What real-world events would it be useful to receive notifications about? | Hacker News Reader

What real-world events would it be useful to receive notifications about?

8 pointsdavekiss11 comments

Tsunamis, nuclear explosions, epidemics, certain keywords received on the police scanner, public transit delays or cancellations, good deals on Ebay for HP 41CX calculators.

I would like to know about things that the powers that be specifically don't want me to know about. Laws that are being slipped through under the cover of night. Any changes to civil or human rights issues. Funding connections to politicians. Abuses of power.

Basically, a transparency module. And yes, I know this is what newspapers used to do, and some blogs attempt to. The signal to noise just isn't great and delivery is not very directed.

Interesting question. Are there certain constraints or parameters to your question? If not, here are some things that comes to my mind:

1. Sudden (unexpected) weather changes 2. Location-relevant deals/coupons (relevant to my interests) 3. Any breaking news (in a similar manner to how things tend to break on Twitter b4 mainstream news broadcasts it) 4. If friends/family are within a local proximity

No real parameters. Cell phones can be programmed to do tasks based on its sensors (eg. turn on vibrate when face down, go silent when past 10pm) I'm just interested in hearing what kind of tasks or notifications (email, sms etc) would be useful to receive from non-digital devices.

I'll continue to think about it. I have been using http://ifttt.com for notifications throughout my social apps. I have become obsessed with it because its ease-of-use and quick setup.

From what's not readily available -- earthquakes in the area, tsunamis, power/phone/cable outages and fire alarms at specific locations (think - a street block), Amber alerts, public service announcements.

What about working in things that can be sensed? Motion, sound, temperature, force etc.