GOOGLE MAPS PRODUCT ABSTRACTION IDEA: TRAFFIC & ROUTES RELATED
Ok, so I just had an idea:
We analyze google maps for a given point A to point B route on an hourly/daily basis to determine the best time to take the route. And moreover, it’s not just a one route. It’s many routes that get from point A to point B. It’s not just what Google currently offers, i.e. traffic lines in red and green and whatnot. We find patterns over a long period of time and say the likelihood that a given route will have traffic. The goal is so someone can create a schedule of when to travel and when not to!
HOW IT WORKS:
1) user enters in a point A and a point B
2) our system determine ALL possible routes without regards to traffic.
3) our system monitors all those routes and provides a list or even graph of how long it will take to make trip starting at every 15 minutes throughout the day. Imagine an area graph with the X axis having increments of 15 minutes through an entire day, and the Y axis has the time it will take to make the trek on average based on our analysis of the trip for the past 30 days, of even past 360 days.
4) then we basically produce a list of the top routes to take in the evening, morning, etc. WE can go many places from here in terms of the GUI and user experience to present the information concisely. People dont wanna look at the graphs of 20 routes, but they can if they want to. So on top of that, we need to figure out how to concisely produce the best routes.
5) we also need to put in search and filter parameters to differentiate weekends and holidays, etc. Obviously. I wont even get into it now, but when I spec the product, u can rest assured I’ll have stuff in mind here.
6) HOW DOES IT WORK: well, this is the hard part. Hopefully we can intercept the precise paths of their traffic lines as generated by their Traffic Overlay method:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html
But if worse comes to worse, we’d basically have to setup a bunch of computers to grab tons of screenshots all time that we use OCR to analyze, similar to what BrowserShots.com does for analyzing how your html markup looks on various browsers.
Anyway, that’s the idea. The hope is that the implementation isn’t as complex as it could end up being. It’s not the next billing dollar business, but it’s definitely a hell of a lot more useful than most of the Web 2.0 Bubble Bullshit out there, and I think it would find a solidified place in the web as a tool many people can’t live without.
BUSINESS MODEL:
2 route are free, 3+ costs a small amount. U could straightup just charge per every route a small monthly fee. That’s it.
And if the goal isn’t clear yet, the goal is to be able to build a schedule for yourself, not just see how the traffic is doing now, but to know generally when to make certain trips so you can with reasonable certainty plan your travel times….I guess the week spot is that we need to offer some sort of benefit for to the minute traffic reports on top of what Google offers. Cuz there will be times that u need that info, and what is stopping people from just going to google. So that said, it would be nice to one up google there some how too.
Let me know if you have any ideas.
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