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Comment by csutter | Hacker News Reader

Google Now has this built in, a card pops up with a map to my destination and tells me when I need to leave. Very useful.

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The only difference is that Google Now doesn't include a buffer. I set my appointments based on what time I want to be there instead of the starting time to resolve this.

If I schedule an event that starts at 7:00pm and it is on the other side of town, Google Now will tell me that I need to leave at 6:15pm to make there on time.

ktsmith mentioned the buffer, though, which seems to be the central innovation of Bounce. It factors in extra time that we are prone to forget about. Google Now accounts for traffic, but does it also easily (and automatically) account for extra time to cover some of these:

- find my shoes (the 1yo hid them) - change the baby before I go - whoops, today's trash day, I need to take those out - I need to stop for gas

Many of these things are solvable by pre-planning (especially gas or chore management) and doing them the prior day, but the fact is that many of us still forget to do them, because we don't make an effort to do so. I know I frequently underestimate the time it takes for me to wrangle the kids, and also often forget to account for the likelihood of one-off things like gas/trash/errands. More importantly, when I discover those necessities, I forget to adjust my expected departure time for future events to reflect those new needs.

Thanks for the heads-up on Bounce, guys. The intro video is excellent, and I've installed the Android version.

This is exactly what I was referring to. Two nights a week I take my son to swim lessons at 6pm. Google now will tell me between 13 and 18 minutes before 6pm that it's time to leave as that's all the longer it takes to get there with or without traffic. The problem is that once we are there he has to change clothes which means he would be late for every class if we only left 13-18 minutes before the class. I instead changed the appointment to 5:50PM and he gets there on time including changing his clothes. That ten minute buffer is not accounted for by Now while Bounce appears to try and figure that out.

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