The let me know you get home safe app
This one came to me last night after seeing my friend off at London Bridge. As he shuffled off into the darkness (distance to home 400 yards), i thought i should tell him to text me once he gets home. However, not everyone has either the mental capacity or the physical capacity once they navigate their threshold to do anything more than collapse in a heap.
So here's a simple app idea for the sobriety-challenged. The app would allow messages to be automatically sent to any concerned party once the phones location is identified to be in the vicinity of there lodgings (or any destination). Or to let them no that they didn't make it.
Setting up the app for a user would be a piece of cake. Users can set destinations by using either Google Maps or allowing the phone to determine its current location - by network or GPS - for repeatedly visited destinations. Links to the phone's contacts, GPS and network location services can be managed.
On starting the app for use, the user would be prompted to: first, select or set a destination; second, select which contacts or phone numbers to notify; and lastly, to set the estimated time for the journey (hours and minutes).
The app then keeps a tab on the phone's location and, in an ideal scenario, once the phone enters the vicinity of the destination within the estimated time it sends a confirmation message by text to each of the chosen contacts.
Should the estimated time elapse before the phone arrives at its destination, an app will record the current location and trigger a phone alert asking the user to select one of the following options: "Still on the way" (defers the initial alert for an hour); "I'm home safe & sound" (triggers confirmation messages); and "I think i need help" (triggers alarm messages). In the event that no option is selected, the app will then wait for anther 50% of the set estimated time to pass before re-triggering the alert every minute for five minutes and recording the current location.
Should the user not respond at all, alarm messages will be sent by text to all the selected contacts providing them with notification that the user has not reached their destination and is not responding to the alerts - as well as providing the times and locations recorded by the alert system.
This idea could also we used for all sorts of purposes (like making sure that regular truants actually turn-up at school or that husbands/wives/whatever don't spend too long at the pub - does this make me a gender traitor?).
So that's it in a nutshell really. It only occurred to me later that i was so busy working out the details of my idea, i'd completely left my friend to his fate.
ps. Yes, he lived.