You didn't ask "Please comment on why you think this is frontpage material while you are at it." on your first comment. You are saying something like "You stupid HN crowd, this shouldn't be on front page and it's useless".
You are not the one who decides things that get to the front page, but I don't bother answering if you asked why I upvoted it: It's interesting.
Point is that it doesn't matter if the apps sucks (haven't bothered to look at them) - he has made something people want, which is what we are talking about here on hacker news.
Sometimes what people want is very, very complicated -- real-time collaborative document sharing and sometimes it is hello word with a random number generator attached (bingocardcreator.com).
Make something people want. Not "build the next Facebook". Not "be the next Andrew Mason or Mark Pincus". Not "prove your mastery of social UX by founding the next Quora". Nope, just make something people want. You never know where that will lead to.
The apps are crummy, there's no denying that. How does that fit in with typical HN content of trying to build good, no, great, products?
And an ebook on how to do it? sigh