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Ask HN: Do you share your Google calendars with your friends?

3 points by pacifi30 ↗ HN
A little bit of background. I am the cofounder of a dating website for working professionals called Truffle and one of the things that we want to do is to import our user's work calendar and their work location and organize dates for them in one of their free time slots at a nearby cafes. We want to make dating align with our day to day life. Currently this is a manual process where the invitor picks a place/time and sends an invitation to the invitee who can accept/change/deny the invitation.

Fast forward to now, Seattle Startup Weekend is coming up this weekend and we want to pitch this location based scheduling app where given user's calendar info and their location, the app will recommend you time slots/locations to meet. We are going to use the app's backend for scheduling Truffle dates anyhow but I also wanted to see if there is market outside our above use case.

Will you use it for planning a dinner with your friends, so you import your calendar, work location/home location and the app will recommend you the time slots as well as the restaurants in the neighborhoods that is convenient of all your friends. We can also integrate this with Open table so that you can reserve a table right, even further we can hook up Uber, Zipcar to automatically reserve a car for you on the day of dining. So basically no need to email bunch of friends back and forth about the place/time, this app will give you enough data to make a decision.

For all the above things, the biggest question is there a need of a such a personal assistant and on top of that, are people willing to share their calendars and location info?

For every feedback, I'll give you guys a cute insight about dating scene in Seattle :)

9 comments

[ 8.5 ms ] story [ 28.7 ms ] thread
selfpost
Well, I wouldn't do that... there are always some people, you do not want to meet up. I think there should be some limitations to share such an info with the people who shall know or not =)
pacifi30
As a user you will only share your calendar and location with the app, your freinds wont see your whole calendar or location information. As an organiser, you will schedule time with couple of friends and the app will give you the best time slots and location for meeting.
selfpost
there is a misunderstanding then. when I saw "importing google calender", I misunderstood. can't you use such an app for the universities? you know it is always hard to book and organize many students... schedules always change.. sending an email to all students and informing them at the same time might be problem sometimes.
pacifi30
ok somehow I can't comment on your second link but I am doing here. So university use case is good but thats more of a notification use case, what we are trying to do is to predict a good time and location when a bunch of people are involved. Sure this can be used to schedule a class but generally classes are schedule based on the professor timings and students align thier calendars to it.
selfpost
nope. there should be two variables. one is professor's calendar, that's fine but the second one is room availability... both should match... and study rooms are also problem... people can use to book a room and organize a study room for their studies. I'm just trying to ask away by hoping that could give you some clues or ideas =)
pacifi30
Ok now I got it. This was actually a problem when I was in ASU that has a huge issue with scheduling. I wonder if the schools have an automated process to do this or they do it manually. I am tilting towards it being manual. But you are right, I think schools can be a good market for this :)
selfpost
well, I can't comment on your last message too, so here I go.

here in sweden we have some scheduling systems for student study rooms, but for the classrooms or halls, no way. and what is nice with your app, to me the most interesting thing with it, it considers location and user preferences, right ? there might be some classes in art business department but nobody knows it and that is why the courses might be cancelled or postponed. by using your app, the closest room with required features might be booked and students could be updated at the same time. that was my idea =)

pacifi30
Interesting, I like it. What you are saying is basically a more refined idea about apart from the use case of picking the best time and location for a dinner with your friends, this functionality can be used by schools to schedule a class depending upon the user preferences(if they are interested in the design course over at the arts department) and since the app will also have the knowledge of the rooms and halls it can recommend them better scheduling options.

By the way, if you dont mind me asking. Are you a Design major or CS major?

selfpost
definitely, you got it. my suggestion is turning and creating such apps for internal communication of organizations. trust me, sending mails and asking for permission take time... neither google, nor foursquare can touch internal informations inside an organization. but an app specifically developed for an organization's internal booking and organizing could worth.

well, not actually... I have majors in econ and also pols, but I'm a research assistant in engineering department and working in radical innovations =).