GeoStrings (Location-based reminders)

[backlund]

Looking forward to this! I have a similar app in development so it will be great to see the community get behind these projects!

[nodforce]

Hey dan, first of all I want to thank you. MPR is my favorite application for webOS as of now. Also, IMO, it is the most "polished". I think you accomplished the same thing for geostrings. Me and my girlfriend will definitely be getting one each. I love how it is so full of useful features. After watching the videos, here are some of my comments/questions:

1. You should definitely add the time option if possible. I live on campus, and after 2 PM, I don't want any more reminders about school! Since this won't be used more often than not, I have a suggestion. You can have it like you had the City,State in location (2:01). The default can be all day, and if the user wants to, they can add time of day parameters.

2. Is it possible to lower the radius from 1 mile? Or would it be too inaccurate at this point? For example, can I have reminder A when I walk into (or close to) the library and reminder B when I walk into(or close to) the lab(which is 500 yards from the library)?

3. You said that it checks on interval, how often will this interval be? Could it be user defined?

4. Make a sexy, transparent background icon.

5. Not really a comment or a question, but just a thought. I think how it affects the battery life of the phone will be the biggest factor in the success of this phone. If you can get this good or at least decent, i honestly believe it will be the most successful app yet.

Keep up the good work!

[socca1157]

So I definitely like the question mark icon. That would be a nice standard.

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by backlund

Looking forward to this! I have a similar app in development so it will be great to see the community get behind these projects!

I think it's a good idea. I think once people see the concept they'll realize it's an app that will be useful to them on a daily basis.

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by nodforce

1. You should definitely add the time option if possible. I live on campus, and after 2 PM, I don't want any more reminders about school! Since this won't be used more often than not, I have a suggestion. You can have it like you had the City,State in location (2:01). The default can be all day, and if the user wants to, they can add time of day parameters.

Yes, the default would be "all day". I would implement it similar to the date parameters where the user would toggle a trigger to enable this option.

Originally Posted by nodforce

2. Is it possible to lower the radius from 1 mile? Or would it be too inaccurate at this point? For example, can I have reminder A when I walk into (or close to) the library and reminder B when I walk into(or close to) the lab(which is 500 yards from the library)?

I never considered a "walking" option. I guess it would come in handy for someone on a college campus or perhaps someone who lives in a community where walking the standard way to travel. I may try this and see if it works.

Originally Posted by nodforce

3. You said that it checks on interval, how often will this interval be? Could it be user defined?

It's set to 1 minute currently. I'm probably not going to make this user-definable. The effectiveness of the app will depend on this interval. I'll have to tweak it to make sure people do not miss a reminder, as well as optimizing battery usage.

Originally Posted by nodforce

4. Make a sexy, transparent background icon.

If I could I would. But for now, this is the best I've come up with.

Originally Posted by nodforce

5. Not really a comment or a question, but just a thought. I think how it affects the battery life of the phone will be the biggest factor in the success of this phone. If you can get this good or at least decent, i honestly believe it will be the most successful app yet.

Yes I agree, battery life is going to be very important.

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by socca1157

So I definitely like the question mark icon. That would be a nice standard.

I tried to make the user interface as intuitive as possible, and I think in most cases the ?'s may not be necessary. But there are some people who are not so technically inclined...my mother-in-law comes to mind. For those people, I think it'll be helpful for them to be able to quickly view all the things you can do on a particular screen.

The other inspiration for this help system was Music Player (Remix). In that app, I implemented several features that may not be obvious to people such as swiping on the titlebar from right-to-left to go back to the main menu screen. So I wanted to make sure everyone knew some of the little known features that help improve the usability of the app.

For instance, on the GeoString Detail screen, if you tap the titlebar, it'll automatically scroll back up to the top of the page.

[Walhalla2k]

I really think this will be a great app... like.. I would set on a location basis where my frend who owns me something lives.. and then.. when I´m there.. It will tell me that I need something from him...

[tsnum4]

Originally Posted by Walhalla2k

I really think this will be a great app... like.. I would set on a location basis where my frend who owns me something lives.. and then.. when I´m there.. It will tell me that I need something from him...

i like it ...

"hey give me back the movie you borrowed 8 months ago!"

LOL

[StevenX]

Originally Posted by DanPLC

I never considered a "walking" option. I guess it would come in handy for someone on a college campus or perhaps someone who lives in a community where walking the standard way to travel. I may try this and see if it works.

I definitely think you should consider this. I was thinking about this today as for the last week I've forgotten to hand some money in to a friend for a deposit which needs to be paid, when I've passed her home both driving and walking (it's between a bus stop I use and my home). Her house is close to mine, so it'd be annoying to have the notification go off all the time when I was at home, so it'd be handy to be able to change the radius for tasks like this which are closer to home...

