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Controversy surrounds My Dream App: Voter fraud?

arstechnica.com — The winners of the closely-followed My Dream App competition were announced last night, complete with voter fraud.

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koregaonpark 1 year 272 days ago, made popular 1 year 272 days ago

369 diggs
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newbnetuser, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Voter fraud or not, the competition and its results still yield some amazing observations. At the same time, you'd think that any type of stats-driven web interface these days would at the very least look at duplicate IPs...
- smeinzer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20We did look at duplicate IPs. The issue is how many business, dorms, and even houses have routers with up to 20 people behind the same IP. We figured its pretty probable that someone else you know at work or someone who lives with you would vote for you. And it's important not to eliminate votes from different people who are on the same IP. (Within reason)
- Crackshot, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4This isn't to say that you didn't try because its clear that a fair system was attempted to be implemented but, as stated in the article, other gaming methods like spoofing IP addresses would probably slip through the cracks undetected as there is no way to have a cheat-proof system under the circumstances. In light of this fact and looking at your population of voters it would seem that the "gaming attempt" variable would be held fairly constant across all choices, making it somewhat difficult too weed out entirely.
  Not proposing a sollution, just seems this thing was doomed to controversy from the start
- Dolomite, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1if people register before they voted... couldn't you verify by their email addresses to prevent multiple votes? You could then easily ban any votes from any obvious sources of fraud such as hotmail or yahoo accounts.
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Nothing against the guy who thought up the Atmosphere idea, it's kinda cool, buy I was a little suspicious as to why it got first place. Who knows, maybe it actually got more valid votes, but there were so many other damn good ides there?
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Voting fraud or not, I think the fact that what is essentially a desktop switcher won means the entire competition was a complete waste of time. Just my opinion, but I know a lot of others share it. A desktop switcher is *not* a dream app.
- reichg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1who cares!
  
  the best programs won
Derfus, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5You mean whoring out to the media wins elections?

Don't any of you live in the USA?
oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7either of these applications would probably be interesting in their own right but the fact that they won a competition called "my dream application" is laughable.

yeah, i've laid awake at night dreaming of an aggregate recipe manager and virtual window. whoopie!
RuffRidr, on 10/12/2007, -12/+7Voter fraud?!? The Republicans must be responsible for this! It's all a part of the neocon conspiracy! *shakes stick*
- RableRableSnarf, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3pMg and RUMSFELD!!!!! he was in on it too!!!! h4x!!
PhelixTheKhat, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4My Dream App is....an automatic voting system which casts fraudulent votes for me in the thousands. I'll call it AVSWCFVFMITT for short.
- mathmanjeffy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Mine casts them in the millions!
  
  I call it AVSWCFVFMITT^2
Dolomite, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4well, i think there might have been some inside influence here. certain judges were pushing certain apps rather heavily. doesn't sound shocking that their pet projects mysteriously got more votes that they should have.
gorkish, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15My Dream App was such a good idea that became such a disaster. I don't know how nobody expected stuffing and cheating into the final rounds. What good is a panel of experts and developers if you can't rely on their expert opinions? The finals should have been left up to them.

The three ideas that won are so unbelievably boring and ***** compared to many of the others that fell out earlier in the game. I'm not saying they don't have merit as applications; they just don't deserve to win a contest like this because there's nothing really innovative about them. I was really suprised when the contestents were announced that so many of them were simply "A mac version of [blah]" or "[blah], but better!" -- that was extremely dissapointing and the first sign of a contest that was going to go wrong. All of those types of entries should have been immediately chucked.

There are already great cookbook, file syncing, and weather apps for the mac -- more than one can even count! It's no wonder they won since developing them seems to be so popular. I can't wait to see my file copy replaced by a giant toilet flushing animation while I minimize all my windows to look at my desktop instead of out the window. Maybe they can also add a feature to Cookbook that will utalize the exploding battery in my Powerbook to actually COOK my meal too! Bang up job guys!

My dream app for the mac? Something that doesn't already exist, but BETTER!
- Kypt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6*ahem* like hijack? :(
- ajwinder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is exactly correct, because they are the ones that will have to code it, in the end. Jason Harris hated the concept of Portal, in fact, none of the judges were too excited about it. That should have been a big hint that no one should vote for it, if the developers dont want to make it because the concept is overdone, boring, and unoriginal, then guess what, you shouldn't make them. Happy devs turn out great work, those working because they have to are definitely going to put out something mediocre.
  
