Windows Phone 7 app idea – Crowdsourcing sports scores

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 team have launched a competition for people to provide ideas for future Windows Phone apps and whichever idea gets the most votes – they will build it! Here’s a screenshot of the the main page for the competition:

So far there have been over 800 entries and, without wanting to be too derogatory to the people that have suggested them, to me they seemed like a lot of “me too” apps; that is, variations on apps that already appear on other platforms. Do these sound familiar?

• I need an app that sync my contacts with back-end web service or something on the web to be able to restore it to any device I have or even if i lost my mobile.
• app to contain a database of common foods with all there nutritional info i.e protein, calories
• Mute or forward calls based on GPS or calendar
• Share my location with friends and tell me when they are nearby

To be fair there were some fairly original ideas on there, iClothYou for one, but I wanted to come up with that seemingly holy grail of apps – something that hasn’t been done before. For that I turned to an idea that I have been kicking around my head for a few months now, something I call Crowdsourced Sports Scores:

There are plenty of ways to get sports scores on your phone today but they all rely on someone like ESPN/an other news broadcaster providing them.

My idea is to adopt the wikipedia model of user-generated content and "crowdsource" sports scores so that the fans who attend the sports events can become the reporters and provide the scores instead.

For example if I’m at a Lakers game and Kobe scores I would simply hit a button on my phone and send a notification of that score to a central service. Anyone else who’s interested in the Lakers can instantly see the score, probably before ESPN or whoever provides it.

Better still, it could work for your college team…whatever, anyone should be free to provide data to the service on any team or sport that they like  and it then becomes a one-stop shop for every single sports score in the world, pro or amateur.

There are loads of possibilities thereafter. e.g. Aggregating tweets about a particular game, real-time updated league tables, league table of "top contributors" etc…, the key thing is to get an app out there that allows people to interact with the service – building upon the data can come later.

[None-americans will immediately realise the blatant americanisation of this suggestion but given its an idea I’m submitting to an american company I figured it was warranted]

If you think this is a good idea please take a few seconds to click though and vote for my entry. As you can see I’m currently ranked 147 out of 800+ so am in need of a few votes:

I myself have knocked together a prototype of a football (i.e. soccer) based service and would love to develop it further but unfortunately I simply don’t have the time so better than have the idea languish in my head I thought it better to get it there and let someone else act upon it. Failing that, if some enterprising venture capitalist wants to give me a load of money to assemble a team and build it myself – come and find me!

Please vote! Thanks muchly!

@JamieT

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