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by StevenX

I definitely think you should consider this. I was thinking about this today as for the last week I've forgotten to hand some money in to a friend for a deposit which needs to be paid, when I've passed her home both driving and walking (it's between a bus stop I use and my home). Her house is close to mine, so it'd be annoying to have the notification go off all the time when I was at home, so it'd be handy to be able to change the radius for tasks like this which are closer to home...

I'll definitely consider this, but my priority right now will be to perfect "car driving" reminders.

[nyquistJack]

Originally Posted by StevenX

I definitely think you should consider this. I was thinking about this today as for the last week I've forgotten to hand some money in to a friend for a deposit which needs to be paid, when I've passed her home both driving and walking (it's between a bus stop I use and my home). Her house is close to mine, so it'd be annoying to have the notification go off all the time when I was at home, so it'd be handy to be able to change the radius for tasks like this which are closer to home...

I really don't know how accurate the GPS is, but it'd be completely awesome if the app could tell the difference between my driveway and front door. Granted, its only 40 feet, so probably more than I can hope for. At the very least I'll need it to alert me between pulling out of the driveway and the top of my street (about a 45 second drive) so if I set a reminder to grab something before I leave its not too late to turn around and go back. I can see a time frame being good here too (only alert me M-F between 6-6:30am).

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by nyquistJack

I really don't know how accurate the GPS is, but it'd be completely awesome if the app could tell the difference between my driveway and front door. Granted, its only 40 feet, so probably more than I can hope for. At the very least I'll need it to alert me between pulling out of the driveway and the top of my street (about a 45 second drive) so if I set a reminder to grab something before I leave its not too late to turn around and go back. I can see a time frame being good here too (only alert me M-F between 6-6:30am).

No, I wouldn't expect it to be able to do this.

However if you really want to, you could just set a reminder for your current location and it would popup every minute. Chances are you wouldn't forget about it!

[nyquistJack]

Originally Posted by DanPLC

No, I wouldn't expect it to be able to do this.

However if you really want to, you could just set a reminder for your current location and it would popup every minute. Chances are you wouldn't forget about it!

While true, my phone would probably end up through a window

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by nyquistJack

While true, my phone would probably end up through a window

That is true.

When I add in the time filtering, that may work for you even better than a 40 ft reminder. Let's say you leave your house at 6:30 every morning for work. You would set a GeoString for your current location (home) and set the start time to 6:20 or 6:25. That way it wouldn't beep until you were just about ready to leave.

[conum]

Nice app with a clever idea behind it; I hope it will work in my country (germany)!?

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by conum

Nice app with a clever idea behind it; I hope it will work in my country (germany)!?

I'm pretty sure I'll get it working in countries other than the United States. I assume your devices have GPS and the Google Maps app can pinpoint your exact location...is that correct? If so, then it should be able to work. The only thing I need to change in my code is to add a "country" field to the "business search" and "manual address input" screens.

[DanPLC]

I've added time filtering to the app. Here's a demonstration of this feature: YouTube - GeoStrings - Time Filtering

Thanks to everyone who recommended this...the more I think about it, the more I believe this is an essential feature of the app.

[spare]

Thanks, with time filtering, this may be the only task manager I'll need.

I can see myself setting a lot of reminders for home to remind myself not to stop at home but to go take care of the reminder first.

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by spare

Thanks, with time filtering, this may be the only task manager I'll need.

I can see myself setting a lot of reminders for home to remind myself not to stop at home but to go take care of the reminder first.

That's a great example for a use of a GeoString. Another scenario I'm thinking of is almost the opposite of your idea. It's for when you're leaving the house to go somewhere (like dinner) and as you're driving off you want to remember to do something when you get back home. I've had this happen to me several times and I usually always forget.

I'm hoping GeoStrings, with its various options, will be flexible enough to handle situations that I've never even thought of. I think as people start using it more and more they'll think of other creative ways of using it.

[panda6]

Regarding the background interval, have you considered having it lengthen or shorten the interval based on distance or time? If the closet reminder is 50 miles away, there's no need to run even every minute, which might save a tiny hair of battery life. If the next active reminder doesn't start for an hour, it can pretty safely not poll at all for at least 59 minutes (since the GPS can take a bit of time to lock depending on the environment).

I doubt the difference would be huge, but since battery life is always a concern, it might be nice to do everything possible to extend it. I'm not suggesting that you try to predict arrival in an alert zone based on velocity or anything, just limit the polling when there's no possibility it could result in a hit.