A refreshing new trend online is the advent of the micro app: a smaller, simpler version of a web application that takes little time to learn and is usually designed to do only one thing, but do it well. This is benefical to users, who don’t need to invest time into something that may not end up being useful or relevant, and to developers, who don’t have to spend months developing and planning a product that may not be successful. Starting small and building constantly is the smart way to expand on the web.

Here are two examples of micro apps that I use:

Instapaper

Instapaper is a non-social bookmarking site where you can easily save web pages that you want to read later. When first logging into Instapaper, you can choose to define a password or not; your choice determines whether your bookmarked sites will be private.

Your bookmarked sites are comfortably divided into two categories: not read and read. The interface is clean and optimized for Mobile Safari, which makes it pleasant to access your bookmarked sites on the go. Instapaper’s strength is in its simplicity, unlike del.icio.us, whose url I have to Google every time to remember how to spell it.

Foamee

Foamee works in conjunction with Twitter to keep track of who you owe a beer and who owes you a beer. (if you don’t use Twitter yet, refer to Ed’s post, which I think includes one of the best explanations of how Twitter works).

Here’s how Foamee works: First follow @ioubeer on Twitter. Then, in Twitter, type @ioubeer followed by the name of the recipient, followed by your tweet explaining why you own the that person a beer. This will go out as a tweet and will be tracked on your personal page on Foamee.

Here is my Foamee page (As you can see, I owe a few).

You can use Twitter’s text function to send I-owe-yous to Foamee, which works well when you are out at the pub (and broke).

My only complaint with Foamee is there is no way to search for user names, so you are forced to browse through an alphabetical listing or find a person by typing their name in the url (example: http://foamee.com/people/yourtwittername).

This works for coffee also, by using @ioucoffee instead of @ioubeer.

The idea here is that web applications don’t have to be huge, all encompassing products. A good idea, simply and efficiently executed, can be more rewarding to the developer and user.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 1:19 pm by Park&Co and is filed under | Articles | Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.