Recently active topics in I want Sandy tagged with announcement

Howdy!

We've been working on a plethora of things in the background over the past few weeks — tweaks, bug fixes, optimizations, and new features — and today's update begins to surface some of this work and marks the beginning of our return to more frequent updates.

In this update:

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NEW: Let Sandy know (even more) precisely when to remind you

By far your #1 most requested feature has been the ability to tell Sandy precisely when you'd like her to send you a reminder. And we're pleased as punch to announce that Sandy's come up with a simple and flexible way to do just that...

Introducing a brand new special tag:

@reminder

And here's how it works...

Just ask Sandy to remember or remind you about something as usual:

> Remember [thing to remember]

or

> Remind me about [thing to remind you about] [date and/or time that thing is happening]

Left to her own devices, Sandy will remind you 15 minutes prior (or whatever your default reminder offset).

But add a @reminder tag, followed by exactly when you'd like to be reminded, like so:

> Remind me about [thing to remind you about] [date and time that thing is happening] @reminder [when to remind you]

and Sandy will schedule that event in your calendar at the date and time you specified (as usual). But she'll set a reminder for precisely when you asked her to.

Here are a few examples to get you into the swing of it:

* Have a meeting at 4pm tomorrow for which you could use a couple of hours of prep?

> Remember my marketing meeting at 4pm tomorrow @reminder at 2pm tomorrow.

* Want to be sure to stop by the store on the way home?

> Remind me to stop by the store at 6pm @reminder 30 minutes before.

* Need to pick out a birthday card for a friend before you see them on Monday?

> Remind me to pick up a card for Susan's birthday on Monday @reminder tomorrow afternoon @birthday.

(Proviso: We wanted to get this functionality to you as soon as possible and so there are likely some corner cases we've not yet discovered ourselves. Please do report any oddities you stumble across by following up to this topic thread.)

Find out more about special tags: http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#spec...

Change your default reminder offset: http://iwantsandy.com/settings/datetime

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TWEAKED: "Remember" and "Remind" not required in "New message" form

A few of you pointed out that you didn't see why it was strictly necessary to say "remember" or "remind" in the "New message" form on the web site. So we thought we'd give it a whirl — and like it quite a bit!

====

IMPROVED: #tags aka hashtags

For the twitterers among you, you'll be please to know that Sandy now looks out for hash-tags (ex. #birthday) in addition to @-styled tags (ex. @birthday) in your emails, direct messages, and everywhere else. This should help with any cognitive dissonance you may have been experiencing using @ for tags (rather than replies) on Twitter in particular.

For more on Twitter-style hash-tags, visit: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags

Not already twittering to Sandy from your mobile phone by SMS or via your favorite Twitter application? Find out more about Sandy's twittering ways and get set up to tweet at: http://iwantsandy.com/settings/twitter

====

IMPROVED: No # or @ tag symbols needed in iwantsandy.com forms

You no longer need to fiddle about with @ (or even # — see "IMPROVED: #tags aka hashtags" above) symbols in the "Tags" field of the web-based edit form. Whether you list your tags as "@one @two", "#three #four", or "five six", or "@one #three five", Sandy will know just what you mean.

====

ADDED: "Created at" date and time for each item

Some of you requested some way of knowing when Sandy first jotted down something you sent in. If you click on any item's name in any list on Sandy's web site, you'll find a new "Created: ..." amongst the details in the pop-up window.

====

IMPROVED: Timeliness

Sandy's been starting in on reminders and Daily Digests a little earlier which, combined with some optimizations we've introduced to how those messages go out to your inbox, Twitter account, mobile phone, etc, means you should be seeing on-time (if not a minute or two early) reminders across the board.

====

FIXED: Minor nits

* "Snooze until..." Fixed a bug where Sandy was renaming an appointment to "until" when snoozed with "snooze until ..." Good catch, Joachim, Nepper, and Kevin1 [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...]!

* Oops! Fixed an "Oops" error on Sandy's web site for our UK clients clicking on some dates in the calendar selector. (A shout-out to Kevin1 for spotting the issue!)

* Sandy now understands "November the 7th" (note the "the") in addition to the usual permutations.

* The @birthday and @anniversary tags now show as expected.

* Many of you found the SnapShots (those web site preview pop-ups) irritating, so we took them out.

* Fixed "lookup @next" so that it doesn't become "lookup @" (and doesn't return anything tagged with any tag).

====

IMPROVED: Twitter and Jott confirmations

Sandy's Twitter and Jott responses now correctly read "I got #1..." (instead of "#1 I got...").

====

DOCUMENTED: Frequently asked questions

We've started in (finally!) on a Frequently asked questions page at http://wantsandy.com/help/faq

It's short but will be growing. If you have any suggestions for or pointers to questions that really should be in the list, please post a follow-up to the Get Satisfaction thread on the topic at: http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

Enjoy!

Rael

P.s. We thrive on your feedback! Be sure to let us know what you think, what you liked (or didn't), and if we missed anything (or made anything worse).

Your head has better things to do than to keep track of the myriad details of daily life. Sandy's mission is to remember those details for you, freeing you up to focus on what's important.

And what better way to keep your eye on the prize than to write it down and keep it front-and-center as you go about your day.

To that end, we've carved out a spot in your Daily Digest to add a goal, guiding principle, or inspirational quote that'll appear at the top of your Digest email each morning and alongside your appointments and to-dos on your "Today" page at http://iwantsandy.com/home.

My personal inspiration for this week reads: "Anywhere is walking-distance if you have the time."

