Navigation Apps: Better Historical Data to Extrapolate ETA

Modern navigation apps, such as Google Maps, are amazing. Refinements such as telling me which of the two left-turn lanes to take are incredibly impressive. But based on my limited experience--I am a full-time telecommuter who only occasionally drives the 30 miles across the metro to go into the office--there is one area I see a lot of room for improvement.

If I start navigation early into rush-hour, for my 30-mile cross-metro commute, I might see ETA 42 minutes. But that will typically elongate as I drive, peaking around 51 minutes. So the missing ingredient, particularly relevant for long, rush-hour drives, is the degree to which congestion builds. I have to think Google has more than enough data to build this in to their algorithm.

App Idea: Recycling

People suck at recycling. Primarily because they make mistakes of commission, motivated by good intentions. Placing a contaminated item in recycling is ~10X as bad as not recycling the same item, when not contaminated.

Ironically, I was having this very discussion with a colleague, who themselves started the discussion. I brought up my favorite example, the cardboard pizza box. Recyclable if never used, but certainly not once full of grease! To my astonishment, this was news to said colleague!

This suggests to me a mobile or Alexa/voice app idea. I envision a universal app (within the USA--apparently one already exists for the small but beloved country of Belgium) that provides directions, based on zip code and potentially other factors, such as waste-hauler, regarding what can and cannot be recycled. It would work really, really well with voice input.

(It is possible to go overboard the other way--it is wasteful of both time and water to wash containers very lightly "contaminated" with their contents--empty soda bottles, etc.)

Rules for Napping

I am a big fan of short, rejuvenating mid-late afternoon naps. Just enough to take off the edge of unproductive drowsiness, without plunging into a coma-like state that makes re-awakening excruciating, or messing up one's sleep-wake cycle.

Set an alarm. This is the first commandment. Never but never nap without an alarm.

Keep it short. Everyone will have a different sweet spot, but in general, it seems like 30 minutes is the max. For me, assuming I fall asleep very quickly, 18 minutes is the ideal.

The rest of the tips relate to not getting toooo comfortable. First is: not in your bed. Don't let you body conflate napping with prolonged sleeping.

Not too warm--it is much easier to rouse one's self if not enveloped in a womblike state of torpor.

Not in the dark. The very worst thing is to start a nap at dusk, and wake up after dark.

Feature Set and Rationale for Night Suite App (Part 1)

From the day I got a smartphone, it was obvious to me that the standalone alarm clock was obsolete. Nevertheless, in the ensuing 10 years, I have continued to search for the perfect alarm clock app (Android). I still haven't found one. Alarm Clock Plus was close, until it quit being maintained in 2014. I have switched to Alarm Clock Xtreme, which is good, but not great.

What has been on my mind recently, though, is that even a perfect clock app did appear, I still wouldn't be satisfied. I want a Night Suite app. The alarm clock would anchor the night suite, but there is a lot of important, complementary functionality that I want to be fully integrated with my alarm clock.

In my view, a compelling night suite would integrate an excellent Alarm Clock with the following key functions: Do Not Disturb with Whitelist, Night Clock with super-dimming, low power warning and super-reliability.

Do Not Disturb with Whitelist

This is pretty basic, and there are good apps for it, but I want it to be integrated. If my family members need to get hold of me in the middle of a night, I want Do Not Disturb to be overridden. Not if they send me a text, mind you, but if they call my phone at 2:00am, I do want it to ring.

Bonus feature: option for whitelist or non-whitelist members to receive an auto-response when they text during Do Not Disturb hours. Customizable, here is the default: "John Doe is in Do Not Disturb mode. If this is an emergency, you can try calling to bypass Do Not Disturb mode".

Night Clock

This one is stupidly simple, but shockingly hard to find. I want a very, very dim bedside clock. Similar to an LED alarm clock--bright enough to see, dim enough not to act like a light source and cast light on my sleeping eyeballs. Currently I use a combination of an app that dims but not enough, and a filter that imposes a semi-transparent black overlay to further dim the phone.

This should be matched with sunrise functionality, that decreases the dimming toward dawn. This would need to be flexible, to handle varying degrees of room shading. This could be handled by a percentage function for Dawn Adjustment.

Low Power Warning

If power goes out during the night, and my phone is in danger of running out of battery before the alarm goes off, I would want to be woken up. Or, as is more often the case, when I don't plug it in successfully.

I think the basic functionality here would be to sound an alarm if the margin of error for power dips below a certain configurable level. Default would be 1 hour.

Super-Reliability

I am not nearly technical enough to know how to achieve this, but a world-class alarm clock, of any kind, needs to be super-reliable. So anything that could be done to ensure an alarm that is less than 10 hours away does indeed go off would be critical. The thing that comes to mind for me is that I think alarm apps can either have system alarms, or their own alarms. I believe I have experienced alarm app crashes where the app didn't re-start. Maybe one way to deal with this is for the alarm app to have its own alarm, but also set a system alarm for 2 minutes after its own alarm. When its own alarm triggers, it would shut off the system alarm. Thus, if for some reason the app alarm didn't trigger, the system alarm 2 minutes later would be the backstop.

Suite Functions

Single-push widget to go into Night Mode, as well as options for scheduled times for Night Mode. Scheduling functionality would include "X hours before alarm", where default is X=8.

Alarm Notification Icon

The typical Android alarm clock app seems to put an alarm icon in the Notification bar if one is set within the next 24 hours. As a user of pre-set and recurring alarms, I don't find this very useful. Most of the time it tells me what I already know. In the rare event I forgot to set an alarm, I don't want to rely on noticing the usual icon is not present; I want a positive notification when there is no alarm set, within X hours of my standard morning. Default X=8.

Advanced Features

This is my basic, must-have-list. See Part 2 for advanced and nice-to-have features.

Feature Set and Rationale for Night Suite App (Part 2)

Recap

From the day I got a smartphone, it was obvious to me that the standalone alarm clock was obsolete. Nevertheless, in the ensuing 10 years, I have continued to search for the perfect alarm clock app (Android). I still haven't found one. Alarm Clock Plus was close, until it quit being maintained in 2014. I have switched to Alarm Clock Xtreme, which is good, but not great.

What has been on my mind recently, though, is that even a perfect clock app did appear, I still wouldn't be satisfied. I want a Night Suite app. The alarm clock would anchor the night suite, but there is a lot of important, complementary functionality that I want to be fully integrated with my alarm clock.

In my view, a compelling night suite would integrate an excellent Alarm Clock with the following key functions: Do Not Disturb with Whitelist, Night Clock with super-dimming, low power warning and super-reliability.

Part 1 covering the rational and must-have features is here. This Part 2 covers bonus and nice-to-have features.

Core Alarm

On-the-fly snooze (a feature from Alarm Clock Plus). So when the alarm goes off, in addition to Snooze, and Dismiss, there is a third option: Snooze Until. When you select Snooze Until, it defaults to the alarm's existing snooze duration, but you can dial it up or down.

Skip until X date. My current alarm app, Alarm Clock Xtreme, has a "skip next". This is super-useful, but an advanced feature where I can skip until X date would be great for vacations.

Do Not Disturb with Whitelist

Option to reply with a text first time the number calls. Second call within period triggers a ring. Useful for travel, or relatives who aren't good at keeping track of time zones.

Low-key visual indicator if you received a call from a non-whitelist party. Possibly useful if you wake up in the middle of the night and notice and think the call could be important.

Timer

The on-the-fly snooze can be even more useful for timers.