Yowza - I wish I thought of that, oh I did I just didn't get off my backside and do it!

Techcrunch brought Yowza (Yes, the startup with Greg who is in Heroes) into my field of view a few weeks ago, in fact on the same week I was thinking about what I'd possibly do if I owned an iPhone, a Mac and the SDK.

Mobile shopping coupons, save on paper and all that. Perfect, I'll get an iPod Touch... Then I was beat to it.

This happens all the time, coded up a UK version of Ideeli and GiltGroupe type sites and on the day I was going to pick up the phone and start talking I was shown the full page advert for Brand Alley and immediately stopped. There's been a bunch of others, the most comfort I can gleen from all this is (as put to me by a Silicon Valley veteran), "well at least you are thinking the same as the big guys".

There's no Yowza in the UK, but it won't be far off. There's a possible avenue of looking at another platform (J2ME perhaps) and going down that route. All things are possible it's just getting the merchants to sign up and the everyday public to download the app in the first place.

Could J2ME ever had an equivilent App Store?

I've hit a real big junction at the moment. It's a whacking great T junction of a decision that I have to make. It all boils down to mobile apps. With OpenCoffeeDerry approaching this Thursday I'm giving lots of ideas a lot of thought. I missed BarcampBelfast yesterday, but I was recovering from photographing a wedding the day before. Anyway, I digress....

One of the reasons that the iPhone and iPod Touch work so well isn't really down to the hardware, it's down to Apple's way of working in terms of the App Store. You can to sell on the App Store then you have to register as a developer (at $99) then write your app and get it approved. So there's already a level of commitment to producing a good app. If it ain't good it don't get in (you on the guest list, sir?).

Over to J2ME.... hmm I'm struggling with this one. If I look at something like Getjar.com there's a lack of clear layout, that's more to design than anything else. My next problem is finding what I want and for my device... urgh this is getting messy. Give me the App Store for J2ME PLEASE!

More to the point, are there actually any really good I-can't-live-without-this apps in J2ME for mobile devices?

Sounds like I'm talking myself out of this one.

On the opposite side of the coin: first of all buy either an iPhone or iPod Touch (which is going to cost me anything from £165 - £350 depending on what I get), learn Objective C, get a Mac so I can get the SDK (call that another £800), the economics are starting to work against me. So for my £1100 I need to make sure that I'm going to get enough downloads and marketing clout so the downloads happen.

Perhaps I should just build a good J2ME App Store.