Brian, Great idea. There are a number of Mac/ham developers on the web who might bite at this. However, public service oriented iphone apps are usually free. One of our local TV news station WCPO has a great app. Free. All the google apps including Google Earth. Free. Folks just seem to like writing apps for the fame and glory and/or to promote themselves or organizations. But many of the free apps are bait towards buying apps with greater functionality. I wonder if Google would be interested in going a Google-ham series? An app that simply linked to web based ARRL services would be quite useful, and could have a membership appication linked to PayPal built in. Great seeing you too. 73 de Gary KI4LA PS If you can't work in an iPhone to one of the thirds of your life, how about an iPod Touch. They run most of the apps, but have no phone module. Sent from Gary's 3GS iPhone On Jul 19, 2009, at 9:31 PM, Brian Mileshosky <n5zgt@swcp.com> wrote:
All --
It was great to work with you this weekend. The strategic planning bit has a couple gears in my head turning.
Tonight I had dinner with New Mexico's Technical Coordinator Scott Westerman W9WSW, who's a great friend of mine. We were playing with his iPhone and thought that ARRL should have an app -- or multiple apps -- of some kind.
Be it a hook into a DX Cluster, an application to search and view our QST archive (without requiring the use of the website), whatever. What if it already exists? We find a way to make it better, add more features, etc.
Some of these apps sell for 99 cents or up to 5 bucks. As more hams get iPhones, they will naturally look for apps (even ham related apps) since that's a main attribute of the iPhone. A few bucks times 10,000 people downloading ARRL's cool app equals revenue we didn't have before.
Going along with the idea of hosting technical design challenges (which we talked about during strategic planning), we could either develop an app in-house which would take time and money -- but may well pay for itself and then some -- or we could come up with a set of parameters and challenge ARRL members to develop some cool app for us.
Some thought would have to be given to crediting the winning developer in some way since ARRL would begin making money off the app but, again, this is a way to (a) show the world that the National Association for Amateur Radio is indeed thinking and playing on the forefront of technology, even if not ham related, (b) demonstrate to its membership that we value their input and ingenuity and want to use it to make their ARRL better, (c) grow into another market that has the potential for generating revenue, and (d) equip hams, in this case those who use iPhones, with a great tool to use which they may impress their ham friends with...which equates to some extent as free marketing in an untapped area.
Thoughts?
73, Brian N5ZGT