Jason Crawforth wants to help you make up your mind. Earlier this month, he and four fellow software developers at Boise, [Idaho]-based MobileDataForce unveiled iMakeDecisions — an application for Apple’s fanatically popular iPhone and iPod touch that provides users with a suite of virtual decision-making tools to help them navigate through any situation.
“I started looking at some of these (decision-making) applications that people were writing and there were a ton of similar things,” Crawforth said. “I thought, ‘OK, these are weak, these are what I’d call iPhone app 1.0. We need to make one that combines several of these tools.'”
Programmed part-time over four months, iMakeDecisions sells on Apple’s online App Store for $2 and includes 10 different tools — from the classic coin flip (picking from a host of international currencies) to “Will it Stick?” (throwing a range of things from pickles to slime at a wall to see what stays).
The app — designed by MobileDataForce programmers Dave Carter, Pete Fransen, Will Hannold and Devin Parsons — is lighthearted but represents the firm’s first foray into a growing and lucrative new market.
“When Apple came out with the iPhone there was nothing like it; it’s a brand new space,” said Crawforth, MobileDataForce’s chief strategy officer. “It’s a whole new area, everyone’s pouring into it. It’s exciting.”
No matter how you slice it, pretty much anything related to the Apple iPhone is big business. When it hit the market in July, users snapped up about 1 million units in the first three days; after a month that figure had climbed to about 3 million. In late October, Apple announced it had sold 6.9 million of the sophisticated, touchscreen smartphones in the quarter ending Sept. 30, and had already far exceeded its goal of moving 10 million by the end of 2008….