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Comment by Tyrannosaurs | Hacker News Reader

Can you give examples of good stuff you've seen from Google Now that have been a real help to you? Stuff that's genuinely useful rather than just "look at that" cool.

EDIT: So far I'm seeing a lot of reasons why Apple wanted to get into maps. A lot of the value add here seems to be navigation related.

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If I search for an address on google my phone will know and tell me how long it will be to get there and offers to bring up driving instructions.

I searched for sports teams so my now cards will show up with scheduled games as well as previous scores, but only immediately before and after games. It's not permanent clutter.

Handles package tracking. No more logging into amazon and going through my cart to find a tracking number, or digging in email.

It does meetings notifications based on how soon I need to leave to get to the location. Previously I'd have to find out how far away the location was and set a reminder for that amount of time and leave enough time for traffic. Not having to worry about an accident or construction is spectacular. This is really my killer feature.

Google Now does all of that automatically.

Google Now will remind you when to leave in order to arrive to an appointment on time (as long as you are using Google Calendar) taking into account the local traffic situation. This one helped me already a few times not to miss a meeting.

I actually had an OpenTable confirmation in my gmail that wasn't added to my calendar, and Google Now still alerted me when it was time to leave. That one creeped me out until I realized it had scanned my email (still kinda creeps me out).

Several people have mentioned Google Now mining their email for flight reservations. I've seen that, but recently saw a new twist: it wasn't me flying but some friends coming to visit me who had forwarded me their details. Google Now put up a card for their flight, and labelled it with them as passengers, meaning it had distinguished between a reservation for me and one for them. Then the next day, along with the weather card for my town, it showed one for theirs as well. It had recognized that I picked them up.

Another story, this time where I was the one visiting: after spending a night at friends, Google Now added a card for directions and driving time back to what it called "Unknown location." From my location info, it surmised I was staying at that place and was offering directions back. Being in a foreign city, this was actually very useful.

Creepy, yes, but useful.

One thing I thought was awesome recently, had a business trip, Google Now knew about my flight information and popped up a notification telling me when to leave to be at the airport an hour early - even offered to navigate!

Any idea on how it knew? An entry you'd made in your calendar? Scanning your e-mail?

They don't make a secret of the fact that they scan your gmail account for a lot of Google Now's functionality.

I believe it scans your gmail for things like flights and package deliveries.

This is all a YMMV situation... I find that if I google something associated with a physical address on my desktop machine, logged into google, my phone will have a card with directions to that location.

That can be useful, but it's usually just an annoyance as I only wanted to call them or do something on their website.

Anybody have a solution to deactivate that behaviour?

I'm pretty positive this came from Gmail.

It also regularly updates me when my flights status changes (delays, gates changed, that sort of thing).

I'm really torn on this. Part of me says "hey, I never [expressly] said you could look at that" and another part is saying "that's really neat".

Google Now notified me that it had determined where I live, where I work and where I make regular visits, and asked me to confirm that it had the locations correctly (it did). Now it tells me when I need to leave to get to an appointment, depending on how I'm getting there and what the traffic is like. I didn't have to set up or configure any of it - it just worked.

One thing that I find genuinely useful is the Traffic/Navigation feature. It is almost always correct and gives me the best route even in Bangalore (India). Also if I search for some location on Google Maps, I get a suggestion on Google Now about traffic, route and direction.

Using Google Maps on my desktop to search for a specific location will pull up that location as a card in Google Now. This is always useful if I forget to record the address before I leave.

Appointments has a nice reminder that you need to get somewhere and it will take X amount of time, so you should leave at Y.

Traffic card is amazingly helpful and surprisingly very accurate.

I work from home and go into the office 1 day a week (on Thursday). Google Now has picked up on this and every Thursday morning I'll have card on my home screen showing me estimated time to the office.

Searched for restaurants on Google Maps on my Laptop's Chrome... there were navigation options for each on my phone in Google Now.

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