To anyone who’s ever written a line of code, pre-canned/auto-generated apps are the scourge of the App Store world. For anyone who just wants to be able to say “Me? There’s an app for that! LOL!” without having to dedicate their lives to waging war against semi-colons and pouring through documentation, however, they’re a god send.
Love’em or hate’em, Nokia has just embraced’em. They’ve just launched a new tool, Ovi App Wizard, purposed with turning any feed (be it RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or what have you) into an Ovi Store App in around 10 minutes.
The process seems pretty simple: Name it, pick a few RSS feeds, choose the colors, and then set up the distribution options. If you’re looking to cash in, you’ve got two choices: toss in a pre-fabbed ad system and take a cut of the revenue, or — if you’re feeling ambitious about your work — you can pick a price. Hit the publish button, and about 24 hours later, blammo – you’re famous. Well, not famous. But you have an Ovi Store App. That’s almost the same thing, right?
It’s always a good thing when an App Store operator makes their outlet more accessible — but this really just seems like a ploy to boost their number of apps through quantity-over-quality. If 10,000 people make an application out of their Twitter feed, that’s 10,000 new apps Nokia can boast about – but how many of those will actually see more than a handful of downloads? Is an app really an app if the only person who downloads it is your Mom?
There’s a reason Apple is banning these sorts of apps.
Check out Ovi App Wizard here.