Newsletter
We all tend to forget things from time to time. That’s just a fact of life. While there are many things one can do to try and improve memory so as to forget things less and less, completely removing the aspect of forgetting is not likely to become a reality for most people, and that’s entirely OK. Being OK doesn’t make it any less frustrating though when you walk out the door and forget your wallet, which you may need to purchase something while you’re out, or will absolutely need if you’re going to be driving since most people’s wallets carry their ID.
Google may be working on a way to help people combat the act of forgetting the little things like your keys, your wallet, your glasses or other small items with a new patent that they applied for. The new patent which surfaced today over at the United States Patent and Trademark Office describes Google’s idea for a system which alerts users to when they leave home without things like their keys. The systems is described as being capable of sending out alerts to the users’ smartphone when they exit the premises without an item which has been synced with or paired to the phone. Naturally, this kind of interaction between common everyday items like a wallet or keys, or glasses would need to have some way of communicating with the smartphone in the first place, and Google’s patent describes the method of communication as a few different possible options, such as Bluetooth, NFC, RFID and others.
Since this is just a patent application at this time it isn’t likely we’ll see any of these capabilities baked right into Android devices anytime soon, and of course there is the possibility we’ll never see this type of feature, nonetheless it’s a way in which users would be able to deal with one less frustration that plenty of people likely encounter almost daily. The patent also describes that users would have the capability to configure the alerts to go off at a certain distance, while also customizing settings like types of alarms, and the “desired frequency” of when the alerts go off.
