Tell us if you’ve heard this one before. You’re sitting in your car. Alone. While your friends are frantically texting you to find out just where, exactly, are you because you are now, officially, 15 minutes late to the party.
The lateness has earned you a reputation. Dublin-based software company
Ripple Mobile might be able to help. They’re making friendships and relationships stronger by offering
OnTime, a GPS-powered app that pulls meeting information from your web-based and mobile calendars and ties it to current weather and traffic patterns to give you the quickest route to your destination. The $1.99 mobile app, available now for the iPhone and Blackberry, will also alert you when it's time to leave and then text or email the people waiting for you as to whether you will be on-time or late. An Android version is under development.
"I think a lot of times busy people fill their calendars with events and aren’t always aware of how long it's going to take them to get them some place,” says Ripple Mobile co-founder Kevin Miller. “That can happen especially if you're in a new location that you're not familiar with. OnTime provides them with a little less required planning and allows them to be more productive.”
It’s one of two mobile apps Ripple Mobile has developed. The other, Ripple Tag, allows friends with Smart Phones to find each other's locations in real time and setup a place to meet.
Ripple Mobile was founded in 2002 and is housed in the
Dublin Entrepreneurial Center. The company has three employees and earlier this year received a TechGenesis Grant through
Tech Columbus.