To add a goal to your Daily Digest, visit http://iwantsandy.com/home, click the "Customize" link, type or paste it into the "Goal, principle, or inspiration" field, and click the "Save" button. Your goal will appear immediately at the top-right of the page and any time you visit your "Today" page thereafter.

Howdy,

Just one of the various tweaks and twiddles I've been working on is today's fix for the Sandy jotters [http://iwantsandy.com/help/jott] among you.

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TWEAKED: Support for jotting multi-word special tags

Jott [http://iwantsandy.com/help/jott] to Sandy? If so, you've no doubt run into an issue jotting Sandy multi-word (or multi-word-sounding) tags like @todo, @noreminder, and @noreply. "Remind me to change the oil in the car tag with to-do" turned what should have been @todo into @to @do. "Remember to consider that offer on Monday @noreminder" ended up being tagged as @no @reminder.

We worked with Sandy over the weekend to recognize and re-assemble those multi-word tags for you on the fly. Now whenever you jott "...tag with to-do," @todo is what you'll get. And the same goes for: "no reminder," "no reply," etc.

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NEW: Turn Sandy's email replies to your jotts on or off

Prefer Sandy not email a reply to each and every one of your jotts? No problem! Turn Sandy's email replies to your jotts on or off at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/jott#r... .

Please note that we've asked Sandy _not_ to email a reply by default to avoid any unnecessary email cluttering your inbox. Feel free, however, to go ahead and turn email replies back on if you prefer.

Remember too that you can explicitly ask Sandy not to reply — on a jott by jott basis — by saying "tag with no-reply." And if you have Sandy's jott email replies turned off but would like an email reply to one jott in particular, just say "tag with reply."

To get Jott and Sandy talking, visit: http://iwantsandy.com/settings/jott

Learn more about Jotting with Sandy at: http://iwantsandy.com/help/jott

=====

Enjoy!

Rael

P.s. We thrive on your feedback! Be sure to let us know what you think, what you liked (or didn't), and if we missed anything (or made anything worse).

Howdy,

Sandy's sluggishness over the past few hours has been due — it turns out — to an attempted spam attack. Sandy's mail servers and spam filters are working beautifully (protecting you and your account), but are moving a little more slowly under the incredible load.

This means you're likely to be experiencing responses from Sandy that are on the sluggish side (no more than just a few minutes). This applies to any email you're sending to Sandy; twittering, jotting, and using Sandy's web site to talk to her is working just fine.

We've made some adjustments to Sandy's spam filters to match the particular attempts being made to get email through to her and that's having a good effect (in terms of server load and thus Sandy's speed of response).

I'll post shortly with an update.

Best,

Rael

We've just added a little something to Sandy's Sandbox [http://iwantsandy.com/sandbox] for you Google Calendar fans...

Your Daily Digest provides a roundup of what's on for the day, what's to-do, and any other details you'd like to keep top-of-mind. And if you're a Google Calendar fan, you can keep your Daily Digest front-and-center with Sandy's brand new Google Calendar Gadget!

To add Sandy's Google Calendar Gadget to your Google Calendar, visit https://iwantsandy.com/sandbox#google... and click the Google Calendar button in the right-hand sidebar.

And, POOF!, Sandy'll be there!

You'll see a teensy picture of Sandy at the top of each day in Google Calendar. Any time you'd like to consult your Daily Digest, click that picture and it'll appear right there in the middle of your calendar.

This is one of several steps in the direction of Sandy maintaining a conversation with your Google Calendar for you; look for more to come...

Enjoy!

Rael

Ever find yourself sending Sandy a flurry of things to remember? For example:

> remember to pick up the dry cleaning @errand
> remember to stop by the paint store and find a nice color for the bedroom @home @errand
> remember to pick up my macbook @errand

Around the third item you're no doubt wishing for a shortcut.

Try writing that list as, well..., a list:

> remember +
> * [first thing to remember]
> * [second thing to remember]
...

The power is in that plus sign at the end of the first line: it tells Sandy to treat each item in the list as an independent item, as if it were written out long-hand as "remember [first thing to remember]."

For example:

> remember +
> * pick up the dry cleaning @errand
> * stop by the paint store and find a nice color for the bedroom @home @errand
> * pick up my macbook @errand

Sandy reads this list as "remember" + [each item in the list].

Useful, eh?

And there's more...

If all the items in your list have tags in common, simply drop those tags into the first line before the plus sign like so:

> remember @common_tag +

For example:

> remember @errand +
> * pick up the dry cleaning
> * stop by the paint store and find a nice color for the bedroom @home
> * pick up my macbook

Sandy reads this as "remember" + [each item in the list] + @errand. She reads the second item as "remember" + "stop by the paint store and find a nice color for the bedroom @home" + "@errand" and so tags it with both @errand and @home (and the same for the rest of the items in the list).

But wait, there's more...

Anything all of the items in your list have in common can be dropped into the first line before the plus sign.

For example, you can schedule all of those errands for the same day like this:

> remind me tomorrow afternoon @errand +
> * pick up the dry cleaning
> * stop by the paint store and find a nice color for the bedroom @home
> * pick up my macbook

Sandy reads this as "remind me tomorrow afternoon [to]" + "pick up the dry cleaning" + "@errand" (and the same for the rest of the items in the list).

In fact, you can pack all the details into the first line before the plus sign and leave only what's different to the list itself, for example:

> remember dentist appointments @dentist +
> * 11/27 4pm
> * 11/29 2pm

Sandy reads this as "remember dentist appointments" + "11/27 4pm" + "@dentist" (and the same for the rest of the items in the list).

