Idea #16: Incessant Pestering
Have you ever used one of those online reminder services?
Let’s say you have a dentist appointment next Tuesday at 3 PM, so you configure the software to send you a reminder email at 2:30.
Then, if you’re anything like me, on the day of the appointment the reminder note arrives in your inbox and you dismiss it almost thoughtlessly, saying to yourself “Oh yeah. The dentist. I’ll get up and go in a second, as soon as I finish debugging this one function.”
The next time you blink your eyes, it’s eight o’clock in the evening. Not only have you missed your dentist appointment, but also your dinner.
When I’m in the zone, it’s hard to snap out of that reverie, so those online appointment reminder services don’t work very well for me.
But what if I could tell the software to send me a barrage of notifications? What if they could send me two emails, three SMS text messages, and four chat messages, all within a three-minute window of time? What if I installed a tiny piece of software that would disable my keyboard if I ignored all my other messages?
That would probably get my attention, and I’d probably make it to my dentist appointment.
While we’re at it, it would also be nice to configure other kinds of reminders. What if the software could send me a reminder five or six times a day, at semi-random intervals, reminding me to stand up and stretch or maybe go for a walk? How about another reminder near the end of the day, telling me to log my hours into the company time-tracking system?
And, although most reminder services can send SMS messages, most can’t recieve them. What if I could reply to a text message with the phrase “snooze 10 min” to request a follow-up reminder?
I know there are a zillion reminder services out there. But what if there was another one, capable of ridiculous, incessant pestering?
Pros:
- This would be a pretty quick, easy development project, with few expenses, and with a simple server architecture.
Cons:
- It would be difficult to differentiat this product in an already crowded marketplace. Even more discouraging than competition from other reminder services would be the competition from bigger, more capable products like Outlook and from mobile devices like Blackberries, with their own reminder software.
…
This is the sixteenth of 30 business ideas that I’ll be writing about over the course of 30 days. Or maybe it’ll only end up being 19 ideas in 36 days. We’ll see. Either way, one of these ideas will become a product over the next six months, and the foundation of my new software business.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:07 am
Hi Benji,
One who is in sleep can be woken up. But one who pretends to sleep can never be woken up. :)
The idea you have is something similar to second one. Do you think that can really work out .Suppose if you find software like this, with you nature I bet you will write your own piece of code fetching the schedule form this software, and unlocking the keyboard when ever it finds some thing is going to happen :)
Anyway cool idea. But the marketing is tough. Punctuality is not something thing cannot be enforced through software and it’s a matter of personal discipline
I am a kind of guy desperately need of software like this .But I will think twice before buying this
It’s my personal thoughts. Waiting for more and more cool ideas.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:03 am
Well, if you happen to remember it though, the series of now unnecessary reminders will annoy the hell out of ya!
My solution is, just remember to read the reminders *mindfully*, and click the snooze button if you want it to come back! It’s free too! :)
On the other hand, you can fix the following problem: I use Outlook for reminders at work just like everyone else. There are times, however, when Outlook does not pop up the reminder in time because the application is in the background? something higher priority is running? I dunno.. Half the time I end up thinking “Don’t I have a meeting?”, bring Outlook to the foreground, and as soon as I do that, the reminder pops up. Yeah, well, thanks buddy!
Can you fix that? :)
July 13th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Obviously you’ll be targetting this on the people who spend all their time working at their computer (hence the locking keyboard, etc). But I doubt this would work because personally, I would rather use an alarm in my cell phone or just set an alarm in an alarm clock.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Hi,
The kind of reminders like sending sms,email are already available on google calendar, not locking the keyboard though :). As you said it’s already crowded marketplace