Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy traveller sleeps well

Today when I was commuting back home I fell asleep and almost missed my bus stop. When I rushed out from bus I began to think why there isn't such a "commuter's smartphone solution" that - among other things - could notify people when they are approaching their destination.

How the notifier could be implemented is not obvious: using GPS data precision is either very good or zero and power consumption might be a problem (after a busy day). Using cell id information works as long as there is network coverage but public cell registers don't exist - service provider would need to gather data from various sources. Google has a nice MyLocation service that uses cell ids; that information would be optimal but unfortunately it is unaccessible to developers. Without a cell id register users would need to first record cell id's in their neighborhood to get alerts - not something that typical users would like to do.

Do you know any solutions that already have a feature that is capable of waking up a sleepy traveller? 

//Harri

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