= "Remember +" rules =

You can mix and match to your heart's content. The rules are simple:

1. Text, tags, dates, and times that appear in the first line between the "remember" or "remind" and the plus sign are added to all of the items in the list.
2. Text, dates, and times that appear in any of the list items override those in the first line.
3. Tags that appear in the first line are added to those in any of the list items (they don't replace them).

Powerful, huh?

Here are some examples of situations in which you'll find this "remember +" shortcut indispensable:

= Examples =

== You're a student and need to remember your irregular work, class, and exam schedule ==

> remind me to work at the bookstore +
> * 7/6 12-5pm
> * 7/8 12-4pm
> * 7/9 9-11am

== You have a series of appointments differing only in their dates and times -- and sometimes in their details ==

> remember well-baby appointment with Dr. Mayer @pregnancy +
> * Jan 2, 2-3pm @ultrasound
> * Feb 4, 9-10am
> * Mar 10, 1-3pm @lab

== Your meeting results in a series of action items all related to the same project or deadline ==

> remember due next thursday @project_x @todo +
> * Pat to produce initial forecast @monetization
> * Chris to write schedule of deliverables @"project management"
> * JJ to work with the art department on some mock-ups @design

Howdy,

Today's update brings some further user-interface improvements in preparation for the fun(ctional) overhaul we have in the works.

=====

TWEAKED: Inline action links

The action links we introduced last week brought those actions you perform several times a day — editing, deleting (forgetting), and archiving — inline (rather than having to click once just to get to them, and again to take action). Some of you — and, admittedly, me too — pointed out that these links took up too much room, enlarging the footprint of individual items a wee bit too much. So we've tweaked them still further, moving them over to the right and iconizing them so that they're within easy reach yet as unobtrusive as possible.

Thanks Jaclyn, Trevor, Waffles, and the rest of you [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for making your feelings known!

=====

TWEAKED: Show/hide past events and done to-dos

You'll notice new "Show/hide past" and "Show/hide done [to-dos]" links at the top of any page you're likely to need them.

For example:

* Select "Your stuff > Appointments" from Sandy's menu-bar for all upcoming appointments; now click the "Show past" link and the list will also include past appointments.

* Select "Your stuff > To-dos" for your current to-do list; then click "Show done" to include done to-dos, "Show past" to include all not-yet-done and done to-dos past, present, and upcoming.

A shout out to Kate, Kevin1, and others [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for pointing out the inconsistencies!

=====

IMPROVED: Empty results suggestions

We added suggestions for where you might find what you're looking for when your search resulted in, well..., no results.

=====

FIXED: Archives

You should find all you expect to when clicking the "archive" tag in the right-hand sidebar while looking at any view of your your stuff, appointments, to-dos, etc.

=====

DOCUMENTED: Mobile reminder instructions for T-Mobile UK customers

Having trouble setting up mobile reminders for your T-Mobile UK mobile? Check out the updated instructions and help documentation at: http://iwantsandy.com/help/mobile

Enjoy!

Rael

=====

P.s. We thrive on your feedback! Be sure to let us know what you think, what you liked (or didn't), and if we missed anything (or made anything worse).

Howdy,

We've had such incredible feedback on last week's big update [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...], it's been all we could do just to take it all in, listen to what you liked and didn't, and find the odd bits and bobs we managed to overlook. Thanks to all of you who not only took the time to explore some of the nooks and crannies of the update, but took the trouble to write up your results, make suggestions, and share your experiences with us and your neighbors.

Today's update addresses much of what you pointed out — with more tweaks and twiddles to come — and continues to build on the web interface work we've been doing over the past couple of weeks.

There are bug fixes and improvements aplenty, but perhaps most notable is something many of you have been asking for for some time...

=====

NEW: Inline action links

You asked for them, and you've got them! You'll now find inline links for those actions you perform several times a day — editing, deleting (forgetting), and archiving (along with the more obvious to-do toggling we introduced last week). You can still click any item's name to see more detail and find links to less common actions, but you no longer have to do so just to edit, delete, or archive. You know what they say: a click in time saves nine! :-)

=====

NEW: Archived and repetition indicators

We've been finding some of the niceties in the new web interface we've been working on too useful not to share and so will be introducing a couple-three of them with each update along the way.

In this update you'll notice that repeating appointments, reminders, and to-dos now have a spiral repetition indicator to call attention to themselves: it's a subtle but surprisingly helpful way to spot those daily, weekly, monthly, and other repeating events.

We've also made it more obvious which items you've had Sandy archive for you; look for the suitcase indicator alongside the repetition indicator.

And while we were at it, we moved the reminder indicator alongside its two new friends, giving you an at-a-glance view of what's upcoming, what's coming around again, and what's safely tucked away in Sandy's archive.

=====

ADDED: Your stuff > Archives

Speaking of archived items... Thanks to all of you who pointed out that it wasn't obvious how to browse to archived items there's now an "Archives" link (you'll find it under the "Your stuff" menu on Sandy's web site) that brings your archived stuff to within easy reach. (Tip! Bring archived items back to the forefront by clicking their inline "unarchive" link.) Visit your archived stuff at http://iwantsandy.com/archives .

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TWEAKED: Scheduled to-dos rejoin appointments

You'll be pleased to see scheduled to-dos (those set for a particular date or time) once again appearing alongside your appointments when you browse Your stuff > Appointments [http://iwantsandy.com/appointments].

=====

TWEAKED: "Show past" comes back from, well, the past

An obvious omission (so obvious it slipped by us unnoticed) from last week's update was the "Show past" link you'll need to go back in time to old appointments, reminders, and scheduled to-dos. You'll find the "Show past" link back where it belongs at the top-right of your Appointments list at http://iwantsandy.com/appointments .

