Here’s a bit of a thought on applications on various platforms. Here’s two recent examples of very popular platforms that people are now developing for; The iPhone, and Facebook. I’m a huge advocate for having useful applications, and reducing your computer usage to only doing what you have to. (Yes, I blame this on batching my time into doing that what I need to do thanks to the “4 Hour Workweek”)

Now a few months ago I was a Facebook user…ok, an addict. This is an important point. Just this morning I was news that AT&T is creating a business plan for the iPhone. In past months, CIO.com and other tech news sites complained that while the iPhone is cool, it is not a business friendly device. It’s my hope that this new business plan will act as the catalyst for the application developers for the iPhone to create useful applications for business users. I guess my point of argument here is the fact that I finally cancelled my Facebook account. I’m happy for that. I’m happy because I spent so much time on new Facebook apps that had no truly useful reason for existing. My account was littered with them. They were there, I had them… and there was no purpose. By the time i cancelled my Facebook account there were so many applications that had little to no legit use it was appalling. Now if I were to go back to Facebook and find that there are more worthwhile useful applications I will retract that point, but until then Facebook is dead to me.

iPhone developers if you are listening, please don’t let the iPhone go the way of Facebook. Create your applications. Go forth and create your software, but PLEASE make it software which the user truly has a reason for using.