Do you want a Dash GPS? We are going to give one away to the person who can come up with the best idea for a geo-aware app that would work on the device. (Courtesy of Trulia and Dash).
The Dash is a GPS unit that is connected to the Internet through a cellular data network so it can tell you where is the nearest restaurant, gas station or hospital. You can also download geo-RSS feeds and apps that tell you where is the nearest WiFi network or winery. In May, the startup opened up its API to outside developers. Some apps that have been created for the Dash include Trulia’s real estate search (handy when home hunting in the car), weather updates from WeatherBug, nearby speed traps from Trapster, geo-tagged Wikipedia articles, and you can even Twitter from your Dash (not while driving, please).
So how do you win your own Dash? It’s simple: think about some of the Dash apps you would most like to see and submit your best idea in the comments below. Bonus points if it is not one of the 80 apps already created for the device. Super-bonus points if you actually create the app. Deadline for submissions is Saturday at midnight PT. The winner will be selected by me. Two runners up will receive TechCrunch T-shirts.
High crime area warnings based on frequency, severity, and recency.
Movie places, basically show what movies were filmed in the area
There’s one element to the geo-aware apps that seems to be missing, and that is the idea of the nearest concert. It seems simple enough to build something that could take feeds from sonicliving and ticketmaster (and eventually the local free urban weekly rags) to find some live music in your area. I can also imagine that this same app could also troll your preferences on the various social music sites, pandora and last.fm, for more personalized recommentations. While the app would only come in handy occasionally, it would be incredibly handy for those evenings out with friends, when folks are looking for some live music following a nice dinner out. I know I’ve found myself in that quandry many times.
The problem with those sites is the data is not geo-coded nor available in the correct geo-formats, and it tends towards major artists. Plus it’s hard to adaptively balance so you get reasonable results based in different population-density areas. The problem with using recommendations from last.fm is the ‘dead-artist’ problem – it’s pretty hard to correlate their data with live artists.
Anyway, my proposal is to use gruvr, http://gruvr.com to provide maps of local concerts as you drive. Gruvr already geo-codes all concert data and provides it in both geoRSS and KML formats. With 500K pages indexed by google, its the largest set of geocoded concert data. Gruvr also automatically guesses your location and tries to adaptively find a radius and timeframe to come up with a reasonable list of concerts within range. It has a nice API as well to support these kinds of apps
Another feature would be an easy way of adding favorite bands to your
“Radar” so the unit would send alerts whenever you came within range of a concert by any of your favorite bands.
OK, so my proposal is basically to use gruvr to build this roving concert radar…
Prices of restaurants in the areas.
Places with special offers for eating.
Movie showtimes & synopsis (+plus ticketing) @ local movie theaters. I’ll email you my shipping address.
Garage Sale search and proximity locator.
Working on new prototype website as well as iphone app for site as well. Will look into moving to Dash too.
Here’s my idea:
ParkSpot – A real time social parking utility.
Basically, dash owners will help other dash owners find parking on busy city streets. When one dash owner is getting ready to leave, set your ParkSpot status to ready to leave and this will broadcast your location to nearby dash owners whose set to finding spots.
So every dash owner wins.
Alfred
http://payscroll.com
Love this idea. I am using the Dash now and it is very cool. A little bulky but not really an issue once you have it mounted. The parking idea was one of the first things I thought of, but why not overlay parking info like restrictions, etc… based on location. Next if you could overlay public transportation and the unit was somewhat more mobile you could see what your public transportation options are, how many times have you waited at a bus stop for a bus wondering where the heck is the bus, would be cool to know that the bus is 2 blocks or 2 miles away. real time tracking of public transportation.
yes, i have also been thinking about this idea.. connecting it to the iphone so everyone can see the info would be great. Also having the system send you a message to let you know that you should move your car for street cleaning, remind you to add money to the meter… would be killer
Spotscout came up with that idea years ago. There are plenty of interview on thew web where you can hear the founder, Andrew Rollert, talking about that. Sorry chief.
