[wealthychef]

Attaching locations to contexts is great on iPhone, but there are some important improvements needed

0) OF for Mac should optionally be location-aware as well.
1) Need to allow multiple locations for a context. For example, there are multiple grocery stores in my area, I might want a "grocery store" context that recognizes all of them.
2) Need to be able to manage locations for contexts on my Mac and sync them with my iPhone, because typing on the iPhone is much more tedious
3) Should be able to use Address book for locations.

[blewis]

Originally Posted by wealthychef

1) Need to allow multiple locations for a context. For example, there are multiple grocery stores in my area, I might want a "grocery store" context that recognizes all of them.

If you want to recognize _all of them_ the do Business Search on "grocery store" and assign that to your grocery store context. That solves the _all of them_ problem and that feature is already there in OF iPhone.

However, I would like to be able to search on multiple businesses on OF iPhone. For example, I'd rather not search on "Hardware Store", I'd prefer to search on "Home Depot", "Lowes", and "ACE". I don't want "Jim's Fancy Dancy Paint and Pony Supply House" showing up as a possibility because I really didn't like the way Jim painted my last pony.

[Toadling]

As a loyal customer of "Jim's Fancy Dancy Paint and Pony Supply House", I must admit I'm surprised you don't want them showing up in your hardware store searches. But to each his own. :-)

Seriously, I agree with blewis. It would be nice to search only for specified businesses (plural). I've already run into that once. Right now you have two choices: (1) everything in a category or (2) only one specific business name.

-Dennis

[Andrew]

blewis, I think this should work for you:

"home depot" OR lowes OR "ace hardware"

(It's important to enter "OR" in uppercase.)

[blewis]

Originally Posted by Andrew

blewis, I think this should work for you:

"home depot" OR lowes OR "ace hardware"

(It's important to enter "OR" in uppercase.)

Nice! I think that did the trick! You're my new favorite! You can have the locations be really general or really specific. Cool.

I did get some seemingly strange behavior where I couldn't sense what location in my search equation was getting priority. For example, I typed A OR B OR C, and OF iPhone would choose location A, even though it was 10 miles further away than B. It got more weird when I swapped, say B OR A OR C. Location A still got picked (I think that showed the order wasn't important). For a while I thought it might be selecting based on how big the business was - i.e. suspected that big business shows up first in a search. Once I typed B OR C and I swear it started picking Z. I was like WTF YO! (how in the world could Fat Sound OR Sam Ash resolve to "Harry's Guitar Shop" - seriously).

I messed with the ordering for a bit more, and then it seemed to start picking the closest location, but didn't change from the original search string. Not sure how that sorted itself out. :-[ I think the Skyhook database has my work WiFI totally confused with some other one, so I blame that. I guess I need to get that 3G! :-]

On a final note, after my ramble, thanks for the tip!

[ramatsu]

Originally Posted by Andrew

blewis, I think this should work for you:

"home depot" OR lowes OR "ace hardware"

(It's important to enter "OR" in uppercase.)

That's a great tip, and I'll be able to use it in my local area. But one of the most promising things about Business Search locations is also sort of a weakness: I'd like to know where the nearest real grocery store is when out of town (and my explicit A OR B OR C list may not correspond to grocery chains in that area), but half the time it just shows me a Shell or Arco station's mini-mart, because they are listed as grocery stores. Not helpful when I need to shop for Thanksgiving dinner fixings.

Of course, sometimes a Coke and bag of Cheet-Os may be all I need and the mini-mart would be great, so the real issue is that the Business Search database taxonomy (wherever that lives) doesn't have sufficient granularity to serve my common use cases. (Or maybe it does - I'm blind guessing what keywords will work as business searches, so if there is a published taxonomy, can you point me to it?)

A solution that would provide lots of other benefits would be to show all the relevant businesses within a set radius, and include them ALL on the Google map you link to from the <1 mile button in the location headers. This is pretty much what other business search apps like Yelp do, and it's infinitely useful. It would help me screen out the mini marts, and also choose to go .1 mile further to a supermarket that I knew had the brand of whatever I preferred. Getting a single, closest hit is just not helpful enough that I'm even confident I'll get in the habit of using locations, and I LOVE the idea.

Speaking of <1mile, I haven't found anywhere to set the location radius (again, like Yelp), but will keep looking through the forums and docs. If you don't have that, PLEASE do add it. Sometimes I'm in the middle of a dense city, sometimes I'm out in rural areas. I guess that even more useful than a distance meter would just be a threshold setting for how many results, with the distance of each listed and the list ordered by distance.

Very promising product - I'm not someone who will spend time to administer organizational tools, so I'm hoping that OmniFocus' added value (like locations - Killer Feature, if done right) will balance well against the amount of effort it takes to use it.

[BK0001]

It's been 2 years since the idea of getting OmniFocus for Mac location-aware.

I can't set up location-aware contexts on my Mac - need to go to my iPhone or iPad for that.

Why? No clue. Add this to the list of things that are poorly coordinated among the OmniFocus apps.

[hypotyposis]

Originally Posted by BK0001

It's been 2 years since the idea of getting OmniFocus for Mac location-aware.

I can't set up location-aware contexts on my Mac - need to go to my iPhone or iPad for that.

Why? No clue. Add this to the list of things that are poorly coordinated among the OmniFocus apps.

Isn't there a workaround using one of the location-configuration apps?

Not sure how this shows "bad coordination among OF apps" anyway–OF Mac isn't specifically designed to work on laptops, which in any case don't have as much mobility as an iPhone/iPad.

[hypotyposis]

Originally Posted by ramatsu

But one of the most promising things about Business Search locations is also sort of a weakness: I'd like to know where the nearest real grocery store is when out of town (and my explicit A OR B OR C list may not correspond to grocery chains in that area), but half the time it just shows me a Shell or Arco station's mini-mart, because they are listed as grocery stores.

Sounds like that's a problem with Google maps more than with OF, no? There's a TED talk by the guy who invented the Internet (TM) or something like that about a parallel open-source project I think... whichever way you go, information about businesses on maps is going to be partial in either sense of the term, methinks.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by wealthychef

Attaching locations to contexts is great on iPhone, but there are some important improvements needed
…

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