I just setup one of my more fun, geeky things that I’ve done with my phone in a long time.
The problem: I drive to pickup my wife on a weekly basis, she knows i’m coming but doesn’t know exactly when so i always end up texting her that I’m waiting outside. Which seems kinda silly when I’d only have to wait a couple minutes for her to look for me and I have to get out my phone to do it, so I usually park first so I’m not texting while I’m driving or I text her from a stop light down the street.
The most geeky resolution to my simple problem: There’s probably all kinds of ways to do this easier by adding more complexity, but with her not being as geeky as me, I was trying to keep it simple for her. She puts up with enough of the weird apps I install on her iPhone. The way I would contact her before is I had a shortcut to message a contact setup on my android homescreen. It was only a few clicks: unlock phone > click shortcut > type “here” > send. That was too many steps for me, that’s like 6 clicks! So I downloaded the app Yo (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.justyo), connected it to IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/recipes/186454-yo-ifttt-text-my-friend) setting up a recipe to text a certain phrase over SMS to any 1 number when I “Yo” to IFTTT. Then I created an Android widget to one click that contact using the Yo app. So my new steps are unlock phone > click Yo widget. Thats it 1 click instead of 6. Now if I can just add that widget to my Android Wear watch when I get one that would be sweet.
Feel free to ask more about Yo or IFTTT if you want, they are both interesting concepts that are cross platform (minus the yo widget on iOS) and can be very useful if setup correctly. IFTTT (http://ifttt.com) is a lot more useful, if you’re a little geeky and haven’t heard of it, you should definitely check it out.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.justyo//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js