Yeah, Larry’s right, this idea’s a copy of something that already exists. It’s called SpotScout. I know they are already up and running. (And have a significant amount of press, too). I remember reading about them in time.com or CNN. one of the two…
Twitter review mashup of local restaurants
A cool app would be a GPS based “Stumble-Upon” type app, where you would be introduced to new food, entertainment, and services within a certain radius of your present location. It could be further enhanced with a recommendation system that filters the highest rated locations to the top.
This would be great for a Sunday when you and the family wants to hang out, but don’t know where you want to go.
That is a great idea! Once you try a place you thumbs up or down.
Red Light Districts Warnings!!!
Red Light District announcements!
Red Light District Ratings and Reviews
Information on traffic jams and accidents with a built in way to avoid those locations.
An app that calculates your carbon footprint as you drive. You input your car make and model, and as you drive around, statistics are gathered.
The app also calculates how much fuel (and carbon emission) would have been saved if you used a hybrid, or even better, an electric car.
I would even add the financial into it-cost of each drive, how much it would cost on a hybrid, on electric.
Guessing we all going hybrid and electric, this device can help people make better decision in the near future, when considering to move to this newer technologies.
…and here’s how it can actually be done:
http://www.wire...hibits/PEIR.php
(Disclaimer: I’m part of the research group)
Cool!! That’s exactly what I had in mind. Is this a live product?
Also, I would suggest you hook this thing up to financial data. As environmentally aware people will become, still saving them a buck will make them REALLY happy.
I would try to aim at those who are considering switching to hybrid all electrical cars, providing them an estimate, based on their collected data, on their ROI, recommended car ( as a function on average car trip, terrain, city vs. country side etc.) .
Maybe even offer this for rent for a certain period to help these (huge) group of people who are considering going hybrid or electrical.
I have more great ideas. I need people from the academic world to help me. Please contact me, if you are in the field of electrical engineering.
Display traffic camera feeds on major highways and thoroughfares IE. Transtar in Houston feeds to mobile phones and web browsers, why not to the Dash.
Shortcut Finder..
Show user submitted ’shortcuts’. We all know that the route automatically suggested is not always the best one. After you live and drive someplace for awhile you usually find various shortcuts, ways to avoid traffic lights, busy intersections, etc..
How great would it be if people could submit their ’shortcut’ routes for others to benefit from.
This could also be extended to show other kinds of user submitted routes that don’t necessarily involve shortcuts but might involve a more scenic route you could take on the way to your vacation destination. Or maybe someone would create a ’shopping spree’ route with all the best shops to hit along the way to your destination. Or maybe a ‘history lesson’ route with stops of historic places. Basically anything someone could think up..
A rating system could be built in to identify the best routes and weed out the crappy ones.
Hrmm.. so maybe I’m actually suggesting a more generic concept to simply display user submitted routes which anyone could create and submit for different purposes. Perhaps people could even suggest modifications to existing routes and if enough people agreed with the suggestion it would be incorporated. Oh.. and if someone takes your route via their dash, it would be recorded so folks could see how many people have taken a particular route.
The dash could display any of these user submitted routes that were either close to your current proximity or planned route to your destination.
Display and have warnings for traffic light cameras.
This one already exists, showing community data from http://www.trapster.com . I downloaded it but haven’t tried it yet. If it works once the device pays for itself.
Cheapest Gas App -
With Gas prices still high Dash GPS will notify you when you approach the cheapest priced Gas Station on or near your route
Already built in. It works pretty well.
List local radio stations and what genre they play including distance to their broadcast tower so you can pick the best signal and music to listen to on long road trips.
That’s a good idea
Already done!
Show car washes!
Show where the fuzz is sitting on highways and biways. Warns others around them to slowwww down.
might be illegal in some states actually.
