Updates

Howdy folks,

We'll be pushing an update to Sandy's servers in the next few minutes to hour. The whole process shouldn't take more than a few minutes, but I wanted to post a quick heads-up so you're not too surprised if you stumble upon Sandy on her break.

Rael

Howdy!

Our push this morning went smoothly and Sandy was offline for only about 5 minutes. We twiddled lots of bits, radically improved performance (Boingboing effect [http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/14/...] notwithstanding), and added some features you folks have been asking for.

[improved] You'll find the site an order of magnitude (at least) snappier (again, traffic surge aside), especially with all those recurring appointments, reminders, and to-dos Sandy has been scheduling. Signups are snappier too!

[new] More examples -- Need some inspiration? Check out the updated http://iwantsandy.com/examples, now with specific examples for families, professionals, and students. How does Sandy help you? Share your examples with those meeting Sandy for the first time: http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

[new] New recurrence tags - Ian, Stayfly [http://gsfn.us/t/3qr], and M8ryx [http://gsfn.us/t/3r1] suggested that @weekends and @weekdays would be helpful. So we brought Sandy up to speed and, in the process, added a few more; Sandy now understands: @daily, @bidaily, @weekends, @weekdays, @weekly, @biweekly, @monthly, @bimonthly, @yearly, and @biannually.

[help] Bookmarks - There's now a bookmarks help page at http://iwantsandy.com/help/bookmarks

[help] Sandy Guide - Sandy's guide at http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide is now completely up-to-date with the latest special tags, shortcuts, and more. If you've not yet visited the guide, you ought to take a gander.

[help] Cheat sheet - Who needs manuals? Check out Sandy's handy cheat sheet at http://iwantsandy.com/help/cheatsheet for a compact but complete set of examples (and shorthand shortcuts) for everything Sandy understands.

And if you're a thumb-typer (BlackBerry, iPhone, Treo, SMS -- you know who you are!), just remember RUFL (Remember/Remind, Update, Forget, Lookup) and save your dutiful digits a tap or two.

[improved] Ffunky [http://gsfn.us/t/3rv] fell over Sandy's overcautiousness when it came to understanding "at 5" in "Remind me about the soccer supper Thursday at 5" (Sandy was looking for "5:00" or "5pm"). She and I worked on this a bit and came back with and understanding of "at 5", "by 5", "before 5", etc.

[fixed] Setting a reminder during daylight savings time for a time during standard time.

[fixed] Thanks to Pstuifzand's [http://gsfn.us/t/3rb] keen eyesight, we noticed and fixed some of the headings in lists of your stuff to correctly reflect the time at which things were last updated.

[fixed] Thanks, Dancemonkey [http://gsfn.us/t/3rl] for noticing that the toggles were not well toggled when listing your stuff by tag and sometimes by date. You stuff should now appear as you'd expect it to.

[improved] Cupcake 30201 [http://gsfn.us/t/3s5] and Scott Killen [http://gsfn.us/t/3sf] lamented Sandy's creating a contact called "Dad's number" when asked to "remember Dad's cell phone number is..." Sandy and I worked it out and she'll now support "Bob's phone number is...", "mom's email address is...", "Lisa's home address is..." and just about anything in between.

[improved] SMS as secondary email address - Some of you have been trying to set an email-to-SMS gateway as your secondary email address so that you can SMS directly to Sandy [http://gsfn.us/t/3sp]. The problem is that you could never see her confirmation code because it was too deep into her confirmation email message. We had Sandy move the confirmation code up in the message so you should see it on those itty-bitty cellphone screens. *Please do let us know if it was moved far enough.*

[improved] If you need to hide dates or times from Sandy in things you've asked her to remember, just put them in quotes like so: Sandy, please remind me on Friday morning about my "Friday night out with friends".