  That said, the cookbook app had the nicest looking, reasonable GUI design. The final app will look like that, because it was one of the few apps designed with the actual system in mind. Portal is, okay, im not even going to lie, its going to be a waste of a time, a gigantic failure, and it won't be out for ages. Atmosphere has potential, and let me tell you, Jason Harris is an amazing developer, his touch should make this app amazing. I just cant believe people voted in Portal, that idea shouldn't have made it past the first round, theres already so many solutions built in that do this.
- gorkish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes I did vote for Hijack and only Hijack; it was the only app in the finals that was particularly interesting as the other contender that made it far enough along, Desktop Wars, had dropped out the previous round.
  
  Really? Cookbook has a great UI? Perhaps that is because it follows the standard time-tested three pane format of EVERY SINGLE ORGANIZER APP that exists. Or is it because it's simply a clone of MacGourmet with extra (read: useless) eye candy crapola tacked on? Atmosphere is probably the only slightly interesting one of the bunch, but don't kid yourself about its merit; it's not really much of an app even if you make it brilliant and beautiful. Plus, who wants to look at a cloudy, rainy day on their computer when it is cloudy and rainy outside? It's depressing enough already. Sure, I guess you can look at somewhere else's weather that is nicer, but it's plenty easy to find a photo of a nice beach somewhere -- you know they even ship a couple standard with the OS, right?
- AnimaMaelstrom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2OK, so many of you should actually look around in the site before making a comment about it. "Jason Harris hated the concept of Portal"???? Ummm, no... he said "I had a really hard time not putting this one into my list of “vote fors”", but he didn't want to code it, due to it's complexity and that moving files around wasn't very "sexy". He also said that he really warmed up to the idea during it's evolution. Another thing was that he didn't like the animation effects as they are (which were designed by a complete novice graphic artist and would eventually be done by a professional designer ... ummmm, think maybe it will get a bit better???).
  
  A lot of other comments in this digg are just completely false but I don't really feel like going into each and every one, there's my one example. Try checking something out in detail before acting like an expert.
monergism, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Maybe they'll learn something and start the program again.

Or ignore the whole idea of user-generated content and just create a product like the rest of the world.
greedonever, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3I stumbled upon My Dream App. Registered. Voted for Atmosphere. It won. I am satisfied.

We're other apps more useful? Maybe. But a minivan is more useful than a Ferrari. And Archos is more useful than an iPod. Which of these would you want. It's not about whats useful.
- oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9wow, that argument made absolutely no sense at all.
  
  respectfully.
- greedonever, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1My point is Atmosphere looks really cool and doesn't really do much. Sometimes that is exactly what people want. In some cases they go for the shiny useless. In other cases they cut back and choose the utilitarian. There's no telling which will fly but you can't say Atmosphere winning is bull.
camvet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Gotta say I started following this from the beginning and was really excited about it. The end result though is that some pretty lame apps. They all look cool in their own right but not the revolutionary stuff this contest promised. There were some really revolutionary ideas in the initial stages. An example, one guy suggested an ERP application. Now that would have been revolutionary as an app that could have gotten the Mac some penetration into the business world. The creator of the contest actually made fun of the person for submitting an acronym he didn't know. This definitely did not deliver the revolutionary applications they promised, come on a weather application??? Look out Microsoft!
HellifIno, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1I'll get buried, but I have to use an ***** moment for this:

Who the ***** cares?! It's on a Mac!

Meh, I'm just frustrated that it's an ONLY Mac contest. Some of the stuff sounds cool, yet none of it will ever reach the PC. Even stuff that COULD be ported will never be ported. So, yeah. Reiteration of my 2nd statement : P
- camvet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6As a PC user I'm gonna say it was cool because the Mac still has a weak software library, and is a platform with a lot of momentum at the moment.
  