=====

FIXED: British Summer Time

UK folks will find that Sandy has loped back into British Summer Time. Thanks, Zu [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for pointing out that she had sprung a little too far forward for your needs.

Onward and upward!

Rael

=====

P.s. Keep those comments coming! We want to know what you think, what you liked (or didn't), and if we missed anything (or made anything worse).

Howdy,

As the week draws to a close, so too does a large swathe of work we've been doing tightening up, tweaking, twiddling, fixing, and testing Sandy's web site interface.

As usual, our focus has been on striking a balance between simple and powerful, friendly and unobtrusive, fun and functional. We've incorporated some of the incredibly helpful feedback you've all provided here on Get Satisfaction in the form of interface enhancements, bug fixes, and site- and email-wide improvements. And behind the scenes we've set some even more interesting developments in motion that you'll see surfacing in the days and weeks to come.

So you can regard today's update as a warm-up before the next phase of the performance we call product development.

We hope you like what you see!

Rael

=====

TIDYING: Here, there, and everywhere

You'll no doubt notice the spring cleaning we did on Sandy's web site, but here are some of the highlights in case you missed them:

* Sandy's site feels that much more pleasant to visit with that legal-pad-yellow vanquished.

* Gone are the filter and sort controls from the sidebar. (They were all but unused. Updates to the default filtering and sorting depending on whether you're looking at your to-dos, calendar, bookmarks, Daily Digest, ... should take care of just about all you formerly had to fiddle with to get to.)

* Subscription links for your iCalendar and RSS feeds are at the bottom of the page when you need them, out of your way when you don't. (They rather cluttered the sidebar and made entirely too much of themselves.)

* The calendar appears in the sidebar on all of "Your stuff" and "Daily Digest" pages (rather than just on Digest pages).

TIDYING: And email too!

We also worked with Sandy to tidy up her email messages — every single one, from replies to reminders to your Daily Digest:

* The same color-scheme you see on the Web is also reflected in Sandy's HTML email (turn on HTML email at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/email for a splash of color in your inbox).

* We moved the Home, Help, and Community links to the footer of Sandy's email template. (Those of you skimming a preview of Sandy's messages in your inbox — Gmail, Outlook, and iPhone mail in particular — will find more of the content in those previews rather than those repetitive links.)

* Repeating reminders, appointments, and to-dos now include mention — beyond their @daily or @weekly or other recurrence tags — of their repeating: "- Repeats weekly"

We're sure you'll enjoy the results of our reshuffling, polishing, and tidying!

=====

FIXED: The non-disappearing edit window

We had thought we had this licked in our 4/12 release, but there were still some corner cases causing some trouble. It was nailing this down that led to quite a bit of the refactoring behind today's release.

Again, thanks to all of you who posted and ultimately helped us narrow down just what was causing this inconsistency: Paul and Nobiq [http://gsfn.us/t/ghx], Nedflanders [http://gsfn.us/t/hwh], Thorsten [http://gsfn.us/t/hwr], Onorio [http://gsfn.us/t/hx1], and others.

We're sorry that this caused some of you some difficulty and will endeavor to avoid introducing bugs like that in the future.

=====

FIXED: Nits in toggling and rescheduling repeating appointments and to-dos

Those of you who ran into some of the nits in toggling and rescheduling repeating appointments and to-dos should find that all cleared and acting just as you'd expect it to now. Thanks to all of you who sent us the details we needed (and your assumptions about how things were working) that allowed us to make this all work that much better.

====

IMPROVED: Toggling to-dos done

We've dropped the three-way to-do / done / not-to-do toggle in favor of a simple to-do/done checkbox appearing to the left of any to-do in your To-do list [http://iwantsandy.com/todos] or Daily Digest [http://iwantsandy.com/digest].

We think you'll find this much more intuitive than the good-in-theory three-way toggle. (You can still turn anything into a to-do by clicking its name, the "Edit" link, and adding a @todo or @done tag.)

====

IMPROVED: Your Stuff

The lion's share of this update vastly improves, cleans up, and removes bugs in the way Sandy lists, sifts, and sorts your stuff.

* Sorting and filtering is taken care of for you (no more need of any manual tuning on your part) whether you're looking at the entire list [http://iwantsandy.com/list], your appointments, to-do list, contacts, bookmarks, lists, or notes. And each now has its very own URL: appointments live at http://iwantsandy.com/appointments, to-dos at http://iwantsandy.com/todos, and so forth.

* Want to reflect on to-dos already done? Head to your to-do list (Your stuff > To-dos or [http://iwantsandy.com/todos]) and click the "Show done to-dos" link.

* Repeating appointments, to-dos, and reminders are called out by the appropriate tag (e.g. [weekly] or [monthly]) right next to the event's date or time. Editing, forgetting, archiving, or toggling items behaves as you'd expect it to depending on whether you're changing the entire repeating series or an individual occurrence (and Sandy will confirm with you when there's any possibility of confusion).

* Repeating events show up whenever appropriate as individual occurrences on each and every day they're supposed to when you're looking across multiple days, weeks, months, or years.

* Your stuff is no longer cluttered with special tags like @todo or @weekly or the like when not needed: if it's a to-do, then the to-do checkbox appears; if done, it'll appear checked. Any other tags you've used show up as usual.

* Hover over the "Your stuff" menu on Sandy's site and you'll find — along with "Today", "Last week", "Next month", etc — new choices: "The next 7 days" and "The next 30 days." Kudos to those who thought to ask — these are now my two default views on Sandy's site!

