Two free ideas for great OSX desktop applications
Today I’m offering two free ideas for great desktop applications I really want to have.
If you’re an OSX app developer, feel free to use the ideas asap :-)
1. Digital Stationary
Small companies and startups sometimes need a stationary for various reasons: business letters, invoices, offers, you name it. But printed stationaries are expensive and usually a waste of money and paper: address changes, tax number changes, company type changes, logo changes, domain changes, whatever. Besides that you usually have to buy 5000 sheets which last… forever.
The most common approach for doing it “digitally” is to design a Pages/Word template but this limits you to these word processing applications.
So what I would like to have is something inside the printer workflow, maybe a virtual printer driver that I can use from any application. It automatically uses a e.g. PDF stationary template and stamps it with the the to-be-printed-data.
It should produce either a PDF file or use any physical printer of your choice.
print dialog in my app => stamp stationary template with printer output of the app => deliver to file or printer.
2. DropService — generic file system interface to RESTful SaaS
So many of us use and provide SaaS web services that interact with files e.g. CSV files from your bank software or some other export of closed desktop software or other online apps.
First you need to download or export the data into a readable format, save it on your disc, then open a browser and sign in to your SaaS of choice, open an upload form, select the file from your disc and press enter. sucks!
What I would like to have is close to Dropbox but not meant to be used as an online storage:
A magic folder (like ~/Dropbox) in your home directory with subfolders.
Each subfolder represents a SaaS account, that can be configure inside the to be written app.
e.g.
/Users/rmoriz/DropService/MyStocktradingAnalyzer/
/Users/rmoriz/DropService/Tumblr/
/Users/rmoriz/DropService/Mint/
…
Now every time I save a file to this directory, it automatically gets picked up by the to be written software and RESTfully pushed to the selected SaaS using the credentials and endpoints I specified prior in a configuration dialog on my computer.
This limits the annoying overhead to a simple “save as csv into that directory + check your SaaS” thing and can be universally used (think of growl).
I guess this can be done with some MacRuby skills in a few days.
GO FOR IT!
Don’t forget to send me an invite for alpha testing: roland at moriz . de :-)
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