Palm, in an attempt to gain mindshare amongst developers has been offering cash bounties for those who create applications. The company is giving out prizes of up to $100,000 to developers of popular free and paid applications. The promotion started in February, and has been extended to June 30th. Some of the applications developers have submitted are highly polished multimedia or productivity apps, while others are a bit… less serious, such as the Elizabethan Insult Generator, which has turned out to play an unexpectedly large role in my life.
Palm’s bounty program is an interesting promotional vehicle to get developers to use their Ares developer environment, it makes tracking the most popular applications relatively simple.
It should come as no surprise that Pandora Radio will walk off with the grand prize in the Free App category. I was somewhat surprised to discover that the YouView Visual Voicemail application might walk off with the paid application crown.
However the application I’ve come to know, love, and expect to encounter several times a day when interacting with my wife over IM is the Elizabethan Insult Generator by Floating Stone Studios. That is to say that I receive insults from it if she’s bored and feels a desire to channel the Bard.
The application is small, and very light weight. The main application interface consists of two buttons: The Insults By Shakespeare button will take you to a simple page with a gray background and an insult from one of Shakespeare’s many works. This is handy because after insulting your friends you can then make them feel ignorant by quoting it’s source… Or if you’re friends are like mine they’ll just stop looking at you like you’ve completely gone insane.
Comments like “Beg that thou may have leave to hang thyself” from Merchant of Venice, are pretty much the par for the course. Some are more useful than others. My mind sometimes boggles that actual people stood on a stage and delivered lines like “Snakes, in my heart blood warmed, that sting my heart. Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas” were delivered to actual live audiences in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, but if you don’t like what you get, feel free to hit Insult again, and another insult shall appear.
Clicking the Share button will allow you to either send the Insult that’s been generated using WebOS’s mail or IM clients. It’s not seamless, but it’s a nice feature for sharing these insults with friends.
As much fun as Channeling Shakespeare is in this degenerate era of blue collar one liners, the Custom insult generator is a little more interesting. You can either randomly select arcane sayings like “Thou art truly a villainous milk-livered skains-mate” complete with a handy translation to let you know that by calling someone that you are saying “you are truly a wicked, timid, knave!” (Sometimes the translations need translations). As advertised you can create custom three part insults using a handy menu with drop downs. This feature also comes with the same option to share your custom if less literary insults as well.
Overall it’s a silly app, but fun, and free, and worth having on your phone, especially if you ever need to figure out what someone else who has it installed just called you. As of the time of this writing The Elizabethan Insult Generator application is number 35 on the free app download list, and is in a strong position to win $1000 dollars. Not bad for a fairly simple web app!