Beyond inventing a beer that helps people lose weight, is there really any way to strike it rich during America's current run of economic downturn?
For Ethan Nicholas, developing a shoot-em-up video game for the iPhone was just the ticket.
Down on his luck and drowning in a sea of medical bills, Nicholas drew inspiration from one success story in which one man netted $250,000 seemingly overnight thanks to his iPhone app.
Even though Nicholas was well-versed in the geek-speak of programming, he needed to learn Objective C, an entirely new language, in order to properly code his creation.
What resulted was iShoot - a game not exactly brimming with the bells and whistles of a Google offering, but good enough for Nicholas to take home $800,000 in a mere five months.
Prospects for iPhone app development have caught the attention of Stanford University - leading to the creation of an undergraduate course strictly designed to help students create the latest flavor of the month for purchase at the Apple App Store.
The Editorial Board can't help but be intrigued by the possibilities offered by creating games and programs for the iPhone.
With a completely overhauled version of the iPhone set to launch later this year, we can only imagine dollar signs popping up in the eyes of developers everywhere.
If one down-on-his-luck-programmer can get rich quick off a poor man's Duke Nukem, who says a group of mildly intelligent journalists can't put together the latest killer app by the end of Summer A?
