Yesterday, I happened to be at the Panera Bread café down the road with my family. We took a table next to a sign that boasted an iPhone / iPad app for the company. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if there was a Windows Phone app… the search in the app store turned up four apps, none of which had much to do with Panera Bread.
On a hunch, I redirected my phone’s web browser to appstudio.windowsphone.com, and drafted a new project… a wrapper for Panera’s mobile site. In minutes, I had used my phone to generate and sideload a brand new app. I realized I could publish the app with only a few tweaks, and from the time I sat down to eat to the time this new Panera Bread app was certified & available for download only about two hours had passed.
I’ve decided to issue a challenge to the Granite State (NH) Windows Phone Users Group (and anyone else who wants to join in) to a “Pay it forward” style friendly ‘competition’.
Whenever you see an app marketed for platforms other than Windows Phone, see if you can’t whip up a respectful/respectable presentation of an app that provides some approximation of the functionality advertised… for the Windows Phone platform… and publish it as a free app with no advertising or in-app purchases. It should be a “gift” of sorts in honor of the subject.
Then feel free to let the folks who might be interested that they are subject to our #RandomAppOfKindness pay-it-forward activity.
If the subject of your app complains of copyright issues, you may be required by copyright holders to remove the app… and you should comply. After all, this app was created and published out of good will.
Here’s my first #RandomAppOfKindness…
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/panera-bread/2b1e2cd1-a440-4657-910d-a0eec15ecc5e
I’d love to turn this into a real competition… Perhaps in the future we’ll discuss crating a list of #RandomAppOfKindness apps and set a finish date to see who’s published the most qualified apps… but I don’t have a budget for that (as of yet) 🙂
Have fun!
Addendum:
Three new #RandomAppOfKindness entries since the Panera Bread app:
