I’m beta-testing a new personal assistant. Ok, she’s not a real person, she’s I Want Sandy, an electronic organiser.
It’s pretty simple to use, I email or text (well, in the US I could text her, from Australia I can’t yet) a message like “remind me to buy a birthday present for Josh on Friday at 1pm” and I’ll get an email/text about 15 minutes beforehand to remind me.
It’s a good little system so far, I can see it being really useful with the SMS feature - to be able to text “remind me to check parking meter in 2 hours” and then forget about it would be a really nice feature in my life, I hate getting parking tickets.
It also works as an address book by automatically adding addresses I send it, and I can CC Sandy in on a conversation with a friend and she will pick up on responses needed - so I can send John an email saying “Let’s catch up for a coffee at 11 on Friday” and CC Sandy and she will automatically send me a reminder of it (and John too if required).
I do have some slight gripes with the system - I find it hard to use a different email address for Sandy than the one they have assigned me. I’d like to be able to switch gender of “Sandy” - it would be nice if I could have a male pretend PA rather than a female one. I know it’s only a small point, but this does reinforce the stereotype that girls have assistant type jobs and make “really great PAs”.
Now it’s just a matter of switching my haphazard system to the one place. At the moment I write something on the back of my hand if it’s really important and needs to be actioned that day, I write it in my (real-life) notebook if it’s a to-do item, I have drafts saved in my gmail with things like frequent flyer numbers, I have random ta-da lists and google documents for things like wedding planning information, I have a basecamp account with client to-do lists and documents, I have my moleskin that I take everywhere for things I remember randomly, and on top of all that I say to people “can you remind me to do this later”.
Having it all in one place would be such a luxury that I can’t even imagine it.
This post is tagged under: Cool websites, innovation, trends
