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by ChuckMcM
5242 days ago
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Fair enough. You realize the 'nut' of this particular problem is capturing the 'free/busy' state. Capturing state requires a two things, a 'probe' (something which measures) and a 'policy' (something which looks at the measurements and produces a finding). Fortunately, in your particular case, the challenge of creating a probe which can measure 'busyness' answers your question (which is effectively 'No' btw). Chat programs work because they limit the problem to 'are you currently in chat' and can probe for that but without instrumenting your friends you are stuck trying to infer their 'busyness', and many people that kind of probing is considered none of your 'business' (pun intended). A limited (and its limited because it has to be proactive) conceptual idea is an app with a button that says 'bored' on your phone. When you press it, it would tell you how many of the friends you are 'following' have pressed that button in the last say 30 second, minute, or 10 minutes and offer to SMS that set. The downside is that it will not include folks who are doing something but they would rather be doing something else. |
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Situation: I'm at home and feel like meeting up with a buddy of mine and am having this problem. I launch the app and click a button that says I'm bored and would like to meet up with one of these people I'm 'following'. This then bring up a list of the followers that are free as well and the SMS option would be available. I could then message them and possibly meet up with them.
This was just an idea I had come up with that could possibly solve this problem I'm having. I figured it would be worth sharing if someone was looking to build something like this. I was hoping somwthing like this existed already though because I believe I would use it a lot. I completely understand there's no magical program that can know you're definitely bored and would like to meet up with a friend hahaha.