

Show HN: GPS + Calendar + Traffic = always on time - justinwi
http://www.NeedToBounce.com

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jonschwartz
Couple of quick thoughts after installing:

1) It appears to be continuously getting GPS data. That will kill my battery.
Dead battery = I'm late anyway I may need to uninstall until this is fixed.

2) I don't need to be reminded of everything on every calendar I have access
to. Have it so I can select which calendar I need to bounce for.

3) Along the same lines of 2, allow me to ignore specific events. I subscribe
to a couple general holiday calendars and I don't need to be told when to
leave for "Memorial Day" or whatever.

Otherwise, great concept. I look forward to keeping up with your progress.

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patrickod
With regards to issue #1. The drain of numerous applications using the GPS
hardware on the phone and thus killing battery life makes me wish Google
Latitude had an API that devs could use to request my GPS co-ordinates. If you
can login via Facebook why can't you do location via Latitude ?

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shazow
<http://code.google.com/apis/latitude/>

I haven't looked at it super closely, but could the interested parties let me
know what's missing? I'll forward your feedback to the right people.

~~~
patrickod
I don't know how I missed this. Everything I was thinking seems to be
included. The only potential feature that it lacks is access to information on
users other than myself, such as would be available through the web interface.
I can see numerous reasons, however, as to why Google would not expose this
information through an API.

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eggbrain
My thoughts on your website (not the app, jonschwartz already covered that)

1) Nothing in <title></title> (or favicon) [Looks like you have since added a
title!]

2) I chuckled once I realized your app Bounce, used Unbounce as its landing
page tool.

2a) That being said, I'd switch off Unbounce as quickly as possible. Unbounce
free gives you only a 200 unique visitor limit, so the minute you might want
to start using the A/B testing and other data (when you have a lot of
traffic), you get kicked off.

3) You need a video to show this off -- before I download an app I want to
know what it looks like, how it works, things like that. I know the android
market link shows off a few pictures, but I think you should also have them on
your website as well.

~~~
justinwi
Thanks a ton for the <title /> issue. Fixed. Video forthcoming!

Re unbounce, yeah we'll build our own site shortly.

Thanks again!

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schiffern
Great concept. I would love to see a video demonstration on the landing page.
How easy is it to use? How much data entry does it take? How does it determine
where my calendar events are geographically? What if I put "Building 51, Room
4115"? Can it learn where that is?

As I said, it's a great concept. I just need a little more before I take the
plunge.

~~~
justinwi
Good call. We'll start working on a video shortly.

We use some rudimentary location lookup APIs now, but hope to improve them
going forward. We should have place lookups soon (e.g. starbucks, etc.) but
places that don't show up on Google maps searches probably won't work.

Thanks for the feedback.

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ynniv
Thought of this one a while ago. Some of my thoughts:

\- How will you know where I am? It would be expensive to run my phone's GPS
continuously to figure this out.

\- My car might not be immediately available. The time it takes to get to the
car will have little or nothing to do with my GPS distance from it.

\- Parking can take a significant amount of time.

\- Traffic estimates are often wrong, sometimes greatly underestimating travel
time. Being late is much worse than being early, but this is appointment
dependent.

Looking forward to more details!

~~~
justinwi
Thanks for sharing. Our take:

\- We try to only run GPS when your next calendar event is coming up.

\- Right now we have an application-wide setting that says, "Add X minutes to
my travel time." We're hoping people will use that to accommodate the fact
that they have to walk to their car, find parking, etc. Eventually we'll make
this configurable for each event.

\- Yeah, traffic estimates aren't 100% accurate, but they're better than
crossing your fingers and hopping in the car. :)

~~~
ynniv
_We try to only run GPS when your next calendar event is coming up._

That could be a problem. Perhaps you want to run it near the last appointment?
This is a complicated problem.

 _Right now we have an application-wide setting that says, "Add X minutes to
my travel time." We're hoping people will use that to accommodate the fact
that they have to walk to their car, find parking, etc. Eventually we'll make
this configurable for each event._

Some things are better done earlier than later. In "new development" cities,
this is okay, but in more complicated locations it will be a serious per-
appointment issue. In a time when people say the first mover advantage is an
illusion, getting ahead of the UX game could mean everything.

 _Yeah, traffic estimates aren't 100% accurate, but they're better than
crossing your fingers and hopping in the car._

Just remember to err on the side of early. ;-)

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squarecat
Great idea. Here's what I've observed:

1) Way over-estimated the "time to bounce" for an event. It happened to be
just over an hour from occurring and when I changed the start time to
"manually" account for rough travel time, a more reasonable Bounce time was
suggested.

2) Throws "unrecognizable event location" for a typical address (which Google
Calendar takes no issue with): Location Name, Street Address, City, ST ZIP

(Wanted to see if back-to-back events made recommendation based on being at
the preceding event location, but... see previous error)

~~~
justinwi
Thanks for the feedback!

Can I get the address that was giving Bounce trouble? We'll take a look.

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nbclark
Pretty cool. I made something like this for Windows Phone a while back that
would let your routes to & from work, and your estimated departure times. It
would then run traffic data on a server before your departure time, and let
you know how long your commute would be. It would then track the times
historically and let you know the best times to leave.

[http://www.windowsphones7app.com/windowsmobileapps/4/2011-03...](http://www.windowsphones7app.com/windowsmobileapps/4/2011-03/110.html)

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srik
You should have a privacy policy if you're going to collect emails, even if
its for something as simple as a waiting list.

It would make people who signup feel secure about giving you their emails and
as we all know people who have explicitly signed up are probably gonna have a
better chance of being your potential customers.

~~~
justinwi
Good call, thanks for the suggestion. I'll see if I can come up basic privacy
agreement. Thanks.

~~~
srik
Just a couple of resources I bookmarked while making our privacy policy. Some
good, some not so much, but feel free to use if it helps -

>>> <http://www.iubenda.com/en>

<http://www.privacychoice.org/>

<http://ownterms.pbworks.com/w/page/6985495/FrontPage>

<http://www.docracy.com/>

<http://lexpubli.ca/>

<http://contractual.ly/>

<http://privacy-policy-generator.legalriver.com/>

<http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/>

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dagar
Damn, I've been working on nearly the same thing for a little while now.

Nicely done!

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schiffmand
We built this same APP at Startup Weekend Boston two weeks ago, but didn't
release it because we still wanted to finalize some features. Nice to know we
have copycats.

Also: The data provided by Bing's API was minimal, this app won't be accurate.
There is also the issue of how do you know where I am leaving from in the
future?

~~~
justinwi
Rest assured, this was rolling around in our heads longer than two weeks ago,
and we had no idea a SW team had tried to build something like this.

Not that, that would have changed anything anyway... :)

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fraserharris
I've been _thinking_ about this for at least a year. Good ideas tend to be
invented simultaneously... good luck with Bounce, looks awesome (apart from
the battery draining GPS usage)

~~~
hmeh
I actually patented this about 6 years ago. Now I just got to dig up the
patent...

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brador
Another +1 for the concept. Get it up on the apple store as soon as possible.

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webbruce
Concept seems awesome! Hopefully iPhone or web version to come soon.

