Cagle World

Car companies are crashing, banks are bailing, farms are failing, but grant this to American entrepreneurs: they sure know how to make apps.

Since the launch of Apple’s iPad, over a million apps have already been sold. There seems to be no limit to America’s fascination with apps that simulate the sound of bubble wrap or – a real favorite – flatulence.

Cartoon by Nate Beeler - Washington Examiner (click to purchase)

A guy was showing me the new apps on his iPhone. He seemed unable to put down the device, even for a moment, preferring to poke away with both thumbs while explaining the process.

He said one app could show exactly where we were. Sure enough, after waggling his thumbs he brought up an aerial view of the parking lot in which we were standing. Another thumb roll and the image became a street map, showing how we could walk from where we were standing to some other place.

“Get this,” he said, as he waggled his way to a list of nearby pizza places.

A venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, now has a $200 million kitty for would-be apps inventors like me. So I figured the best way to cash in was to invent an app that computes the market for apps.

Turns out there are already several of those, including a site called 148apps.biz, which reports that Apple’s App Store has 175,855 active apps available for downloading. There are 34,614 people and businesses “publishing” these apps – with roughly 650 new apps submitted to Apple every day.

About a quarter of Apple’s apps are free; about a third cost 99 cents, and there are 13 apps out there selling for over $450. Apple was in the app business for less than a year when it reached the one billion download mark, and the current total exceeds three billion, so you do the math.

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The app known as BubbleWrap allows users to press images of bubble wrap and hear a digitally-created popping sound, which to many consumers is a real gas. Speaking of which, when it comes to app sounds fart noises are among the most popular, starting with the renowned iFart. This app allows users to “Select randomly from 18 digitally mastered fart sounds for the ultimate in poop gas.”

Another big seller is iSteam, called “genius” by a critic at The New York Times, who must have been fiddling with his iPhone while sitting through a four-hour performance at Carnegie Hall. The app creates virtual condensation on your screen that you can “wipe” with your finger. Over two million have been downloaded at 99 cents.

A favorite free app is The Shut Up Button. You press it and your iPhone shouts “shut up.” Another is called Have2P, which directs the user to nearest public toilet and provides details about what each facility offers.

For reasons that escape me, Hold On! is a popular app with which you press an on-screen button while a timer keeps track of how long you can keep your finger on the button.

Full disclosure: I don’t have the faintest idea how to go about inventing an app. My plan for this column was to acknowledge the phenomenal app market (all cited here are real), then come up with my own humorous concepts for fake apps. That was before I read about a real app called The AcneApp, which uses blue and red lights to supposedly kill skin bacteria. This scientifically unproven app is sold to iPhone users for $1.99.

Recalling the storyline from “Seinfeld,” I planned to end my app spoof with an app about nothing. Then I learned that a fellow named Paul Perry actually sells a 99-cent app called Nothing. Its ad says, “Nothing is everything you ever wanted in an application – except much, much less.”

So I’ve decided not to invent apps for a living. With real-life products like these, the business is simply too serious for me.

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©2010 Peter Funt. This column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. newspaper syndicate. For info call Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or e-mail [email protected].

Peter Funt is a writer and public speaker. He’s also the long-time host of “Candid Camera.” A collection of his DVDs is available at www.candidcamera.com.

I’m calling this column “Coca-Cola.” Although I have little to say about Coke, it’s my hope that the giant soft drink company will send me a few bucks for the naming rights.

Apparently during the current economic upheaval, names are the easiest things to pawn off. New York City got $4 million by allowing Barclays to put its name on a few subway stations. Ohio State University named its new student union after U.S. Bancorp in return for $1 million. Lansing, Mich., recently collected $1.5 million from a law school to name its minor-league baseball park Cooley Law School Stadium. The zoo in Columbia, S.C., desperate for cash, even auctioned off naming rights to a baby giraffe.

Cartoon by Ares - Cagle Cartoons (click to purchase)

But in what must be 2010’s boldest naming ploy to date, the city of Topeka, Kan., changed its name to Google. Seems the deciders at Google are looking for a community in which to test ultra high-speed Internet service, and Topeka hopes to woo the business by adopting the Google name for the month of March.

What’s next? Could taxpayers save some money if the nation’s capital were renamed AIG, D.C.?

This form of crass commercialism isn’t new. Every June, Dublin, Texas, changes its name to Dr. Pepper to commemorate the nation’s first Dr. Pepper bottling facility located there. The town of Clark, Texas, changed its name to Dish, so that residents could all get free satellite TV.

Much of the blame for commercially motivated renaming goes to the town fathers in Derry Church, Pa., who in 1906 became so overwhelmed with gratitude for the success of the local chocolate factory that they renamed the town Hershey.

One hundred years later, Washington, Pa., temporarily renamed itself Steeler, Pa., when the NFL Steelers won the Super Bowl. Odder still was the decision by Ismay, Montana, in 1993 to officially change its name to Joe, Montana (after the star quarterback).

The concept isn’t even new in Topeka, which prior to becoming Google had temporarily changed its name to ToPikachu after the Pokemon character.

And Google, Kan.,isn’t the first example of digital-age name switching. Halfway, Ore., renamed itself Half.com in 1999, after the e-commerce site owned by eBay, in return for school computers and $100,000 cash.

Once upon a time companies didn’t have to bother paying for naming rights, they simply picked a city they liked and commandeered the name. The famous fig cookie firm did that with Newton, Mass.; the GM people did it with Pontiac, Mich.

There are still plenty of existing towns to which American organizations might wish to relocate based on their unique names. There’s Boring, Ore., which would probably be thrilled to become the site of new studios for NBC. There’s Looneyville, Texas, which could house national headquarters for the Tea Party movement.

Why has the IRS overlooked the opportunity to relocate to Needmore, Texas? Shouldn’t the Pentagon be in Gayville, South Dakota? A fitting home for the U.S. Congress would be Truth or Consequences, N.M.

If I’d had the time to relocate myself, I probably should have filed this column from Embarrass, Minn.

Meanwhile, back in Kansas, the Google bandwagon seems to have rolled over not only Topeka but the entire county of Shawnee, where commissioners are now considering renaming a sports facility the Google Recreational Building, and a local park Google Gardens.

If, after all this, the Google company decides against setting up shop in Kansas, Topeka can always rename itself Dumburg, Crasstown, Desperation Station — or, perhaps most appropriately, Almighty Buckville, USA.

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©2010 Peter Funt. This column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. newspaper syndicate. For info call Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or e-mail [email protected].

Peter Funt is a writer and public speaker. He’s also the long-time host of “Candid Camera.” A collection of his DVDs is available at www.candidcamera.com.