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Either you have an exceptionally high opinion of your idea or you have a different definition of what a 'killer app' is than me. There's a huge gulf between a '
by halo 19y ago
Either you have an exceptionally high opinion of your idea or you have a different definition of what a 'killer app' is than me. There's a huge gulf between a 'killer app' and a 'good idea', and not being one doesn't exclude the other.
To me, a killer app is usually a single product that creates such a buzz around a new or previously underused technology or concept that causes a sudden almost universal take up by both users and developers and causes long-reaching paradigm shifts.
Google Suggest did it with Ajax, Del.icio.us did it with tags, YouTube did it to online video, Wikipedia for wikis or even the web for the Internet. Not everything becomes popular thanks to 'killer apps' and some innovations are introduced more gradually (such as Flash), but they're somewhat less common and it's generally an uphill struggle before they're adopted.
- wallflower 19y agoI stand corrected. It is interesting that you suggest that Google Suggest did it for Ajax (I would argue that it was Google Maps that surfaced OWA-type no-page-refresh-updates). However, I think that Ajax, like Flash is a technology. The rest of the items in your list are more ideas/concepts (e.g. making it easy for the average person to use technology for their own purposes). YouTube - easy embedded videos - a difficult problem to solve - (Flash just happened to be the enabler). And we can argue that video is/was the killer app for Flash. Email was the original killer app (and still is). Maybe there isn't a killer app for Flash/Flex. Since it is more of a technology that supplements existing technology (OS integration) than a paradigm-changing thing.