* Sandy now abbreviates dates and times as appropriate anywhere they appear on her site and in her email messages: an event at 9am today won't list the date; an event at 9am tomorrow will; neither will show the year if it's this year; etc.

Take a new look at your stuff at http://iwantsandy.com/list

=====

IMPROVED: Daily Digest

You've told us quite precisely what you'd like to see in your Daily Digest and we're bringing most of it to you in the coming week or two, starting with today's many improvements:

* You'll no longer see duplicates in your Daily Digest — when, for instance, a to-do scheduled for today appeared in both the "Calendar" and "To-dos" sections. If it is scheduled for today, you'll find it in the "Calendar" section.

* Your Daily Digest — whether today's or next Tuesday's — now includes overdue to-dos, those due today (or next Tuesday if you're looking at next Tuesday's digest), and unscheduled to-dos. (If it's not yet due, it no longer shows up until its time has come.) Many of you requested this feature and we're glad to have finally had the chance to bring it to you.

* To-dos are sorted by status and due-date: past-due, due today, then unscheduled.

* Overdue to-dos not yet checked off as done are slightly highlighted so that you can spot them and get them done.

(Please note that we wanted to get this update out and into your virtual hands so the emailed version of your Daily Digest will sport the same improvements as the version on Sandy's website in short order.)

Visit your Daily Digest for today at http://iwantsandy.com/digest

=====

IMPROVED: The "New..." form

Something that was chapping my hide — and I know it was bothering some of you too — was the way that telling Sandy about something using the "New..." form (from Sandy's toolbar on every page of her site) popped up a small notification but didn't take you to the stuff you just had Sandy remember for you. You'll now be redirected to the new content a moment or three after you click the "Send" button.

"Email" Sandy right from the iwantsandy.com web site at http://iwantsandy.com/new

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TIDIED: Print

We tidied the Print version of your Daily Digest and any views of Your stuff.

Print a pocket-able, portable, paper copy of your Daily Digest: visit http://iwantsandy.com/digest and click the "Print" link.

=====

P.s. As always, we'd love to know what you think, what you liked (or didn't), and if we missed anything (or made anything worse).

Happy Monday!

Despite having just served up a large batch of fresh-baked features and fixes [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...], we just couldn't help but strike while the oven was warm and make just a couple-three more.

—Rael

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NEW: Special tags: @birthday and @anniversary

It didn't take a rocket scientist to notice the co-occurrence of @birthday and @anniversary tags with the special tags @yearly or @annually. It just took a little time for us to twig to a simple solution: turning @birthday and @anniversary into special tags, of course!

Never miss another birthday or anniversary! Leave the remembering (and any angst) to Sandy.

To have Sandy remind you about a friend's birthday, write to her with the person's name, birth date, and tag it with @birthday like so:

> remember Mimi's birthday 7/8 @birthday

Sandy will schedule a repeating yearly reminder (just as if you'd used the @yearly or @annually tag).

May at least the one anniversary you remember be your own! Ask Sandy to remind you about your anniversary, your parents', your children's, your sibling's, ...

> remember Our anniversary Aug 15 1993 @anniversary

(A word of caution: be sure you've got that date right; there's nothing that deflates a hearty "Happy Anniversary!" quite like being off by a month.)

A hearty "Thank you!" goes out to Alex Foster for teasing the solution out of our brains with his detailed write-up on "Using IwantSandy to remember birthdays" [http://www.alexfoster.me.uk/2008/04/0...] — and for sporting his Sandy flair [http://iwantsandy.com/sandbox#flair]!

=====

TWEAKED: Saying "Thursday" on a Thursday

Now this is one that's perhaps harder to explain than to intuit (try saying it three times quickly yourself), but here goes:

Sandy now assumes that when you say "Thursday" on a Thursday you mean Thursday of next week rather than the Thursday of today.

Sandy's client JRK kindly noted that saying "Remind me to do something on Thursday afternoon" had Sandy confusingly scheduling that something for that very day (when that very day was a Thursday) when if that's what you actually meant, you'd have said "Remind me to do something this afternoon" [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...]. Thanks, J!

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TWEAKED: Simpler, cleaner, shorter SMS

Squinting at a 5:30pm @weekly Sunday @home @todo reminder text/SMS from Sandy yesterday, it occurred to me just how much simpler, cleaner, and shorter Sandy's mobile reminders would be without the useful-yet-an-eyeful list of trailing tags.

And so, in the spirit of our optometric approach to fit and finish ("Better here... or here? A or B?"), we asked Sandy to leave those tags out of text/SMS reminders for what we believe is an improvement in both aesthetics and readability.

Better?

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TWEAKED: Your stuff sorted in reverse-chronological order

A recent update twiddled default sorting of "Your stuff" so that appointments and scheduled to-dos appear in chronological order; contacts, bookmarks, lists, and notes alphabetically. What was perhaps confusing was that the default (if you just chose "Your stuff" from Sandy's menu bar) also defaulted to alphabetical order.

So we've switched the default back to reverse-chronological order with your most recently updated stuff appearing first.

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DOCUMENTED: Time-zones, @birthday, and @anniversary

We've added details on Sandy's recently-announced [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] support for specifying time zones and the promotion of @birthday and @anniversary to special recurrence tags to Sandy's Guide and Cheatsheet.

Grab a fresh copy of Sandy's cheatsheet: http://iwantsandy.com/help/cheatsheet

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Howdy, folks!

