Recently active topics in I want Sandy tagged with improved

Happy Monday, folks!

We spent some of the weekend catching up on some of the things we've been meaning to get to: features and enhancements you've asked for, bugs you've pointed out, and bits and bobs that have been on our lists for a little while.

IMPROVED: Cleanup of appointment and reminder names

Sandy spends a lot of effort smoothing out the lumps in reminder and appointment names — and on the whole does a rather good job of it.

Poppet, Thorsten, and a couple more of Sandy's eagle-eyed clients [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] noticed that she was a little overzealous with a couple of characters commonly found legitimately in the names of reminders and appointments. For example: "Meet Jack & Jill", "Meet Pat @ the campus bookstore".

We went through some representative examples with Sandy and explained just how to sniff these out and leave them be — while still allowing her to do the right thing when encountering a spurious character in need of clean-up.

At the same time we noticed some cases where Sandy was shortening particularly long reminder or appointment names when they really should have been left as is. We worked with her to come up with a happy medium here too.

TWEAKED: "Your stuff"

You'll notice some changes making their way through the way Sandy lists Your stuff [http://iwantsandy.com/list] on her web site as we work to clarify, clean up, and otherwise improve how you are able to browse through and work with your appointments, reminders, to-dos, etc you're having Sandy remember for you.

In this update:

* Your stuff is sorted alphabetically (rather than by last updated date) by default.

* Appointments and to-dos are both now properly sorted by date (specifically: by day).

* Done to-dos (things tagged with @done) don't show by default. (Show them by clicking the "Include done" radio button in the right-hand sidebar.)

* Reduced overall footprint of the filtering and sorting controls in the right-hand sidebar.

* The "Print" link appears in all lists.

RELOCATED: "Take it with you" subscriptions sidebar

Take your appointments, reminders, and to-dos with you to your iCal, Outlook (2007), or Google calendar. Sandy can automatically add appointments, reminders, and to-dos to Outlook 2007 (Windows), iCal (Mac), Google Calendar, or any other calendar that supports subscribing to remote calendars using the iCalendar standard.

Find out how at http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds#cale...

Subscribe to an RSS feed of your stuff and have Sandy deliver piping hot appointments, to-dos, contacts, etc. to your RSS reader.

Find out how at http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds#rss_...

Many of you are already subscribed to the iCalendar or RSS feed of the things Sandy is remembering for you. While the functionality itself isn't new to iwantsandy.com, we've made it more obvious and accessible to folks by moving the iCal and RSS links from the foot of the page into the right-hand sidebar on most pages.

TWEAKED: Lengthened email field

If you've a particularly verbose email address, you may have had a spot of trouble logging in to Sandy's web site. We've just relaxed the length restriction on the email field in Sandy's login form so you should have no more problems logging in. (Thanks, B., for catching that!)

NEW: Snap Shots!

We've included Snap.com's Snap Shots [http://www.snap.com/] to Sandy's web site anywhere a list of "Your stuff" appears. Snap Shots provides visual previews of, RSS feed news for, Wikipedia excerpts from, and other interesting bits and bobs about web sites you've asked Sandy to bookmark and any other URLs you've included in your appointments, reminders, etc.

We look forward to hearing whether you find this feature interesting.

UPDATED: Google Calendar Gadget URL

As some of you noted, Sandy's Google Calendar Gadget inexplicably stopped showing her shining countenance on each day of your Google Calendar. While the exact reason for this escapes us (we defer to the Google collective mind), we've provided a rather simple fix: We've renamed Sandy's Google Calendar Gadget URL to http://iwantsandy.com/static/gcal_gad... (note the "2" at the end there).

To add Sandy's Calendar Gadget to your Google Calendar, visit the Sandbox at http://iwantsandy.com/sandbox#google_... and click the Google Calendar button in the right-hand margin.

(Thanks, Mark, MBG, and Kevin1 [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for your suggestions!)

Enjoy!

Rael