a lot of good sold web based applications, and 
some of those have decent on-device applications.

	Pretty tough nut to crack, but really.. for me, to fight all those 
big guys, it would be sort of like Shadow was at the beginning.. carving a 
specific niche and trying to grow it, without getting on the radar of the 
big guys. But in the world dominated by walled garden stores like iTunes 
and Android Marketplace, your visibility is dictated by downloads .. the 
top stay the top, and the new or niche guy has an almost impossible time 
being noticed, by store design. (They dont' want a big ecology.. the 
stores want a set of very successful few apps, in any given category.)

	Anyway, the question then is .. what could an app I build (call it 
Shadow for sake of argument) offer that the other guys do not, and that 
they couldnmt' then just bolt on? Its like.. if you build a better 
mousetrap, the old mousttrap companies will modify their design after 
you've done all the hard work. The trick is coming up with somethign that 
can't be duplicated.. like hard work ;)

	So what would need to be in a new applicaiton, that the other guys 
doint' already do? Or, just taking it seriuously? Doing proper hierarchy 
with dependancies between items and lots of dates and custom displays and 
all that? Thats pretty much the opposite of what iOS and Android 
applications are .. so hard to say if that would sell. Those markets 
thrive on $1 apps that donmt' have much work in them .. doing something 
serious takes a lot more time and you need to charge for it..

	.. but can you sell an app for $7 or $10 or $15 there? Pretty 
hard. If you sell it for $1, wil you get enough sell through to make up in 
volume what you dont' get per unit?

	Yeah, had all these same questions before, but I was younger and 
more foolish then, full of spit and vinegar ;) Now I'm still full of spit 
and vinegar, but not as much energy :)

	If theres a market there, I could be tempted back in :)

		jeff

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012, swac2002 wrote:

# Hi Jeff,
# 
# I am almost willing to pay the outrageous $50 to StyleTap just so I can use ShadowPlan! 
# 
# But! I'd rather pay you $50.00 if that would lead, even some time down the line, to a version for the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad.
# 
# Of all the folks on the yahoo group who have asked about this, I wonder how many would be willing to each give you, say $25.00 seed money upfront, to help fund the project.
# 
# I like my Palm T3 for ShadowPlan but I never have it with me because, well, it's a second thing to carry around, and I obviously can't coordinate what I'm doing across devices.
# 
# I'd jump in a second to an iOS version so all I'd need to carry around is my iPod Touch (or iPad 3 if I decide to buy one).
# 
# Finally, when I recently checked the StyleTap website they were touting some sort of Palm Software development kit that would "easily" allow Palm programs to be ported to iOS. Is this something that you could use? And even if so, would they be wanting an arm and a leg to sell you that kit?
# 
# Thanks so much for one of the best programs ever, and for your time right now,
# 
# Sincerely,
# 
# Chris
# 
# 
# 
# ------------------------------------
# 
# Yahoo! Groups Links
# 
# 
# 
# 

--
If everyone would put barbecue sauce on their food, there would be no war.