Bob
So my wife and I currently live in Austin, Texas, home of local startups like Favor and the classic pizza delivery services, and also happy to welcome San Francisco startups such as Instacart and Postmates to our neighborhood.
My wife has a health condition that prevents her from driving, so we also make frequent use of Uber. Any technology that allows my wife to stay home with our 1-year-old daughter and avoid running errands while handling Clementine, Clementine's carseat, and other items without a vehicle to leave anything behind in, is a welcome privilege.
The other piece of context you have to know about Bob is that our apartment is built something like a modern castle. It has high walls around in a sort of courtyard shape and is a veritable maze of twisty passages, all alike. We don't even have consistently ascending apartment numbers. 9 times out of 10, I get lost, so your Instacart delivery specialist or Postmates runner doesn't really stand a fair chance to make it to our apartment door.
In fact, most of the time, they get stuck outside the complex entirely, placing a phone call asking us to meet them out front.
Now I, being a programmer, Twilio fan, and generally used to optimizing my life to avoid phone calls while heads-down writing code (or in the middle of a 6-hour Destiny raid), saw an opportunity to automate away this problem, and thus Bob spawned out of pure thought* and 12 lines of Ruby code.
- Slightly-too-subtle reference to The Mythical Man-Month intended.
Features
Bob has three key features:
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Bob lets us copy our Favor runner or Instacart delivery specialist's phone number, and paste that number into our text message conversation with Bob himself. Bob thensends detailed instructions on navigating to our apartment door directly to the runner.
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Bob answers with repeated "9"s when you call the number, which has the nice side effect of immediately allowing deliverypeople into the apartment complex when they enter our apartment number into the callbox.
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Bob echoes any replies to his number to my wife and I, to our endless entertainment.
Try it out
Text you or your friend's number to Bob at +15122715352, see how he works. :)
Actual feedback
"Is Bob a real robot?!"
"The directions were amazing and very helpful, thank you!"
"Please thank Bob for me"
Authored
Bob was built by Nathaniel Jones in 2014 or so. You're welcome to copy him, rename him, or make him your own, but if you publish your new Bob, a link back my way is always appreciated. :)