iCaption Mobile (Witty Captions and Ratings) is an iphone application for all you Dane Cook fans out there — meaning I don’t think it is remotely funny or even tolerable but I guarantee some of you out there will.

With that tender opening aside lets get to the meat of this slap stick application. The concept behind this wunderkind (it is still in its early stages after all) is that a community of assholes can be entertaining — if only to each other. iCaption Mobile executes this thesis by allowing registered users to upload photos of funny/disturbing situations and then allow the community to add comments and rate the photo with a quick and easy thumbs up or down.

From a technical standpoint iCaption Mobile is smooth, aesthetically pleasing and relatively complex. You can create your own profile, sort through stupid pictures by category and shift through random photos of people being kicked in the groin — not bad considering it’s a free app.

iCaption Mobile does something unusual that merits a mention. The doesn’t “force” you to join the community. If you prefer not to hand over your name and email you can still browse the photos profile free, albeit without the ability to add captions or ratings. It’s a small thing, but it’s an option I wish more apps offered — the ability to test the waters before taking the time to set up yet another profile.

Unfortunately, like many of its peers this type of app is predicated on its ability to galvanize a real community around it. And, with so many social apps tugging for attention, it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

iCaption Mobile comes with a NC-17 rating — pretty standard for an unmonitored community where users are free to take turns trying to outgross the previous commentator. Even seemingly innocent pictures were inevitably captioned with lewd remarks. It’s not “The Aristocrats,” but don’t enter if you’re shocked by blue humor.

A broader user base might just take iCaption Mobile up a few notches. I Can Has Cheeseburger is another community-oriented photo app (and website) that doesn’t suffer nearly has much from the jerk factor. Instead of focusing on a closed community, the developers should look at ways to make iCaption a feature app rather than a stand alone community app — there may be better ways to utilize other social graphs (i.e. Facebook and its 300 million users).

Until then, I welcome iCaption to ranks of the Appcraver 6 — the parental equivalent of telling your kid that you are disappointed but you know that they have so much potential.

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category: Best Free Apps, Entertainment, Misc Photography