I thought this was the speed traps app
while it’s not much use for the Dash customers I’d love to see a Navizon app running on there to build up a collection of WiFi and celltowers to help improve their database. The Dash users could of course earn points for the Navizon contributions (don’t forget to use my ID “5E585D5B5A” if you sign up!)
actually one thing I would like to see that matches up to Navizon is the ability to see trails and compare commute times/conditions… for instance SportsDo.net allows you to look at an animation of your run/ride … would be cool to see your drive to work and how the weather, traffic conditions, time of year impacts it and how it relates to air quality in the area etc
Opt-in geographic advertising with proceeds going to charity.
A “crowd router” service that aggregates real block-by-block travel times and calculates the best routes based on real-time information.
This is the core application of the Dash.
Show where friends are on the road and if you pick a friend suggest possible meeting places based on trajectory, send a message to meet.
The Dash should provide a heatmap to show where other Dash-users are located. To find cool places or to avoid traffic jams/flash mobs.
Or, using the optional ‘Filter mode’, find cool/hot/sexy/geeky/etc. people or friends.
(Although privacy is so yesterday, all data is aggregated and anonymous. But on mutual agreement, the app may be used to avoid running into your ex and/or mother-in-law)
A Price and Instock finder. The ability to search for an item and find the nearest place that has it in stock. Also augment that with the ability to have a shopping list put in and when you are near a place remind you to stop by and pick it up. If you could build your list at work and it automatically route you by the store that carried those items on the way home.
The ability to create a custom destination profile. By this, I mean the following steps:
1. When you leave your house, your profile tells Dash to show weather, traffic patterns, or morning talk shows.
2. When you’re nearing your work destination, Dash will move to display your email and calendar.
3. When Dash notices that you’ve gotten to the grocery store, it will search your email for the grocery list and display.
4. etc…
If you establish a profile, you wouldn’t even have to enter destinations for common places; Dash would figure out you were headed to work and display the information without any outside input.
http://www.tech...make-it-better/
Location-based reminders, set via a web interface, available on the Dash GPS.
Examples:
-Show me my shopping list as a pull into the supermarket
-The next time I’m in San Jose, remind me to swing by Fry’s and pick up a widget
Setting reminders:
On the Dash GPS–”The next time I’m [at|within X miles of] my present location, remind me about Y.”
On the web (from any computer)–Look up a location in Google Maps, then tell it “The next time I’m [at|within X miles of] that location, remind me about Y.”
Doh! Ian Crew beat me to it! Ian, great minds think alike. You can have the Dash, my friend, I just hope someone will do this app for the iphone! I hadn’t hread yours when I entered the same idea below. I like your google maps twist too.
Mine also has some overlap with Josh’s, above (though his wasn’t posted when I started typing! I swear!
). It’s clear that the time has come for all of these sophisticated GPS devices to make it easy to build tools (maybe through some sort of scripting language?) that trigger action X when you’re at or near location Y. If that sort of thing existed, my idea, your idea, and Josh’s idea would all become pretty easy to implement.
Opentable.com mashup — tells you open tables near current location, based on food type. If you are a Zagat member, you can get all Zagat-rated restaurants, or
ones with food score > X.
Oops, this one was not supposed to be a reply, sorry. Also, the duplicate
I was refering to is below, called “location alarm”.
http://www.tech...comment-2481416
An app that tells you how many calories you would have burned had you walked (or run) this trip instead of driving.
I love this one! In cities it could also tell you when it would have been faster to walk.
A hook into GasBuddy.com or similar Gas price database so you can see where the cheapest spot to fill up is. This would be a must have for a device like this.
Similarly some kind of app to track your MPG by knowing how far you’ve gone since your last fill up. If there is any way to add user input you could add the price per gallon and number of gallons you filled up which would be useful over a long period of time.
A feature which lets you google some item and then point you to the place (through GPS) to buy that item.
