Android App Indexes Your Life & Augments Your Memory [INVITES]
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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Friday
Quick Pitch: Friday is an automated journal for Android meant to augment human memory. Users can ask the app questions about events in their lives and Friday will provide accurate results.
Genius Idea: A personal search engine for your Android device.
We use our mobile phones to do a lot more than make phone calls. We snap and share photos, manage our calendars, update our friends on our status, listen to music, send email, text message friends and family, and use our phones to navigate the world.
In many ways, the actions we take on our mobile phones are representative of our lives, tracking who we know, what we do and where we go. Friday, a private alpha application by India-based startup Dexetra, looks to help you collect these mobile moments and build a journal that you can reference and recall.
“We are helping people remember their lives,” Dexetra co-founder Binil Antony explains. “We thought that since the role being played by the smartphone is so significant, why not use it to assist people?”
Friday indexes and aggregates most of the available data streams on your phone. This includes your calls, text messages, emails, music, battery life, calendar events, photos and location. It uses this information to create a semantic map of your life.
You can use Friday to revisit a past day in your life or you can ask the application questions about where you’ve been or what you’ve done. Think of the latter as a memory aide. For instance, say you want to locate specific photos you took while traversing Central Park and listening to Lady Gaga. Input “photos taken from Central Park while listening to Lady Gaga,” and Friday will fetch them for you.
Essentially, Friday indexes your actions to build your own personal search engine.
Friday also creates an analytics engine around your life, tracking activities, places and events. Who do you call the most? Where do you spend most of your time? Friday will tell you. Sure, it’s less practical than the self-discovery side of the application, but it’s your personal data in aggregate.
Antony says the startup’s next priority is to release cloud synchronization to allow users to search and browse their mobile footprint from anywhere. Also in the works is a feature he calls “Intelligent Suggestions.” Friday would recognize patterns in your behaviors and make suggestions accordingly. If, for instance, you’re always at the same place at the same time every Monday, Friday would send you an alert if you’re not there at your usual time.
Dexetra first released Friday in late February and has more than 5,000 users. The startup has raised a small seed round of funding.
500 Mashable readers can get access to the application by signing up for an alpha invite on Friday’s site and inputting the code “Mashable500″ in the “Why would you want to try out Friday?” field.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSparkThe Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
2011-05-26
Android App Indexes Your Life & Augments Your Memory [INVITES]
via mashable.com