I must apologize for our being a little on the quiet side over the past couple of weeks. We've been heads-down, hard at work on finishing, testing, documenting, and otherwise readying some features you've been asking for and bug fixes you've been asking for no longer. (And, I must admit, we took a much needed day or two off to spend with our families over Spring Break.)

Here, then, are the latest feature additions, bug subtractions, usefulness multiplications -- and absolutely nothing in the way of long-division ;-).

Enjoy!

Rael

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NEW: Toggle individual occurrences of repeating to-dos

One of most popular feature requests was the ability to toggle individual occurrences of a repeating (weekly, daily, monthly, ...) to-do. And now you can do just that — both on the Web and by email, SMS/text, and Twitter.

* On the web: Simply click the checkbox to the left of any repeating to-do and it'll be marked as done, leaving the upcoming occurrences as-yet-undone.

* By email, SMS/text, or Twitter: Reply to Sandy with an update as usual:
> update [#number of the item to update] @done

Find out more about updating things: http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#update

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NEW: Update individual or future occurrences of repeating appointments, reminders, or to-dos

To update only the current occurrence of any repeating item, just ask Sandy to update it as usual:

> update [#number of the item to update] [text, date, time, and/or tag to update]

For example, let's say your weekly staff meeting has moved to Tuesday at 2pm this week:

> update #1 Tuesday at 2pm

To update all future occurrences including the current one, just include the recurrence tag with which the item is already tagged in your update:

> update [#number of the item to update] [text, date, time, and/or tag to update] [recurrence tag]

For example, perhaps the weekly staff meeting has moved to Tuesday permanently:

> update #1 Tuesday at 2pm @weekly

(The @weekly tag tells Sandy to update all future occurrences rather than just the current one.)

Find out more about update and recurrence: http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#upda...

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NEW: Let Sandy do the time-zone calculations for you

Have a conference call at 4pm Europe/London (aka GMT) time? Flying from San Francisco at 7am PDT (or is it PST?), connecting through New York at 2pm EDT, then on Sydney for a noon lunch (Australia/Sydney aka GMT+10) on Thursday (or is it Friday?)? Sunday morning call with your grandmother in Arizona -- they don't do daylight savings, do they? Eek!

Your head has better things to do than time-zone calculations!

Tack a time-zone on to anything you're asking Sandy to remind you about and she'll figure out just when that is in your local time-zone and remind you when the time comes.

For example:

> Remind me about the sales conference call at 4pm Europe/London
> Remember San Francisco to New York 5/1 7am PDT - 2pm EDT
> Remind me about lunch in Sydney on Thursday at noon Australia/Sydney

A shout out to Ilya and TRONash for pointing out that Sandy should indeed be able to do this! [http://gsfn.us/t/fv5]

More date and time examples: http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#date...

Set your time zone: https://iwantsandy.com/settings/datetime

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TWEAKED: Dial "R" for "Remember"

A few of you noticed that the shortcut "r" was sometimes mistaken by Sandy to mean "remind" — even when you didn't specify a date or time - surprising you with a reminder the next morning.

Sandy will now assume that by "r" you mean "remember" and not set a reminder unless you specify a date or time.

Have Sandy remember so you don't have to: http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#reme...

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FIXED: Re-using your email address (and Twitter username)

Some of you ran into trouble signing up again using an email address that had previously been associated with another account. Others had similar trouble associating a Twitter username with a new account that had formerly been associated with another account.

This'll trouble you no longer! We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate the time you took to troubleshoot the issue with us.

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IMPROVED: Recognizing contacts

(Or, rather, not recognizing non-contacts.) Sandy is continually learning to discern the difference between people's names, their company's name, job titles, and so forth. Not to mention all those tracking numbers, phone numbers, and lottery winning numbers ;-). While you probably don't give it more than a moment's thought (if that), it's all actually rather complicated stuff.

We've spent some more time with Sandy over the past couple of weeks in our continuing effort to help her discern David Wells Bank from Wells Fargo Bank, tracking number from telephone number. If you've managed (mistakenly of course) to stump Sandy with any of these in the past, you'll no doubt find her much improved.

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DOCUMENTED: Notes

We've added a Help page on having Sandy remember assorted notes for you.

Visit: http://iwantsandy.com/help/notes

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TWEAKED: Twitter confirmations

A simple matter of mistiming meant that some of you weren't receiving Sandy's confirmation tweet on setting up Twitter interaction. Sandy would attempt to twitter you but the whole "I follow you; you follow me" thing hadn't yet been negotiated and so she'd find that you weren't (yet) a friend.

Sandy now assumes that mistiming is to blame and gives it another few tries at regular intervals before giving up (and letting us know).

We've also added a message to Sandy's site that pops up with instructions if for some reason you've not yet followed Sandy.

Twitter to and receive reminder tweets from Sandy: http://iwantsandy.com/settings/twitter

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And more on the way...

Good evening, folks.

Sandy will be going offline at 10pm PDT (America/Los Angeles) this evening (Monday, March 10th, 2008) for a spot of database origami. The whole process should only take around 30 minutes, at which time Sandy will be back with abandon!

While Sandy's offline, you will not be able to reach her web site and any reminders she owes you for that time will be waiting until she comes back online.

You can continue emailing and Twittering to her — she'll get to your messages and tweets the moment she comes back online. You won't, however, be able to Jott to her during this time.

I'll post again the moment she's back online!

We apologize for the short disruption in service — this is sometime (though rarely) required in order to make wider-reaching changes to Sandy's systems.

Best,

Rael

It's Wednesday — and that means it's Town Hall day!

I'm Rael Dornfest, Founder and CEO of Values of n: the folks that bring you Sandy — your personal assistant and mine.

