Hey, not a bad idea. There is a competition right now for apps for the iPhone, there is a lot of money you can snag up for doing the next cool iPhone applet. This sounds like a fun one, and I bet it is part of the iPhone API and SDK.

I say go for it!

I don't have an iPhone but I do have an iPod Touch. I would like to see it, but there are already a few different apps featuring coverflow contacts and apps launcher.

I say do it but the competetion is about to get ramped up in a big way. Have you downloaded the SDK yet?

I currently am in the developer program with the SDK you can't get the access level or the code process needed to that in the SDK. There is no multi-tasking or replacing of Apples main functions like contacts.

That's a little misleading Kevin. The SDK gives you full access to the contact data via the AddressBook framework so you could easily build an app that layered additional meta-data like images on top of that data in whatever UI you wanted to design. Using the custom URL scheme, you can easily invoke other apps from your own (e.g. to allow making a call directly from a contact shown in your app) or allow other apps to invoke yours (e.g. to implement some sort of vCard functionality).

There's lots of competition in this space, but if you think you could build something with more functionality than existing apps, I think the market will be there.

I've found a couple so far. Here's one of them:

http://justanotherip...ow-to-your-contacts/

I did not mean to be misleading. You can call the data base like contacts, you have to reference the ABAddressBook Class. But, you can't do something like replace Apples core application with your own version if that was what you were planing.

Applications are assigned to there own sandbox area. iPhone applications can not write data to any location outside of their designated area.

If you launch the phone via the very limited action "tel:" the app launches and will then pop-up a prompt asking for user conformation. There is no way to integrate with text message or much else. There is no API to initiate phone calls, text messages, email, etc... But, you never know it might be something new in one of the SDK updates.

The way you can invoke apps is rather limited. It is something like this your app has a custom URL lets call it prog1 so using "prog1:user123" would terminate your app and then open the other program to user123.

Hope that clears things up.

Not qualified to comment.

ditto landsky

there reasons not to get an iphone

perhaps you could make money off this though

An interesting idea...Go for it!

yep, it's good. first good idea I found this round (and I'm almost done reading them all :) ). 4*

i thought apple dosn't work well with third party apps?