For ex: I didn’t know that I could get a camel bag at REI … I googled it .. found it and then asked my GPS to take me there. Instead of this, if i had a GPS feature asking me to spell some item and then providing me with the directions of that item .. that would have been simply great.
Instead of the dealing with the hassle of driving ‘hungry’ to your restuarant of choice and realizing you have to wait over an hour to be seated, my application through the dash would allow you to tap into the reservation system and see how long the wait is at the restuarant. Youll even have the ability to put your name down on the list. This is great because knowing that when your in your car you can actually expect to eat within a reasonable amount of time when you get there!
Enter flight number and airline before leaving for a flight and it will determine when you need to leave and if you are ahead or behind schedule while on the way. This would use the following data:
1. Flight status information from airline
2. Security queue times from TSA
3. Driving time data including traffic from Dash
4. Average parking to check-in time by airport (needs to be compiled)
This would be great before leaving and on the way to the airport.
Brightkite and Fire Eagle integration. Allow you to announce your location with just the press of a button. Simple. Easy.
Already has FireEagle
Oh, well then… that means I should win since they’ve already implemented it!
Allow the user to choose their own mapping application. So if the want the route to be on Google Maps, VE or Mapquest allow them to choose it and the routes would autoupdate to it.
This could bring in a heatmap layer for traffic that is usable on live.com instead of listening to the annoying voice.
Also would bring in Birdseye View/ 3d / Street view…all the bells and whistles you get from those maps.
I have one that fulfills a universal need:
Search for (and display) nearby public restrooms. Also show “semi-public” restrooms (Starbucks). Allow users to populate a website/database with additional new ones.
Face it, sometimes you’re on a date or something but happen to be in an area that you have *no* idea where a restroom is. She has to go. You try to go into 10 places without luck to find one. This could alleviate that problem. Also would be a KILLER iPhone app.
If you don’t think this is a problem, then you clearly have *never* been to NYC.
This is built in. It uses data from a public restroom finder website, with a combination of official public ones and reliable chain businesses like Starbucks, McDonalds, etc.
Being able to tell where your kids (who own cars) are if they own a Dash too.
Bonus: Could use it to spy on your spouse!
Sometimes just because you have a GPS doesn’t really mean that you know where you are (the GPS might know but you don’t.) It will be nice to have an app where you share your location with people you choose to do so, and if you get to a point where you need to go to a friends house, you can have your friend go online (while you are driving) and create a route for you from where you are. If your friends knows some shortcuts he can drag and drop the route (like in Google maps) and your Dash will receive this data and take you there.
This is useful when you don’t know the address, or when your GPS can’t find the address you’re typing. While you are driving, some times is easier if a person you know is in front of a computer looking at your location and planing your route for your next destination. You will have to confirm that a friend is changing your current route.
I love this idea. It could be pretty simple: you send an email or txt from the device giving the recipient one-time access to view and alter your route on the Dash website.
An app which provides a wide array of ‘voices’ for the the audio part.
Selection could be funny accents, a voice which swears everytime you make a wrong turn etc, …
This is easy.
The greatest effect, with the easiest tweak, for a likely expanding demand?
Drum roll please…………………………….
1 on screen (and/or verbal) command: “Tweet My Location”.
(Or other to social nets. But why?)
Already available, and the tweet can include a link to a map of your current location.
an XKCD geohashing app
CAFFEINE LOCATOR: show me the nearest sources of caffeine, their format (coffee at a cafe vs. redbull at a walgreens, etc.), and their estimated caffeine content in milligrams per serving.
What self-respecting technologist would be with out it? …now that I’ve thought of this, I really need one.
just get an in car peculator
Ok, so this goes beyond the dash, but have you ever noticed how ridiculously dumb traffic lights are?
create a system with the dash that communicates with traffic signals. Traffic signals will be able to tell how many cars are coming from which direction and move traffic in the best possible pattern to get people to their destinations quicker. Traffic lights will also communicate with other traffic signals to best alleviate traffic.
http://motortor...communicate.asp
how about what goes on sales or special promotions around your location
an app that allows me to create or import my to-do list so that when I am close to a footlocker the app lets me know that there is a footlocker nearby and reminds me that I wanted to buy a new pair of sneakers. The app essentially recommends and alerts me of nearby points of interest that will help me get things off my to do list.