I'd like to invite you to join our weekly I want Sandy Town Hall, every Wednesday from 12 to 1pm Pacific Time (America/Los Angeles) at https://raelity.campfirenow.com/e017f

Our weekly Town Hall gives us the chance to meet and spend some time with you in real-time, introduce you to one-another, hear your stories, learn from your experiences with Sandy thus far, share some of the motivation and thinking behind our service, and generally shoot the breeze.

WHEN: Every Wednesday; 12-1pm Pacific Time (America/Los Angeles)
WHERE: https://raelity.campfirenow.com/e017f

(Note that the room only holds 25 people, so do plan on getting there at noon; and if you don't make it in the door this week, there's always next week — and Get Satisfaction, of course.)

See you there!

—Rael

Hello!

Last night's update — and I apologize for just now getting to the update notes — put in place some work we've been doing in the background to enable Sandy to do a few things we'll be talking about in the coming week or so. Additionally, we put in some fixes for things y'all have pointed out and a couple of nice new bits you should enjoy.

NEW: Print style sheet

We completely reworked the print stylesheet so that printing any of Your stuff or your Daily Digest produces a nice all-but-greyscale paper copy for you to take with you as you head out in the morning. We've even added a few blank lines under the Calendar, To-dos, and tagged sections so that you can write things in as they come up and synch up with Sandy in the evening. And we've included a calendar in the right-hand sidebar (Daily Digest only), otherwise leaving you plenty of room to jot down assorted notes to yourself or things to tell Sandy about.

NEW: Unnamed reminders

Sometimes — whether by accident or otherwise — Sandy is asked for a reminder without any clue as to what the reminder is all about (ex. "Remind me in 15 minutes."). She does her best to extrapolate from the subject of the email message, any other text nearby, etc. If she really couldn't find any further detail, she would just let you know so that you could give it another whirl.

Now, even if there's nothing else to go on, she'll deliver that reminder (along with anything relevant she can find) to keep you on time and on track. (You'll see these show up on the web and in email as "A reminder.")

NEW: Special @goal tag

If you've not yet checked out Sandy's new Goals functionality, you should take a gander at http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... .

IF you're among those of Sandy's clients who have already set a goal (Click the "Customize" link on your Daily Digest page at http://iwantsandy.com/home) and are having Sandy keep it front-and-center, you'll love the new @goal tag. Simply tag something with @goal and it'll replace your prior goal and appear in both the web and email versions of your digest. For example:

> Remember "The difference between theory and practice is far greater in practice than in theory" @goal

TWEAKED: Your Daily Digest is home

Thanks to a great suggestion by Nik [http://gsfn.us/t/al5], when you log in, return to iwantsandy.com and are already logged in, or visit a few days later after checking the "Remember me" checkbox on the Login page, you'll always return to either the Welcome page or your Home/Daily Digest page on iwantsandy.com. This means you can just go straight to http://iwantsandy.com and (if you're logged in) you'll be whisked off home to your Daily Digest.

Of course if you want to visit Sandy's home page at http://iwantsandy.com, you can click the the "I want Sandy" link (formerly "Home," which was confusing to say the least :-\) and you'll be taken to http://iwantsandy.com/iwantsandy (the self same page as you'd see if you weren't logged in and visited Sandy's home page).

TWEAKED: Past events don't disappear from Digest tag sections

Some of you asked that Sandy not remove past events (appointments, to-dos) from tag sections in your Daily Digest. Now they'll stick around until you @archive them or mark them as @done. Good idea!

UPDATED: The Tags menu is gone, long live the Your tags sidebar!

In response to lots of great feedback from you and some hand-wringing at Sandy World HQ about just how to make it better, we've removed the "Tags" menu from the menu bar and put those Special tags (i.e. todo, done, archive, weekly, twitter, ...) in the sidebar beneath Your tags.

So there's now just one place to find and browse by tags — yours and all the special tags, whether you've used them or not — and that's in the right-hand sidebar.

TWEAKED: Daily Digest is home

Nothing's really changed here, but we did away with the confusing "Today" menu bar text and replaced it with "Daily Digest" which more accurately represents what it is — a digest of your day, no matter which day you choose.

TWEAKED: "Remember me" off by default

The "Remember me" checkbox on the Login page now once again defaults to being unchecked.

TWEAKED: Dates and times more concise

Dates and times in your Daily Digest and Your stuff (on the Web and in email) are now even more context-sensitive than they were before. We went out on a limb and assumed you know what year it is ;-).

FIXED: Reminder statuses now completely independent

A handful of you received duplicate reminders via SMS and email — I do apologize to those affected — when Twitter was down the earlier this week due to a bug in the way reminders were related to one-another (all versions of any one reminder were re-tried — and so re-sent — when only the Twitter reminder was failing). Reminder statuses are now completely independent of one-another meaning that this won't happen again.

FIXED: Expired SSL certificate

While we update our SSL certificates on a regular basis and did just that the other night, one server didn't get the update and so caused some browsers to pop up a warning each time you visited a page on iwantsandy.com. This has since been fixed — thanks to the valiant efforts of some of you folks in pointing it out, taking screenshots, and troubleshooting.

Phew! — I need a nap after just writing all that up. But we've plenty more afoot and so I leave you for now and return to helping Sandy better help you. Keep that feedback coming...

—Rael

Happy Wednesday, folks!

We've been heads-down here at Sandy Central: optimizing, tweaking, twiddling, fixing, and testing to help Sandy do an even better job of keeping you on time and on track.

