Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I would like one spot to go to remind me of when everything is going to expire. I have warranties, domain names, web services, SVN services, email accounts, airline miles -- all kinds of crap that has some sort of expiration date on it. And I can't keep track of any of it.

And I want the machine to do all the work -- heck if I want to go around entering everything. I want to answer a few questions, maybe have it "follow me" around as I surf, and then keep a list of when things are going to run out.

View on HN

Can't deny it's a problem for you, but I add all that sort of stuff to my Google Calendar as it crops up. I have lots of things in my calendar years in advance. Works a treat.

I suppose a Firefox plugin that would automatically hook up to your Google Calender would be perfect.

Just trying to help out with a rant. As you said, there are lots of easy solutions to this.

But I find it hard to believe you track everything this way. Things like airline miles expire 2 years from the last time you flew. Do you update Google every time you fly? When you buy a toaster, do you note whether it has a 90-day full replacement or a 30-day parts warranty? We got an email from Google last month with coupons for free AdSense -- they expired in a couple of weeks or so. Amazon sends out sale notices all the time. Little stuff like that adds up over time. It's easy for me to catch the big stuff, but do you really catch all the little stuff on Google calendar as well?

It's easy for me to catch the big stuff, but do you really catch all the little stuff on Google calendar as well?

Not always, but if I didn't already add it to Google Calendar, I didn't catch it at all (let alone to any other place). I imagine such things could be automated but that'd require collaboration with the producers/retailers/etc.

Though, I wouldn't track warranties since they're not typically renewable and all products in my country have a 1 year warranty. The expiry doesn't matter much. Something either breaks before they expire or after.

Do you update Google every time you fly?

No, but I don't make up flights just to use airmiles anyway. I have about 40k airmiles but if they expire, well, I wouldn't go any place I didn't want to go already just to use them up :-)

I agree that this would be an interesting problem to solve.

But I doubt it could be made conclusive without manual data-entry. Even a tool following you around the web can't possibly understand "Ah, he just ordered a toaster" - much less when that toaster actually arrives, gets returned etc.

I think at the bottom of this lies an interesting UI challenge. How to make data-entry painless enough so that you, me and others would actually use it?

Or, perhaps, instead of data entry, a more universal data format and communication protocol for exchanging and synchronizing date information, so that supermarket purchases, websites etc. automatically add the data to a person's centralized calendaring system. This is something I want to make a (small) part of my current project, so someone please beat me to it, and then you can make a plugin for my project once I've launched :).

But I doubt it could be made conclusive without manual data-entry.

Thought.. it could be made semi-automated. Perhaps this sort of data could be in a QR bar code that when scanned (maybe even using the webcam that comes with most machines now) results in a program tracking the event as Daniel suggested.

www.warrantyelephant.com is a site designed to solve your warranty problem. Won't help with the others though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com