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Ask HN: would you pay for a "Tell me when" service?
I'm thinking about productizing something like Huginn (https://github.com/cantino/huginn) plus Siri, with a human-driven coding / interaction layer and a simple UI.
A simple form that says "Tell me when ____________" and the user can type anything they want. Examples could range from "tell me when it's going to rain tommorrow" to "tell me when the price per watt of solar panels drops below X". What standing alerts would you want? How much would you pay per alert, and would you accept variable pricing by complexity? When you make these, a real person will evaluate them and use proprietary software on the backend to set them up. Concierge alerts about the world.
What do you folks think?
- 97-109-107 13y agoFor some of the simpler stuff here Google Alerts can be used to be notified of new occurances of a keyword.
- mindcrime 13y agoI think it's an interesting concept. Coming at it as a geek myself, my thought is "I want this". In fact, I've given some thought to building something like this myself in the past, but never had time. What I wonder, though, vis-a-vis making a business out of it is "will normal people want (or even understand) this"?
- mikemcdonald 13y agoI think IFTTT covers a lot of what you've mentioned. For example you can set an alert IF(its going to rain) THEN(send me a text), and a lot can be customized. What kind of alerts were you thinking that would need human evaluation?
- dscb 13y ago"tell me when it's going to rain tommorrow" Would the service tell you what time it would be raining/not raining the next day? Or would it alert you the first day that the weather told it that it would be raining the day after?
- eksith 13y agoThis would depend which weather data provider is being used. On my AccuWeather app, there's a graph showing the temps and whether it will rain etc... by the hour, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.
- bwh2 13y agoTell me when... * my website is down for >n minutes * my car needs (an oil change, new tires, etc.) * my credit card balance is within $x of $n * Justin Verlander is starting, 12 hours in advance * my softball game is rained out (and notify my entire team) * we've only got enough coffee grounds left for 2 pots * my (bus, train, flight) is running >5min late
- tectonic 13y agoThanks!
- swanson 13y agoI'll add some of mine. * I can watch MOVIE XYZ on Netflix/Amazon * Small indie movie is playing at the local Arts Cinema * A band is releasing a new album * I've spent more than my monthly budget * Someone links to my blog from their blog * Important European soccer games are being aired on TV
- tectonic 13y agoAnd would you pay for any of these?
- palidanx 13y agoFrom a southern california who drives a lot, I would like a tell me when service when I am going to hit traffic. We always have random freeway closures and accidents and I sometimes forget to look at the map.