Running late? Use GPS to auto-notify your meeting mates
How often have you been in this situation: you’re running late and frantically trying to get to a meeting or appointment. You need to focus on getting there, but of course, you’re getting TXT messages and e-mails asking: "Where R U?" or "Wn wil U B here?". Naturally, you have to reply which only interferes all the more with your hectic effort of arriving as quickly as possible.
If you have a GPS device and smartphone or GPS in your smartphone, Oops I’m Late might come in handy. Based on your location and the settings you provide for the appointment, this service will contact your attendees with updates on your location so you don’t have to. It’s too rich for my blood at $69 and $99 for the Standard and Professional versions respectively, but there is a free three-day trial of the less expensive version. Maybe I’ll give it a 72-hour workout at the next CES in January since I think I was late for everything I scheduled last year.
(via Jason Langridge)
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Why not carry it further? When you enter a new appointment the PDA could check how far the appointment is from your office and set the advance notice to an appropriate time. So no more 15 minute notices for appointments 30 minutes away.
Or your phone/PDA with GPS could estimate how long it will take you to get to your next appointment and pop up a notification at that time no matter when you manually set the notification time. That’s letting the technology work with you and not just for you.
But you have to let them know who your attendees are before you can contact them…. doesn’t it work out to be the same effort in the end?
If anyone actually sent me a message stating “Where R U?” I would assume it was a 13-year old who had mis-sent their SMS to my number…