I have been traveling a ton since Jan 1 for my company Spotted Koi. Going to networking events, meeting with potential new customers, and also with customers that we have and continue to work with. So far, it has been alright except that I frequently have to pull over and use my iPhone Google Maps to find a spot to crash between meetings. Not only that, but the cost of driving around the block a couple times and then buying a drink so I don’t feel guilty adds up pretty quickly.

What I am proposing is a website/app that will help me out by doing the following:

1. Grab my schedule from my calendar, along with addresses for where I need to be
2. Plot that schedule on a map
3. Show me places I can crash between meetings
1. Possibly even show me the “cost” of crashing there
2. Free wifi is a must
3. Parking for free is huge too
4. Optimize my travel route for time or distance
5. Allow me to have this route on my phone, so that I can use it as I go
1. If the app had a schedule listed out and could one-click “get directions” to my google map, omg.
6. Give me reminders of where I need to be
7. Let me check in using Foursquare to places I visit (one button would be AWESOME)

The idea here is that it would help me plan my day, show me how much time I actually have between meetings including travel time, and the relative cost of stopping at Starbucks all the time.

For example, some of the places I would like to be able to stop at are places that have free wifi, like Starbucks, McDonalds, Libraries (some do, some don’t) and other places where I may or may not need to pay to use the internet.

I know there is someone out there who thinks this project would be really easy to build, and it would save me a ton of time and money. I would pay $4.99 for this app for sure, especially if I could plan it on my computer and share it with my phone.

All of a sudden on Dec 15th I started seeing some really crazy events showing up on my Google Calendar:

All I could think was that one of two things had to be going on:

1. Some calendar software I am using had a “funny” developer
2. Someone was messing with me

I disregarded the first couple events, but here it is February and this stuff is still showing up on my calendar.  Now, this would not be too much of a worry except that it was showing up on my work calendar and my boss started asking questions.  There was an event that was nothing but the word “Fuck”, I quickly deleted it upon my boss discovering it.

Then my brain-switch kicked on (must have been the coffee) and I realized that not only have these crazy events been showing up in my calendar, but I have not been getting the SMS event reminders I should be getting. Ding! I went and checked my SMS settings on the Google Calendar and my old phone number was in there.

So, for 3 months some poor guy who got my old phone number has been getting the equivalent of a collections-agency-annoyance from his new number.  Unfortunately, I had that number for 13 years, so he is probably also getting random phone calls from people looking for me.  I tried to remember to switch everything over but there are some things you just forget.

Here’s to the guy who got my old number, and here’s to hopefully solving the problem so I don’t get some random dude showing up ready to kill me. If you know him, tell him I’m sorry and buy him a beer.