I was going through my blogs today and stumbled on a note from the guys at Smartphone Thoughts.  I like these guys, but again, it was a plug for a piece of software they hadn’t tried, in the vein of “looks kinda neat - anyone try it?”.  This brought me over to the best-seller list on their site, where the current top dog is a clock program.  Yeah, a freaking clock program.

<rant>
So what’s going on here?  We’ve got a reasonably powerful device with web connectivity, and a clock is the best we can come up?  Surely the other top sellers will be better.  Let’s see; we’ve got a mediocre home screen customizer with really tiny Windows 95-style graphics.  There’s CorePlayer, which is decent, but it used to be free (back when it was still TCPMP).  There’s a tweaking app which makes tweaks to the registry for you and may have some other useful features.  Next is a notes management app, and then ANOTHER STUPID CLOCK.

I can’t put money down for this stuff, especially when I see some very nice free apps on the market.  Google Maps is very well executed.  Windows Live Search is very functional and simple to use.  Yahoo! Go is a pretty good piece of software, too; a little slow, but it’s a beta still.  These are all free.

Where are the professional, useful applications?  Where are the real developers hiding? 

What about all the wonderful Web 2.0 (forgive me) web apps available?  I’m talking about Google Docs, Mint.com, and similar.  Where are useful apps like those in a portable format?  So far the only strides have been online versions of Gmail and Google Reader ( and a few others).  Where is the creativity?  Where’s a blog tool that supports WordPress?  Where’s an IM tool that works?  Where’s a real replacement for Microsoft Reader (MobiPocket really sucks)?  Nah, we don’t need that; we need a ringtone manager or seven different weather apps.
</rant>

Here’s my point, in case I haven’t hammered it in enough.  Before developing another alarm clock or home screen plugin, step back and see what would REALLY be cool.  Until then, I suppose we could always take our agendas to the eXtreme.