This weekend I was hypothesizing how three apps I think are very cool operate, specifically: Google Voice search, Shazam, Square. What shocked me about all of them was how available they were across platforms - particularly mobile. Then I came to quickly realize the only investment in development for each platform was front-end work; the piece they all had in common was the backend. Now, some might be familiar with some patterns that make this possible like MVC; but what really surprises me is how unbelievably seamless these apps work in the face of having to support different platforms. This leads me to a more philosophical question about touting an "app for that..." - really what we are seeing is that behind many of the good apps there is a terrific service that is capable of being abstracted from that devices interface.