Review: iwantsandy.com - Your Very Own Personal Assistant

I find myself constantly trying to find the best way to keep track of this I need to do and appointments I may have, flight times, etc. I have an iPhone and have tried things like Ta-Da form 37Signals, and also the iPhone friendly Google Calendar. But none of those quite seemed to fit the bill.

I also have tried the famous analogue PDA pocket moleskin, but while staright forward, I never seem to follow up and it has not quite worked out either.

Enter iwantsandy.com. I think I was tipped off to this by an rss feed item, but the source escapes me. In any case, I went over to see what it was all about and decided to give it a try in my never ending search. Let me say, it is way cool. Very simple and very powerful.
So here is the deal. It is billed as your very own Personal Assistant named Sandy. You interact with Sandy via email, just as if you were emailing an assistant. When you sign up, you get a unique email address to iwantsandy that you send your emails to. I simply added this to the address book on my iPhone and that was it.  Sandy will also interact directly with you through Twitter.
Let me go over some examples. Let say I want to add a todo item, it is as simple as this:
send and email to sandy that says “Remind me to pick up my dry cleaning tomorrow @todo”

It is as easy as that. There are keywords Sandy keys off of. I always start mine with “Remind Me”. She is also very date aware and will schedule the todo item for tomorrow, and notes the proper date. She will also know things like: “Next Monday” as well as actual dates you give her. Now the @todo at then end is how you tell Sandy exactly what it is. There are special tags that are reserves, like @todo, @done, @lookup, @archive. Check out the online guide for more info.

So not only can Sandy remember todo items, but also appointments. Simply shoot her an email about a meeting and it gets logged.

Now here it the great features. SAndy reminds you about your todo’s and appointments. Each day you will receive and email from her in the morning with your daily digest. On it are your appointments for the day and any todo’s you have not completed. Here is one of mine:

Bonjour, Jimmy!

Here’s what you have going on today:

Friday, 11/30/2007
————————————————-

Nothing’s scheduled for today…perhaps you’ve got time to tackle a project that’s simmering on the back burner?

To-dos
————————————————-

#1 Fri, 11/23/2007 Print Paperwork
- email reminder at 7:00am
- tagged with @todo
- http://iwantsandy.com/286454

#2 Fri, 11/23/2007 7:00am Get the Prius serviced
- email reminder at 7:00am
- tagged with @todo
- http://iwantsandy.com/286456

Have a great day!

Sandy

It is really nice to get this first thing in the AM and see what you have or need to do. There are ways to update items as donas well. For example, if I finished #1 above, I can simply send Sandy and email and say:
“Update #1 @done” and Sandy takes it off your todo list.

Now I know this is getting a bit long, but there is one feature that blew me away, Working with Firends. I cannot do all of this justice. Here is a clip form the online guide:

Staying organized with friends, family, and coworkers is effortless when I work with them, too.

• send shared reminders (the movie premiere Friday night)
• add stuff to each other’s calendars (the dentist appointment)
• share a to-do list (get those to-dos done together)

…and so much more. No more fussing with different organizing systems and calendar applications — just bring me into the conversation and I’ll take care of the rest.

Introducing me

The easiest way to introduce me to your friends is to Cc: me on email to someone else, like this:

To: Jim <jim@example.com>
From: Marla <marla@example.com>
Cc: Sandy <yoursandy@username.iwantsandy.com>
Subject: Our coffee date

We're on for our coffee date tomorrow afternoon!

Sandy, remind us about Coffee at Frank's Diner tomorrow at 3pm.

Take care,
Marla

(When you Cc: me on a message, put “Sandy,” before the keyword you want me to pay attention to.)

When you bring me into the conversation, I will automatically introduce myself — if I’ve not already done so — to the other recipients (anyone else in the To: or Cc: fields). I’ll also share any details you’ve asked me to take note of; more on this in a moment.

Obviously there is a ton of features. I know as our DC Tech community grows we all have needs for little reminders and a little help from our very own personal assistant. So dont hesitate to stop by and get you very own assistant and see how much they can help.

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Tags: iwantsandy, technology, DC, DC Tech, Washington DC, east coast bloging