  If you would like to see a PC version of the contest why not suggest it to the guys who did this one? Or set one up yourself? Nah its easier to just sit in front of your keyboard and bitch about it.
bushy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7'and I would have won too if it werent for you meddling kids!'
bushy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2aaah jesus.

this isnt a ***** apple story. did you ever consider the 'programming' category?
- gorkish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well it really sort of is an apple story seeing as the entire point of the thing is to develop ideas for macintosh apps and the actual apps when they are developed will be mac apps. Until now there has been no actual development whatsoever other than mocking up concepts.
P5ycHo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I don't get it. It's all still conceptual. How can there be a winner at all?
Don't you need a working app to win? It should be called myDreamConcept.
koregaonpark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think a lot of non-Mac users and many Mac users that weren't really interested, but wanted the free apps voted for random apps.

The best of the lot according to me was Hijack. I don't use forums and never have for a very long period of time (other than this one stint on the Bioware BG2 forum), but Hijack made the whole idea appealing again to me. It was the best of the lot and all the voters I know personally voted for it.

It's a real shame that it lost by 5 votes. I mean 5 votes! That's plain unfair. I think if it was such a close call, there should have been a tie. I mean, as many people have said on this and other threads, you can't completely eliminate cheating. Might as well take the possibility into consideration,
- mathmanjeffy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1At what point is the # of votes "fair?" 1000? Then what would have happened if they lost by 1005?
easy4lif, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4come on, noone saw this coming
ITS VOTING FRAUD SEASON AFTERALL.

wait till the Nov. Elections. then we'll see how the "experts" do it.
wrldpc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I knew it was ***** when they didn't float my idea.
- Punch405, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Dugg for using "*****" and "float" in the same sentence. :)
h3smith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0if the other apps are still worth a *****, they will still be able to sell them and make some money off of them.

the fact they were in the final round is amazing press.
ArcticCelt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah but did Diebold counted the votes?
willgonz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They should have put measures in to not allow automated processes to make votes.
The cookbook sounds like a good idea. I think Kevin Rose had some great ideas for the cookbook. Like making it go on-line. Getting recipes for on-line for stuff you have around the house. Then using a digg type system to grade the recipes.
nandabanaotakun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm still shocked that a recipe library made it when such applications already exist (and nobody cares).

It's probably because it's first alphabetically and people were in a hurry to get free shareware...
- nandabanaotakun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Woz said it best:
  
  "I think Cookbook is the big loser of this space. We all knew in 1981 that recipes were the #1 use for computers. But nowadays email, web browsing, blogging, music and movies are the collective killer apps for real people. When was the last time I pulled up a recipe program? Ummm… 1982?"
angelp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I love how the majority of these comments have absolutely nothing to do with the voter fraud and are all about what should and shouldn't have won.
chrish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It seems to me, that in the end, eye-candy won the day. I noticed as the competition progressed, that those who had the best mockups were the ones getting talked up.

And in the end, the hottest looking one of all won. But what is it really? A changing desktop background. I'd rather my background (if I could see it!) cycled through those beach images in Apple's beach screensaver.

I stopped voting after the first round, and even then it was hard enough to find something that fitted the criteria of being a "dream app".

A dream app is really one you almost can't live without (for whatever reason). Are there that many people who can't live without Atmosphere and Cookbook?

Practicalities aside, on that basis with forums being so popular, I woulda expected Hijack to be most peoples' dream app.
time2go, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1iGTD shoulda won, its the only app I ever voted for. That guy was a lousy representative for that idea....I bet they chose him on purpose.
ajwinder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0okay, heres my point. Points for Portal were that it was needed (even though solutions already do exists), and Sarner said it was thought out fully. Points against it: its a boring concept, Harris explicitly said he didnt want to code it, Casasanta said it was an overcomplicated concept, and Sarner said it didn't really feel like a dream app. Thats not a warm reaction, and certainly, as a voter, when i saw that, there was no way i wanted any of them to make that application. And no one really should have, its a boring concept, and the idea of the dream app competition was to bring out really exciting ideas brought to life by expert coders. Whistler would have been amazing, im not sure i would have actually bought it, but it embodied the spirit of the competition, it was truly unique and if it was pulled off (Harris seemed to think he could), it would have been an amazing feat. And I even liked atmosphere because although the concept isn't incredibly complex, with good artists it will put a beautiful, moving representation of the weather on my desktop, which i can see buying.

I guess the biggest bummer is that I wanted to see some interesting ideas come out of the competion, stuff i hadn't seen before, and looking at the results, they're all very pedestrian.

(This was a response to an above comment, but i apparently didnt hit the reply button, so now its at the bottom).
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Controversy surrounds My Dream App: Voter fraud?

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