Quick Take
AI is empowering more people to create applications faster than ever and with less technical expertise than ever before. Is this good for the community? We think so, but not always.
What About it?
Recently this conversation got kicked up on reddit: "How do we stop AI from ruining the hobby?"
So we decided to grab the three most recently apps likely built with AI and try them out!
https://dxrank.net/ - A web app for gamifying making contacts and providing constant 30 minute rankings of contacts made. We think the concept is great, though the UI is a bit dated. Compared to what options are already out there though... it's a big leap in the right direction. Nice job!
Bearpaw - An app for better organizing and interfacing with your scanner. Honestly, it's a MAJOR improvement to the experience, it's FREE, and boy does it improve the experience of utilizing the scanning devices it's made for!
Repeater-Scores.app - A collection of web apps made primarily for the ICOM 5100, 5200 and 52 ht radio. It overhauls the nearby repeater search functionality majorly which is an awesome improvement. It also has an in browser memory channel generator and editor... so you don't need to spend $25 for RT Systems to get their clunky and dated UI... and don't even get us started on how they mapped the Mac "undo" key shortcut to "Delete", that's downright stupid of a mistake... or they're saddistic. Either way, save $25 and use this web app!
Bottom Line
We're not seeing the doom and gloom. We're seeing people trying to actively improve the hobby, while old sad hams just want to sit at home in the dark on their empty repeaters. We love that folks are trying to innovate. Where we do struggle though is folks trying to build these things for profit... that's where this can get a bit less positive for the community if we start to drown in those apps. The folks doing it though "for the love" well we say kudos to them!