Product Ideas

[da]

via conversation with chezmax:

Wouldn't it be great if you could get a GPS with a personality? When you go around a corner, if you take it sharply enough, it will go "whee." Of course in an unemotional GPS standard tone.

Or a GPS with the personality of Marvin the Paranoid Android. "You can turn left here. Or right. I don't really care, what is the point?"

It might be fun if it had way-points built in and you've told it you're not really in a hurry: it could suggest brief detours. "Hey, let's stop for coffee and doughnuts! Turn right in 100 meters."

You could tell it how much time you have to waste.

Or, to give a route that only involves right turns.

Comments

[redsash.livejournal.com]

"It's a GPP GPS"
"What's the GPP stand for?"
"Genuine People Personalities."
"Sounds Awful."
"It is."

~r

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Win.

[chezmax]

I can just imagine someone *glaring* at their GPS the first time it said "Whee."

[dpolicar]

I have to take a moment here and be thankful for the sheer quantity of surplus energy available to me and mine at this time.

[jeanne-d-arc.livejournal.com]

Prarie Home Companion's Guy Noir episode this week was about a GPS system with an attitude. Hilarious!

[cypherpunk95.livejournal.com]

I've been in a car with a GPS (I think it was a Garmin) that, whenever you do something different from what it suggests, says in a really snide tone, "reCALculating". You can totally hear the unspoken ", you idiot" at the end of it.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

That personality... I could do without. :P

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

I think the "TomTom" has downloadable voices, so it can have an Irish brogue, or have a "slutty" sounding female voice, for instance.

(My car has a GPS system; I call her 'Betty' because she just sounds like a Betty. I think you can change the voice; I'm not sure. I haven't really looked into all those little features.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Wouldn't it be great if you could get a GPS with a personality?

Erm, no. For that sort of experience I have passengers. Trying to guide me using a printed out map that is not up to date. "Turn right.. oh, there's no street there. Turn anyway!"

And, alas, some GPS devices these days do suggest pit stops at chain restaurants.