There are a few thoughts and activities going on in my life right now that are starting to pull together into a single thread.
The first was Apple’s most recent keynote where they talked about iHealth as a way to allow your health related apps to talk to each other and share information. I like this idea. But I would like to extend it a bit. Imagine that you have a fitness app – something that tracks how much you exercise and helps you with a training plan. Also imagine that you have a diet app that helps you track your food and water intake. Having these two apps talk to each other makes perfect sense – these are both apps that help you monitor your health and well being.
Now extend that a bit. I also have a grocery list app. I would like it if my diet app and my grocery app could share information. It might be something like this: I notice that I am about out of some item. I use my smartphone camera to scan the bar code on that product to add the item to my grocery list. At this point my diet app chimes in with a suggestion for an alternative similar item that better meets my health goals. All this happens because both apps use the product bar codes.
Now imagine that my training plan has me doing a long run in a couple of days. My menu app (that talks to my diet app and my grocery list app) suggests that I might want additional calories that day and suggests several meals that would fit that need. If I choose one of those the menu app could automatically adds the ingredients to my grocery list and once my long training day comes around my diet app can ask if I actually consumed the suggested menu.
The apps I already have currently make suggestions independent of one another to help me attain my goals. It just seems like a natural next step to have my apps work together to offer even better suggestions that are more tailored for me and my goals.
I realize I am talking about apps, but all of this could be device independent. It is really about having the information where I am and on the device I am currently working on.
Just a thought.