Dumbest App Ever

Becky Worley
·Special Contributor, Yahoo! Tech

There are well over 500,000 apps to choose from: some are amazing, some stink. And some of them are so downright dumb that their real value comes from the joy of laughing at their stupidity. With so many apps on the market, we are making a call: what is the DUMBEST APP EVER?

Even though I spend a LOT of time on my phone, I rely on viewer suggestions from Facebook and Google+ to help me narrow the field. So go ahead and add yours to our Facebook page. The top contenders so far:

Shake To Charge Battery — claims to enable you to charge your phone just by shaking it. Uh, no. Despite millions of downloads and user reviews suckered in by some placebo effect, the app does not actually work. In fact, the fine print on the description even says, "Note: Of course this application is not charging your phone. It's for fun purposes only." Shaking your phone for hours — so much fun!

I Am Rich: When this app first came out, it cost $999 and it did little more than display the words "I am rich" and a red gem on the phone's screen. Apparently, eight people shelled out a grand each and downloaded it before Apple shut it down. Now you can get a free replica of the classic app from the Google Play store.

Hangtime: When you throw your phone in the air, it measures how much "hang time" you get. Even better, it used to share your results with others competing for the most hang time ever!! Um, throw your phone in the air?? To be fair, the description now advises you NOT to throw the phone in the air, just to keep it in your pocket as you jump. So maybe this one isn't so much about dumb apps as dumb users.

SimStapler: Take it from the ad: This app "brings all of the thrill and excitement of a real stapler right to the palm of your hand." My favorite part of this app is that CNN once listed it in the "Top 10 must-have iPhone apps." Because we just don't get enough stapling in the real world- let's take stapling virtual!

Wobble: Move the targets onto particular parts of a still image on your phone and make those parts jiggle. Not a lot of imagination needed to figure out what body parts are most often targeted.

Flatulence Apps
And speaking of juvenile humor, so many viewers suggested apps that make fart noises that this gets its own category.

  • iFart — offers the basics, and then some. You can record your own farts or choose an option that lets you set your phone on a flat surface, and the next time it's moved, it will sound.

  • The Fart Piano. Revenge for every music lesson your parents made you take.

  • Farm Farts provides bovine varietals, plus goats, horses, pigs, squirrels, spiders… I'm just glad I wasn't the recording engineer for this one.

Dumb or Genius?
Sometimes, there's a fine line between stupidity and brilliance. Flip the switch on the Blower app for iPhone and watch it blow out a candle. Really. Power varies with the model of iPhone (iPhone3 works best, iPhone 4, not so much), but I'm just amazed this works at all.

Have you seen an app that's even dumber than anything here? Like us on Facebook, and share your top pick there.

Related: Apps for Cats?