This fellow wanted our help coming up with ideas on rock climbing guides delivered as mobile apps.  Here’s what we came up with for him!

  • Enlist climbing organizations to provide suggestions as to what their membership would like to see in an app — that will give you user-friendly suggestions and build buzz around the app coming out.
  • Build a web-page that touts the future release of the app and lists the features of it for people to vote on what is most interesting/important to them and have a space for people to request features that aren’t on the list. (Another way to build the buzz)
  • Alternate locations/venues this type of app could be adapted for (e.g. theme parks, as you mentioned), there are also venues like hiking trails, large malls, state parks, and ski runs.
  • It would be really fun if there were a version people could adapt on their own for urban scavenger hunts!
  • Another way to adapt it would be historic walks / walks-of-interest for tourists in various cities.
  • Call an Android software development company to get a free quote (some will do that!) on creating your app. You can also do a Google search for “Android App Development” to find listings of companies that might quote for you.
  • Good feature addition: app asks how long you want to hike/climb and when an answer is provided it uses your current location (either auto detected or manually entered) to determine possible routes/highlights/destinations for you that might be reached in the time available. (You could expand this to even include driving time, hiking/climbing time, and drive return from current location. App would probably also then need to take climb rating and user’s self-rated skill level into consideration for how long any given climb might take.)
  • See if it would be possible to utilize Google images which have been geo-tagged (or name tagged) to provide app users images of where they are.
  • As an enhancement to the climbing log, a user’s day could be visually journaled using snapshots taken by the user (maybe even in combination with already available Google images), geo-tagged using GPS data, and compiled chronologically at the end of the journey for later viewing.
  • An enhancement to the idea above, a web-based interface could be developed which would allow people to “watch” your climb (using real-time GPS data from the phone) from the comfort of their own homes.
  • Design and build a harness to attach the phone to your head — have it automatically snap a picture every 15 seconds (or even take video) which can then be synced with the climb log after the user has returned home. Call it “CLIMB CAM”!
  • Take your idea #7 and expand it to be a full-on climbing social networking site to allow users to network, share info, and arrange group climbs.
  • Take a look at Kickstarter.com as a way to fund your app concept into becoming a reality.