Whimsical

Whimsical

Many sites have events on web pages that can, in seconds, become buried from a user's view. Unfortunately, this disproportionately affects those with mental illness or memory disorders and can help individuals with very little time to no longer constantly scroll for their information. This problem can leave many users wondering weeks, days or seconds after seeing an interesting event with the thought... what, when and where that event could be found. With the Whimscal Google Chrome Extension, users can create a centralized location to remember where, when and what that event or activity was with a click of a button through their Google Chrome and their Google Calendar; providing these users with the opportunity to join an otherwise forgotten event, on a Whim.

What it does

Whimsical allows users of Google Chrome to remove the clutter of web pages and their lives by extracting data through grabbing screenshots that are converted to data (using Google Vision and Machine Learning (ML)). This data is then added to a user's Google Calendar, on a Whim.

How We built it

Whimsical was built on the backend by using Node.js. Google Vision API was used to parse text from the images. Then, we used processing algorithms to pass specific data points from the text. On the user interface side, the Chrome extension is designed to get the screen-clipping of the current tab and then send it to the Node.js Services. Depending on the result of the parsing, the event is added for the user for a specific date, time and location in the Google Calendar. This was achieved by using Google Calendar API through making requests through the API.

Challenges We ran into

During this project, we faced many errors and obstacles in programming this concept and with additional time would be able to present a more complete application.

Accomplishments that We're proud of

Team effort involved in brainstorming, creating and troubleshooting this application.

What We learned

Thirty-six hours is insufficient time to create a great project but we were able to get the core concepts of our Google Chrome extension.

What's next for Whimsical

Additional features and graphical designs to draw and market to users. Expansion of concept to other avenues that could be addressed, such as a Recipe Book that grabs recipes from websites without scrolling through excess data. Expansion into Augmented Reality (AR) Recipe Book that uses visual aids through AR, i.e. visual timers and ML to aid the user in getting their best meal perfect every time