iPad: Breeding ground for the next-gen developer
Two Stanford University graduates who are part of their in-house Institute of Design, known colloquially as the 'd.school', have created an iPad application which has taken the technology world by storm. In just five short weeks, they released the very sleek, simple and cheap RSS-based news aggregator which will be soon be ported to the iPhone platform.
In the spirit of being young Generation Y developers at a world renown university, social sharing controls are a key part of the application which allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook and email.
All good and well, but I don't really want to focus on the application itself. It's the developers that I want to pay homage to, in that they are being publicly shown to be high value Generation Y members, who can apply knowledge, design, aesthetics - and all kinds of other qualities which make them highly employable in the near future.
The New York Times wrote this morning that the $3.99 application which aggregates everything you need to know into one screen is now topping the list of paid applications in the iPad App Store. That's roughly 15,000 people and $40,000 generated in only a few days, the site reports.
iPad's aren't for e-books. They're a breeding ground for the next-generation developer.
Mobile applications are still rapidly rising, with Neilsen data showing today that music, social networking, news and weather, communications and entertainment categories being the most commonly used smartphone applications. Seeing as so many students nowadays have an iPhone, a BlackBerry or some kind of smartphone, it only makes sense that today's youth pitch to their own audience and stay within an environment they're comfortable with?
- Read more: Part mobile entrepreneur, part teenage millionaire
- Read more: Windows Marketplace now free for student devs
I can only hope that this project can offer at very least some motivation to do something similar. All it takes is one idea for your entire life and career to change. This wasn't even a new idea, but it has qualities which make it the best at what it does.
So what's your next big idea?