I was at a cafe today, discussing life as men do on Saturday mornings. My friends, a business owner and a Software developer threw out an idea for a coffee-ordering app. Coffees on the go. Pay for coffee online on and have it ready by the time you reach the cafe.
I pushed it further by suggesting location services on the app, it's quite ingenious really and probably on trial already. Order coffee on your phone, as you approach the cafe, your location shows up on the cafe's location finder. As you get closer, the barista starts making your coffee, all ready for you to walk in and out in two seconds with a fresh cup of orange mocha frappacino!
A friend recently worked on a project at MIT, trialing a similar app in Copenhagen. A suggestive tool, it tracks your favourite destinations, places you would visit if you knew about them (like cool, hidden cafes in alleys), location of friends and how long it would take to visit them. The idea is to use downtime effectively. Say, you have a 2-hour lunch break, the app tells you where or whom to visit, how long it will take you to get there and back.
To me, that takes the fun out of adventure and exploring. But, it does seem to be the future of short bursts of leisure.
I pushed it further by suggesting location services on the app, it's quite ingenious really and probably on trial already. Order coffee on your phone, as you approach the cafe, your location shows up on the cafe's location finder. As you get closer, the barista starts making your coffee, all ready for you to walk in and out in two seconds with a fresh cup of orange mocha frappacino!
A friend recently worked on a project at MIT, trialing a similar app in Copenhagen. A suggestive tool, it tracks your favourite destinations, places you would visit if you knew about them (like cool, hidden cafes in alleys), location of friends and how long it would take to visit them. The idea is to use downtime effectively. Say, you have a 2-hour lunch break, the app tells you where or whom to visit, how long it will take you to get there and back.
To me, that takes the fun out of adventure and exploring. But, it does seem to be the future of short bursts of leisure.