What to program for a gadget that can deduce what I'm doing? The ultimate life-hack? [closed]

Question

This isn't really a programming question, more of an ideas question. Bear with me.

My sister gave me a well-used Nokia N95. I don't really need it, but I wanted it to do some programming for it. It supports a few languages, of which I can do Python.

My question is this: what to do with it? If I think about it, it has a lot to offer: i can program the GPS, motion sensor, wireless internet, sound and visual capture; it has a lot of hard disk space, it plays sound and video and so on.

The combinations seem limitless. The way I see it, it is a device that is easily always on me, has access to a huge data repository (the internet, and my personal data in it) and can be aware if I'm sitting at home, at work, or moving about somewhere. It could basically read my google calendar to check if I should be somewhere I'm not -- perhaps give me the bus schedule to get to where I should be. It could check if it's close to my home and therefore my home PC bluetooth/wifi. Maybe grab my recent work documents from my desktop computer, along with the latest Daily Show, for the bus journey to work. It could check my library account to see if any of my books are due, and remind me to take them with me in the morning. Set up an alarm clock based on what shift I have marked in my google calendar.

Basically I have a device that can analyze my movements in time (calendars with my data etc) and space (gps, carrier cell ids). By proxy, it could identify context situations -- I can store my local grocery store gps coordinates or cell mast ids and it could remind me to bring coffee.

Like I said, the possibilities seem limitless, and therefore baffling. Does anyone else have these pseudofantastical yearnings to program something like this? Or any similar ideas? How could this kind of device integrate into -- and help -- your life?

I'm hoping we could do some brainstorming.

Answer 1

"Gotta Leave" - A reminder that figures out the bus time, how far you are from a stop on your bus and shows a countdown till you "Could" leave (green), "Should" Leave (yellow), "Must" leave (orange), and "Gotta Run to get there" (red).

As inputs it needs what bus number you want to ride. You turn it on, it finds you, finds your closest few bus stops, estimates your walking speed at 2/mph and calculates when you need to leave where you are to get to the bus with 5 minutes waiting or less.

Answer 2

You should just pick any one and implement it.

It doesn't matter where you start, more that you actually do start. Don't concentrate on the destination, take a step and see what the journey holds.

Do it for a laugh to start and your expectation will be set right for both when you do find your killer app and when you don't.