Ideas

I had a similar idea to this, but in reverse, it would send an SMS to someone when you got within vasinity of a point, if you are picking up your kids from a partice or something, when your roughly 3 minitues away, it would send them an SMS telling them that so they could meet you out infront of the building etc.. And it could be programmed to only send the sms on tuesday between 6 and 8 so your kids dont get an sms when you drive through that intersection doing something else.

Neat idea. I'll vote it up.

excellent.

FireWire, I think the trick to making a GPS idea like this popular is to avoid letting other people see your location. In your idea and another idea I had (http://www.cambrianhouse.com/idea-explorer/idea-promoter/ideas-id/4k7KW9d/) and about 5 other similar ideas on CH, all have issues with privacy because other people can see your locatiion. For example in the situation you just posted, kids could use the information in nefarious ways .. eg, when the sms announces that their parents are three blocks away, they put out the smokes and wash the smell off their hands.

Interesting. I just read about a dating service in China that sends an SMS when you are in the vicinity of someone that matches your profile. For example, at a party or something. It's called "Text Flirtation" and it is hugely popular.

Makes me think this would work. Voting up. Read about it here.

http://money.cnn.com...ion=money_topstories

Interesting idea.

Still, from a users point of view, one could ask :

1. How many people would actually use "reminders" that are location - based ? Do you think this is a big market ?
2. Aren't most reminders typically time-based and can't you solve most location-based reminders with a time-based anyway.
3. Wouldn't the treshold & effort of putting in a location-based reminder be much bigger then putting in a time-based reminder ?

My vote if you convince me -)

Imhotep, thanks for the super-insightful comments! For the first question, I think a lot of people go places and forget to do things they would have liked to have done ... had they thought of it. Whether or not they are willing to take the effort to remind themselves to do such and such thing when they find themselves at place X ... only a market test will answer that. But I can honestly say it is something that I would personally use, as I've needed it many times in the past and will coninue to do so until I get an implant. As far as time-based reminders versus location-based reminders, I don't think there is any comparison. For certain things, time-based reminders are essentially useless. For example, you want to buy Goo Gone next time you are at (or near) Home Depot -- how on earth are you going to know the next time you will be near Home Depot? Its impossible to use a time-based reminder in that case. Last thing, as far as threshold and effort -- I totally agree, keeping effort to a minimum for setting up these reminders is absolutely critical for getting and keeping users, because if its too time-consuming nobody will bother. A few ideas for the UI: Google-esque maps -- and even more cartoonish where the frequented business "loom large" on the map -- where users can click their places in a visual setting. Learning users' patterns and letting them quickly click previous places they've used as well as offering pull-downs for previous reminder messages entered. The latest and greatest Ajax GUI ... etc, etc.

Congratulations Branchut, you've won my vote.

At least I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and have this market tested.

One suggestion to increase chance of success :

1. Combine location-based + time-based => = ultimate reminder tool !

2. Allow to enter the location quickly from your cell phone when you are at the location itself ! ( As an alternative )

a. It is already GPS enabled
b. Most of these cell phones allow to run software on it, You could write some small sw that immediatelly takes the GPS location from the location where it's triggered + syncs the new reminder to yr reminder sw.
b.

Cool, thanks for the vote Imhotep! As far as throwing a time-based reminder service into the offering, I think it should be done eventually to make a complete offering, but it should be super-low priority task, just because there is such a bewildering array of free services that already offer this. (Yahoo calendar, etc).

However, I DO think time _constraints_ would be useful... which is actually FireWire's idea (RPO). But I think it could be taken a step further, and instead of making the user enter the time constraints, the system would pre-enter them based on the hours of the business.

Back to the Home Depot example ... when the user enters the reminder, the system would pre-enter time constraints that correspond to the hours when Home Depot is open. So if you go to Blockbuster to return a video at 2:30 in the morning, and Home Depot is right next door, you won't get an annoying reminder to buy a new bathroom mat ... although you might get one to buy ice cream, since Safeway is right next door and they are open 24 hours.