TWEAKED: Even better understanding of Outlook email

Not to pick on Outlook, but of all the email programs Sandy receives email from, it's definitely been the most troublesome. The sheer combinatorics of versions and builds, Exchange-backed and stand-alone, and email formatting — all with their own idiosyncrasies — is mind-boggling.

As a result, Sandy's new HTML email template and some versions of Outlook (2003 or older) didn't play well together. (For specifics and symptoms, take a gander at: http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...)

Last night's build put a stop to that (at least in all instances we could track down, test, and handle). If Outlook is your primary email program, you should feel free to turn on Sandy's richer, prettier, more fun(ctional) "Rich Text (HTML)" email under "Formatting and attachments: Email Format" at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/email .

If you do find any residual quirkiness (http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...), please do let us know and we'll extend the fix to what is most likely yet another version of Outlook email. And of course if you find any of the above-mentioned quirkiness happening to you and you're _not_ using Outlook, please let us know that too.

OPTIMIZED: On-time reminders

Sandy's being noticed. And as such, she's taking on more clients and so more workload. And she's doing an admirable job of keeping up: reading more incoming email, tweets, jotts, and texts than you can imagine; remembering all you're asking her to; and getting your reminders delivered to you on time (within a reasonable window of a couple-three minutes).

But there have been certain times of the day when Sandy's hardly had time for a sip of her coffee, she's so many reminders to send. The result is that some of you have noticed reminders coming in a few minutes later than she — and we — would like. (Of course there are the odd exceptions where reminders arrive far later than that, and these we have been delving into on a case by case basis to figure out what's kept them: Sandy on the sending end, you on the receiving end, or somewhere in transit.)

So we rolled up our sleeves and tucked in to optimizing how reminders were being gathered, queued up for delivery, and routed. And we're pleased to report that Sandy's back to within her couple-three-minute acceptable Window. And we'll be working with her to bring that down still further.

Please do let us know if you notice out of the ordinary (or, indeed, anything wonderfully extraordinary — we love surprises too!).

—Rael

Hello,

As you may already have noticed, Sandy's responsiveness was less than stellar this morning.

Sandy experienced a very sudden influx of new clients which took her, us, and our spam firewall by surprise. In fact, Sandy herself was responding in a timely manner. The bottleneck was in our spam firewall which was suddenly introduced to a whole host of people it had never heard of before and so did just what it was supposed to do and dutifully shuffled through all the incoming email.

So where did all these new clients come from? It seems a lovely article over at Fast Company titled "The Top 10 Websites You Never Heard Of" [http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2...] was featured on the home page of MSN this morning. (A quick shout-out to Chris Dannen and April Joyner for the props!)

We've spent the past couple of hours working with both that spam firewall to get it up to speed on all these newcomers and convince it to hand things off to Sandy as quickly as possible. She's now flying through her inbox as quickly as the mail is coming in and playing catch-up on some of those messages that were held up in transit.

You probably also noticed a delay in some of your expected Daily Digests and reminders. Those reminders too were jammed in the rising mail flow. We worked quickly this morning to further dissociate incoming and outgoing email so that an influx of email to Sandy should not affect the delivery of your reminders in this manner again.

So where are we?

Well, there's still quite a bottleneck that we'll continue working to relieve. The good news is that this is about the most upgradeable part of our infrastructure. The less-than-perfect news is that, for today at least, it is just going to have to work its way through the queue before things return completely to normal.

As much as you plan for capacity, every web service has a day like today — and nobody, from startup to Fortune 500, is immune. (I say this, mind you, not by way of excuse, but just as a little perspective. We take our jobs very seriously here and do all we can to ensure a smooth, useful, and enjoyable experience for all of Sandy's clients.)

Bottom line: what does this mean for you and your correspondence with Sandy?

* Your email will be received (it won't be bounced or lost), but there will be a delay in Sandy dealing with it.
* You won't receive a reply from Sandy right away when you send her email.
* Anything you email or twitter involving relative time (ex. "in 15 minutes" or "in an hour") will be off, I'm afraid, by however long the delay was.
* Reminders will have been rather late today, but this should return to normal over the course of the day.
* You may experience a slow-down (from sheer traffic) when you visit Sandy's site at http://iwantsandy.com.
* You may see some delay in receiving email responses to your Jotts to Sandy.
* You may see some delay in email responses to your Twittered tweets to Sandy. She will, however, twitter back within her usual < 30 seconds or so.

I apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you and appreciate your continued patience and understanding as we weather out this bumpy patch.

In the meantime, if you've been one of Sandy's clients for a little while, we'd love it if you could make your new neighbors feel at home, help them out (answer questions on GetSatisfaction if you're able), and reassure them that this truly isn't the normal state of things.

I will report back throughout this "Sluggish Saturday" with updates.

—Rael

Sandy's a pretty colorful and playful character, always striving not only to help you be more productive, but to bake a little fun into the otherwise functional nature of getting and keeping organized.

To that end, she's taken the wraps off her brand new HTML email format. Sandy's replies and reminders are now richer, prettier, and even more fun! Most importantly, though, they're still just as helpful, functional, and powerful as they've always been -- and there's deeper functionality on the way!

* Anyone signing up as a new client will have HTML email automatically enabled for their account.

* If you're an existing client, you can turn on HTML email by visiting http://iwantsandy.com/settings/email, selecting "Rich text (HTML)" under "Email format", and clicking the Save button.

(We wanted to be sure not to toss existing clients a curve-ball by having email showing up out of the blue.)

The HTML version of Sandy's email messages all still include a plain text version (identical to those you're already used to receiving) for compatibility with email programs that do better with plain text email.

We hope you enjoy the splash of color!