iPhone app review: Collage by Tapulous

In Collage, Tapulous hit upon a pretty awesome concept:  take advantage of location services and the iphone camera, and create a dynamic photostream app so you can see the world through the lenses of all the other iphone users around you. There’s only one problem with it that I can see so far:  too many of the iphone users around me are clueless assholes.

What I was expecting from this app was random shots from the lives of random people, woven into a tapestry that in a very Web 2.0 way demonstrates how connected we are.  You know what I’m talking about — the minor details and captured Polaroid-esque moments from our lives.

What I received from this app was:  people clearing out their entire photo roll in one ejaculatory blast, zillions of uninspired, ill-conceived and poorly rendered iPhone wallpapers and screen captures, the occasional porn picture, some guy who uploaded most of his undergrad photo-class flickr set (which admittedly were pretty enjoyable, but…), and what to me was most annoying of all: some shmuck who took a screenshot of a notes page that had nothing but his myspace web address on it, and spammed it about 50 times into the photostream.

So how could Tapulous fix this app?  Here’s one idea:  they could harvest info from every poster’s iphone, and if that person is determined to be an idiot, use that info to dispatch a death squad.  In my opinion, this would be the most elegant solution.  If for some reason option ‘A’ isn’t feasible, the app could use some human moderation prior to photos being posted.  Maybe different ‘channels’ (screenshots vs. non-screenshots, for example) could be employed.  At the very least, the ability to ban individual posters from your photostream should be an option.  Or what if — and this idea would undoubtedly piss off a lot of people — what if you could only post pictures from the camera, and not from your photo roll? hmmm…

At any rate, it’s a great idea, rendered crappy not by its creators, but by its end users.  But it’s also a free app, so by all means, load it onto your iPhone and start posting more of those Tazmanian Devil wallpapers.  I can’t get enough of those.