Jelly Bean’s assistant: Google Now

This sounds neat:

• When a user is located at a bus or train station, a Google Now public transportation card will appear that says when the next buses and trains are arriving.
• As a user walks down the street in a new place, Google Now will suggest points of interest.
• Once a user searches for a flight, Google Now creates a card for it that is updated with flight status and delays.
• Google will also determine what sports team a user is most interested in, based on search history, and show a card of scores and upcoming games.
• There are also cards for travel, translation, etc.

Definitely this is the wave of current “it” apps such as Waze and Cue, and even Siri to some extent. It’s a drain on the battery, but that’s technical and can be solved. It raises all sorts of privacy concerns — imagine your phone beaming out location data constantly to a dozen different companies.

But the real problem is the annoyance factor: your phone never shutting up with coupons for Subway, spas, and offers to test drive Hondas. It’s going to be tough to balance and get the noise level manageable. Many will just shut them off entirely if annoyed even once.

Apple provides decent controls over Notification Center, we’ll see how well Google does it considering that to them this is just another platform from which to beam shitty ads to your eyeballs.