What would really be helpful is to be reminded of something you needed to do when you were at a specific location, regardless of what time it was. For instance, the next time I’m around the corner of 71st and I-465, I need to pick up my dry cleaning.

This type of alarm system could be implemented with the technology we have already at our disposal. Phones with GPS in them, cars with GPS or handheld GPS receivers.

The other potential application would be to use the cellular network itself to set reminders. For instance, you could set a reminder on your phone to occur the next time it was within range and of the same cell tower you’re hitting at the moment for your signal.

The other perhaps useful feature there would be to have two phones, synch with each other. The next time they’re within range of each other, announce the reminder to both parties, or perhaps even immediately initiate a call between the two phones.  The application of this would be, “Next time I’m with Mark remind me that I owe him $20 for lunch last week.”

Image: flickr user brucebeh and Google Local map underlay

Post from: EveryJoe

Location Based Alarms and Notifications

Does anyone else notice some things that are missing from the right-click contextual menu when you want to add something to your Outlook Calendar?

I probably have blogged about this before, but it’s again annoying every single time I go to do something that I think is intuitive and it’s not there.

Doesn’t it make sense to be able to right-click somewhere on your calendar and setup a reminder for you to do something? I know I can do that as a “task” and then specify myself to be reminded of the task at a certain time, but that just seems like too much additional work to me.

I think it’s also a missing feature to not have events on your calendar that can float from one day to the next. For instance, if I need to get a haircut today, but get busy and don’t get to it. Shouldn’t that be an item that I could tell to automatically float to tomorrow? Let’s then add the feature of a repeating item like that. If I cancel it for today, is it canceled again until the next repeat date? No, that would mean I’d have a mop for a hairdo for an extra month. The repeat date should be from the time the task is completed, not originally assigned right?

Another nice feature would be to get prompted for items that you had on your calendar to complete on one day but weren’t marked completed. For instance, I come in tomorrow morning and see that I missed my haircut and an appointment with my brother. I could float the haircut to today because I have time, or float it to tomorrow sometime because I’m a little more flexible.

I can’t really float my appointment with my brother, I’ll need to call him and propose a time to reschedule.

What’s everyone else think? What’s missing functionality from Outlook for you?

Post from: EveryJoe

Missing Options in Outlook Calendar