Thursday, March 18, 2010

A good solution for filtering some of the noise in the crazy world of apps

After one week into its launch Google Apps Marketplace had around 1,500 apps. This quick rise of more apps for me to sift through lead me to a conversation with Brent Dance from Fresh Consulting about the over saturation of apps in our lives. I was curious about finding a solution to filtering through the plethora of available apps and a simple way of locating the ones that are value added.

The iPhone App Store, for example, has so many apps that I waste a lot of time just trying to find one that is worth downloading. There is a rating system on the store site but how do you really compare one app to another? Also how do you compare an app from the iPhone to an app on the web, or to a Google App. Each system has their own rating system but does not allow for general comparisons amongst other platforms.

While this issue was fresh in my mind (no pun intended Fresh Consulting), Brent referred me to a site called web2review.com where some of my filtering problems could be answered. He admitted that it is not the end all answer to my questions, but that it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Web2review primarily focuses on web apps, but the general idea of being able to filter and compare over a number of different sites in useful. I did a simple comparison of Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. I was able to weight different variables and see which aspect of each service was most useful to me. This type of service is extremely handy and shows you why a different web serivce/app is better than another.

One thing that would be nice to see in the future is the ability to compare all types of apps no matter the platform.

Thanks for the recommendation Brent.
Web2review is definitely a step in the right direction to easy filtering.

Posted via web from Kevin Tame

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