By the way, reminder aspects aside, this service would be useful for putting shopping lists on your phone without having to mess with bluetooth transfers -- you rapidly enter them over the web, drive to the store, and when you get there the list will be sent to you as an SMS.

You may also be able to do this using "Cells". Back when I had my Sony P800 phone there was an application that could give you the ID of the phone cell you were in.

Granted, it would be much less precise and would require the user to visit the location and record the cell ID, but it's worth thinking about.

There are difficulties with this.

Mobile applications are different for almost every phone because of memory, screen size and gps type. 50% of any EA Mobile game cost is moving the application to the appropriate phone.

Some networks use a-GPS (network) which is assisted GPS and others use GPS (standalone) straight from the phone.

Many of the phones do not have the horse power to do the math required for GPS enabled applications. A solution may be using the KnowledgeWhere Location Application Server (www.knowledgewhere.com ) which would receive the gps coodinate information and apply any rule that would make sense for the application.

As well there are difficulties with selling the application to the gatekeepers at the telco's.

However there are many GPS applications including this one which would make sense in the long run. It is a good idea!

fish99 .. you make some valid points on the technical side of things, but one thing you are misunderstanding is the need for a GUI app on the phone -- it would just be a headless daemon (sounds a bit scary, eh?) that just runs in the background and periodically pushes the user's location coordinates to the server. Therefore no wrangling with different GUI API's, worrying about screen size, etc.

But perhaps this app is not even necessary, and by plugging into the knowledgewhere server you mention, it would be possible to get the coordinates directly from them.

Here is the flow of information I was picturing: phone sends coords to server -> server checks if user near any points with reminder triggers -> server sends SMS text message to phone. All configuration and editing reminders would be done via the web rather than on the phone itself.

I hear what you are saying Branchcut.

The difficulty comes down to cost. If you continuously transmit your position, the carriers will either charge for each byte or sms message. They are a little cautious in increasing data traffic until higher speed networks are widespread.

This is why a continuously monitored gps transmission other than navigation has not been introduced through the carriers.

The navigation systems are usually sold as a subscription, in the 10 dollar per month range. (most of these are corporate customers) The carrier will take a pretty good chunk of this revenue.

Don't get me wrong.... I like the idea but I know the issues involved.

The knowledgewhere server will not generate the locations. That has to come from the phone. (either pushed or pulled depending on the network )

It comes down to what price the end user is willing to pay to remind them of their tasks.

There is a sampling issue with this as well. Is once an hour enough to get a location? Is every 15 minutes too much.? What will the end customer pay for such a service.

I still think it a good idea and I think there is opportunity for many more location based apps.

This is going to be a huge market, naturally.

I think that the first serious location-based application that is not only navigation needs to be a game. There are simply noy enough devices on the market yet.

I think the trick is get the big chunk of the market as soon as possible, even that there are not enough devices around. Early adopters adopt early but they also play unique games... make it a game!

Fish, you make some valid points. However, a lot of carriers currently offer unlimited data plans, and I think those plans will just get cheaper over time as customers expect more internet services. For users with bandwidth limited data plans, I would say that this service would just need to give the customer ample warnings regarding possible data usage charges, and allow them some configuration to regulate the timing interval (1, 5, 15 minutes). In the end, its really up to the customer whether they can afford the extra bandwidth usage out of their data plan .. with 100 byte UDP packets sent every minute, it comes to 4MB usage per month. Of course if they are on an unlimited data plan they wouldn't have to worry.

Another possibility -- which is somewhat lame but may work in the end -- is when the user is at a 'location of interest', they would just send an SMS to a particular short-code with their location (eg, "home depot"), and if they have any reminders, the service will respond with an SMS. By location of interest, a place where you have a strong feeling you were supposed to remember to buy something or do something .. but can't remember exactly what that thing was.

Maybe the "data plan challenged" and "gps device challenged" subscribers could use this option, while the rest of us would get the automated messages without having to prompt the system.

Deckard, you are right that there is room for a 'killer app' game in this space, have you thought of it yet? ;)