There is a DashApp that integrates with Remember the Milk.
This is inspired by a presentation I saw by a guy at Microsoft at the Location 2.0 Summit. His presentation was called “Location Prediction for Drivers”.
1. Have the GPS locally build a Markov model of your destinations based on your turns. As an example, if I turn right onto Gray and left onto Highland, there’s an 90% chance I’m headed to the Alewife subway station.
2. Once trained, the Markov model can be used to predict your destination after only a few turns.
3. Use the *predicted* destination and *predicted* route to identify traffic issues ahead and suggest alternate routings. Example: “You appear to be headed to Alewife along this route. There’s heavy traffic on Rt. 2, so dash suggests taking this alternate route.”
4. Use the *predicted* destination to offer alternate destinations: “If you’re headed to Costco, there’s a big sale at Walmart right now.”
I love prediction. I’m building a company around it. This idea is orthogonal but would still be lots of fun.
First App
======
Not sure what best to call this, so it’ll be an ‘optimizer app’
* You create an account with an online web service. Then you launch the app.
* Every time you drive it records the start and end location as well as the time
* As patterns emerge (commuting to work every day) it can automatically suck in existing information (traffic, weather, etc) to chime in and say things like: “Today you should avoid route 95 b/c of traffic”. Even though you didn’t tell it you were about to take route 95.
* While all this is going on, you can opt-in to a data-sharing plan where the trip data is anonymized and uploaded to a big database.
* From this data you could make suggestions: “Other people on this route at this time find a better experience turning right”
Second App
=======
Carpool finder
This could easily be built into the above app, or live as a second application. You show it your daily commute and it uploads this data to a database. It finds people nearby and suggests carpool groups.
Third App
======
Commuting Times
Also easily built into the first app, or live as a seperate entity. This is based on the theory that a person leaving 30 min after the high point of rush hour might get home at almost the exact same time as the person who left during the high. Analyze everybody’s daily commutes and report back what time leaving work will actually result in returning home. People could use this data to plan more effective days.
A location alarm. It is like an alarm clock, but based in a place rather than a time.
Let’s say I need to pick up a jacket I forgot at a frend’s house in SF. I want to set a location that beeps me when I happen to be near his neighborhood (within given distance of his address). I really want this, and was surprised no iphone app.
http://lifehack...n-you-get-there
Thanks, Jon (just saw this) One thing that might throw a wrench in this: it may have to be running in the “foreground” to work. I need something that is running all the time (in the background) that beeps me at a location. Not sure if iphone has the multitasking cability to do that.
A few ideas:
1. Build in a ‘Lo-jack’ like capability to add security to address theft of the device as well as the car itself (assuming the GPS is still in the car.)
2. Build an Onstar-like capability that can direct emergency personnel to find you or talk to you, although this would ideally incorporate voice communications capabilities.
1. Community info. Local communities can submit a list of items/POI’s that pop up on the Dash as you enter the community. The list could be static, or a maintained calendar list that updates daily to include happenings that day such as Farmer’s Market, festivals, concerts, sporting events. How often have you driven through somewhere one day only to find out later that something you would have stopped for was going on that day. It’s basically an extension of the digital billboards that some communities already have showing ongoing or upcoming events in town. Communities that already have one would already have a list to publish and would benefit by not needing people to pass a specific intersection to see it.
I’d like to see a simple ride-sharing app based on my own social and business network. I ask my iPhone for a ride from SF to my company’s office in Palo Alto, and it finds one of my coworkers driving there now. I can send a request for a ride, which the driver can ignore or easily respond to. There’s an option to pay a share of gas via paypal.