Lately, I have been thinking about this concept of location-based reminders (LBR). The idea is quite simple. a classical reminder is usually defined for a certain time, while a LBR is defined for a certain place. Setting a LBR opens a whole range of new possibilities as we can combine space and time in different manners to accommodate different behaviors (e.g., being reminded to buy milk while close to the grocery store but only on friday and sunday morning). I remember several projects done in the past that should have achieved exactly this point, like DeDe. However, they all failed because people are uncertain about their spatio-temporal patterns when communicating with other friends.

More specifically, the value of LBR is related to the fact of being reminded while being on the place. However the caveat is that either we are certain about our path in the city, in which case the value of the LBR is reduced, either we are uncertain about the path, the value of the LBR stays high but we can find ourself at home without milk.

Defining a spatio-temporal pattern is not a trivial task. Learning meaningful location is the first step but it is certainly not the added value of the application.

[Geominder, a simple LBR app]