Apps to monitor your daily routines and take action coming to Nokia and iOS devices

Situation- and environment-aware gadgets were something in the realms of sci-fi movies until recently. Smartphones, however, are jam-packed with location, voice and motion sensors, and it was a matter of time for these technologies to come out of the lab, and enter the mainstream.

Nokia just launched the beta version of its Situations application that can program your phone's behavior for various occasions. A Situation can be determined out of the time of the day, your GPS/network cell ID location, and being in the range of a particular WiFi network or Bluetooth device, among others. However, it still relies on user input to tell your Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature 2 to Symbian^3 device what to do in various locations and/or situations - you have to tell the phone what to do when you are in the office, while you are sleeping, and so on.

Jigsaw, on the other hand, automates this process to an extent. It uses your phone's mic, GPS and accelerometer sensors to monitor your daily routines, and take action accordingly. Developed in collaboration with the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, it has algorithms for distinguishing if the phone is in a trouser or a jacket pocket, for example. Combining these with information sent from the other sensors and the microphone, Jigsaw stores information about your activities on the phone, instead of online, for privacy concerns.

This information can be used in a variety of ways - from updating your social network accounts to preparing updates for your doctor or fitness instructor. It turns off certain features depending on your activities to save battery - when you are static, for example, it doesn't check the GPS position, and so on. Thus a phone running Jigsaw all the time can go 12 hours with average use, instead of 6 with all monitoring features constantly on. The application is supposed to appear for the iPhone and Nokia handsets next year.

What do you think - "smartphones getting too smart", or "cool, 'cause I can't be bothered to update Facebook on my own"?

source: NokiaConversations & NewScientist