Consumer Applications and Domino

My post from the other day received one comment.

And Ben Poole had this to say:

Who or what Business Partner has written anything to sell to someone at home?Who uses Lotus Notes at home?? A BP would only code such an app if there were demand for it, surely?

I say developers only code what they get asked for, usually, not always.

You never know when the next one will pop up, but ideas happen all over the place.

I keep a notepad, an old Lotus one of course, by my bed for late night ideas that hit me because by morning I forget them or the details sometimes.

So sometimes the ideas go far, sometimes short, but it's always interesting to read.

So some ideas for consumer ideas have been shown to be found at the iPhone Apps store.

What makes a consumer idea for an iPhone, exempted from being a Domino app?

One example to think about. And this is real life, everyday usage millions of people do every day. To be fair one(from my basic searches on iTunes) exists to do this in some fashion. Go lookup Bon Appetit from InovvaDev,LLC ($2.99)

Lunch menu's for kids in school.

Not only could you track the lunch's and potentially the costs to justify if you should pay for lunch at school or not, but imagine the opportunity for change or boredom by your kids...that's 30 days in a row of PBJ(Peanut butter & jelly)?!

Imagine the feedback the school cafeteria could have if they saw these menus?

I possibly see a bunch of parents buy one app. For $1(or $2.99) it would be worth it if they understand how it helps them too.

How many students are there in the US? Or the world? And parents that need to make them lunch? This wouldn't even be a dent in IBM's revenue stream, but imagine it as a BP, like I do.

Sure it could be done using Excel or any other database but outside of the yellow bubble and general IT people, the rest of the world doesn't do this normally, really they don't as I find out more and more I work with my kids school.

One Domino server synching all these menu's and providing quick lookups or reports to be emailed to parents or schools?

Just because there aren't any apps, doesn't mean there can't be or won't be.

We only have ourselves to blame if we don't change the way we see opportunities, not IBM.