Ideas

meh..

That will work!
The program could calculate the mileage or download it for any type of car.

I think users as well as gas companies will be willing to pay...

I think this is a great idea, making up meals when you are trying to lose weight gets very boring or tedeuos at times. so this will help millions of people get to their goals

also calculate your gas millage?

I've resubmitted this for ANDROID specific brainstorming. This particular app as presented could actually be written using J2ME quite easily... there's no need for ANDROID to have it running as a service. And your physical address could be entered if GPS data is unavailable (I'm assuming an ANDROID app will have a better chance of collecting current-location data).

But... to think of this as an ANDROID app... what else could we do?

- Track (approximately) how full your tank is. You alert the app every time you tank up (or it monitors your bank statement for gas station charges). So it is "sleeping" until it is plausible you might need more gas.

- Alert you when a good gas price is found nearby, based on your current location, or established driving patterns.

...now these features overlap with the more generic idea of "spam me with great deals" and allowing user to receive advertisements. So we're probably going to need either a reputation system (so gas stores don't try direct you to their station by alerting you to bogus low gas prices), or only report prices once they've been verified by multiple users.

On the other hand, unlike the usual spam people get, gas prices offer little room for interpretation. Determining if I want to know about the latest GOOD deals on consumer electronics is very grey-area and gameable.

But gas prices are very quantitative. Location. Price. Proximity. Verified?

It is true you can do this but the difficulty lies in having the gps function of the handset on all the time...GPS chipsets require a chunk of battery power. While the power requirements have dropped, you would likely not get 6 hours out the phone. (likely a lot less)

This idea would be impossible using a-gps. It would be too expensive.
A-GPS is assisted GPS see here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-GPS.

Most of the carriers use a-gps. New phones may use the standalone chip sets but with the issues of battery life.

"known gas mileage of your car"

Gas mileage has too many variables to just give it a hard number like this guy is saying. Using AC ? Windows down ? Towing ? Heat ? How old is your air filter ? When was the last time you've had you fuel injectors cleaned - etc etc.

Now, if you could somehow tie it into the bluetooth of your car, and it records the real time data. My suv has a mpg that I can reset, and a mpg right now that goes up and down depending on my acceleration. Not much of an idea in my opinion. Hopefully something could be brainstormed from it for ANDROID though.

fish99, I'm hoping to make general points about location based data a forum discussion...
http://www.cambrianh...ral-discussion/2192/

...I of course don't know that you're wrong. But quite a few ideas I resubmitted under the assumption that location data would not be expensive.

GroundLoad, I was not trying to be too exact on that. The general idea was your Gas Calculator would not be nagging you if it was safe to assume the car had at least 1/2 a tank of gas. Based on previous driving habits, you could ask it to only nag you if it thought the tank was X % empty. It'd probably be off by 25% every time.

Such thing as a car bluetooth with such data? I'd assume its only stereo equipment, but if there's more I'd be quite interested.

My car (true I do live in Europe) has a gauge. This tells me various information, like how much petrol i have left. Can't imagine double checking it on the phone.

I don't think the phone would need super-accurate gas mileage like GroundLoad implies. I think a good average would suffice. I can see this being quite useful if I'm on a road trip or a known route around town and the phone can let me know it would be best to fill up at a certain point when I'm in a location with low prices rather than waiting until the gauge tells me its time and using whatever station is nearby. I never bother to drive anywhere to get lower prices since using time/fuel to save pennies is counterproductive, but if I'm already near the lowest price in the area, a ping from my phone to that effect would be useful.

Does gas really vary enough to make a difference?

Metalfuup: there's often as much as a ten-cent difference between stations in my area. I don't pay much attention, but I hear other people talking about it. Based on the time value of money, it's not something I'm willing to devote much thought to, but I wouldn't pass up the cheaper option if I didn't have to go searching.

Does anyone see other parallels here? What else (like gasoline) is extremely quantifiable, and not a matter of personal taste (cheaper=better)? That fluctuates in price? Anything?

Gordon,

Airline tickets are an answer to your question. Cheaper is better and the different seats on the same plane exist. But those are not location based.

How about traffic routing?

Gord

All fossil fuels fall into that category. But I think the reverse model could also work. In Europe (where cars have gas meters) you can pay extra to have your power (electricity in this case) from a green source that is added to the national grid.

I thinks something where people could pay extra to offset their carbon omissions could be useful and make some money

Gordon,

Cocktails are fungible. Show me the nearest/best happy hour.

See gasbuddy.com for accurate prices on the web. If you are not in a metropolitan area, try searching your zip code. Prices in LA county vary by as much as $1/galllon.

why do you need a "cellphone" gas calculator

if you know what the price of gas is
and you can map the co-ordinates (distance in km/miles) from google

then all you need is simple mathematics

generic_idea_machine, where do you get the price of gas at various stations? Where do you do the comparative mapping? The answer to both could be a lot of things, but at least one answer is your cell phone.

Microsoft live! Has this down with there map program, except maybe the notifies automatically in the background part.

Micco, the notion we could write an application that beeps to alert a driver that cocktails are on sale nearby... well there's the new Elboa virus my Spectre team has been researching in our secret base under a volcano... they can stop work on the virus, and start for on the cocktail alert app! We'll domain squat a permutation of http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org (the drunk can't spell so it'll be easy to typo-squat), and offer it for free.

Once civilization has collapsed under the carnage, SPECTRE will reign supreme!

Gord

Forget the Ebola virus, get them working on the exploding mb phones wa ha ha!

Rich2809: "exploding mb phones"

Been done. Move on.
http://news.yahoo.co...129/tc_cmp/204300505