[changed] Now when you sign up, you'll no longer be given an actual word as the "magic word" part of Sandy's special address she sets up for you (e.g. the "silly" part in silly@myname.iwantsandy.com) as sometimes the word just didn't fit the bill. Instead, you'll be given a random string of 8 letters, but an always change that or the "myname" part at http://iwantsandy.com/settings.

Phew!

--Rael

Hi Scott,

There have indeed some bumpy spots today. As much as we stay on top of performance, responsiveness, and uptime, the epicentric effects of a post like Cory's on Boingboing this morning (and don't get me wrong: I absolutely appreciate his spreading the word) just can't be predicted.

The updates we had in the works and put into place this morning were to have dramatically improved responsiveness -- and indeed did, only the change lost some of its luster in the incoming traffic-flow.

Things should very much smooth out over the coming hours. In the meantime, we do appreciate your patience and are sorry you are frustrated.

--Rael

P.s. Tangentially, there was a little something in today's update for you, Scott!

Hi Scott,

Your prescience knows no bounds -- we were in the midst of another update when I saw your kind words and they came at a perfect time

Rael

Howdy,

We're in the midst of maintenance for a few minutes but will be back in a jiffy.

Rael

Hi folks,

Sandy is back to her self again, is back to her usual seconds-to-minute-or-so response-time, and her site is (now observably) more responsive despite the traffic than it was before this fabulously long day began.

To all who visited today, we are so glad you did and invite you to continue the conversation -- both with Sandy by email and with us here. To those who ran into some bumps today, we appreciate your perseverance and kind words.

We'll be getting caught up on the rest of the open questions, suggestions, and topic threads in a little bit. And, of course, those of you who have been working with Sandy for a little while now, please do show her new clients the ropes.

Rael

Howdy, folks!

I trust you US-resident types had a lovely Thanksgiving (and are still enjoying the weekend-after festivities)! Despite being a little quiet over the past couple-three days, we've been working away in the background, pushing changes left, right, and center. Here, then, are some of the updates we've completed; and more on the way.

[improved] Added a little email header magic so that reminders will appear amongst related messages in your inbox when sorting your email by thread or conversation. M-R, thanks for bringing this up; now you can have your cake and threading too ;-). [http://gsfn.us/t/4en]

[improved] Examples on the Examples page [http://iwantsandy.com/examples] and in the sidebar are now hyperlinked as mailto: so that you can give them a whirl in your very own mail application with a simple click. It is now similarly simple to introduce Sandy to someone else by clicking the "Introduce Sandy to a friend" link in the sidebar.

[help] We added a couple of pages to the site on how Sandy works with professionals and families (take a gander at the "How I work" menu in the menubar on iwantsandy.com).

[help] We added a section on Palm and Entourage (Mac) to the iCalendar feeds documentation [http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds].

[help] We added a help page on lookups (e.g. "look up tomorrow's to-dos") with gobs of lookup goodness [http://iwantsandy.com/help/lookup] and added lookup to the cheat sheet [http://iwantsandy.com/help/cheatsheet]. Thanks, Elle! [http://gsfn.us/t/4e3]

[help] We added a proviso about Google Calendar and Google Reader not supporting password-protected ical and rss feeds. (Sorry that was confusing folks!)

[improved] Sped up the search for and display of recurring appointments, reminders, and to-dos.

[fixed] Sandy now always includes the appropriate attachments (vCard, iCal, etc.) when sharing with others.

[fixed] Updating a friend's details on your Friends page [http://iwantsandy.com/friends] no longer makes your friend vanish (as if by magic) before your very eyes. Thanks, chzdanish! [http://gsfn.us/t/4cz]

[fixed] We helped Sandy through some confusion involving bookmark URLs containing what look like european-formatted dates. Thanks for the catch, Cupcake 43031! [http://gsfn.us/t/4ed]

[fixed] Sandy was not picking up on remember/reminder requests in the subject line in certain situations -- she'll now pick them up no matter what!

[fixed] Recurring appointments, reminders, and to-dos now show the right date when returned to you via email look-up (e.g. "look up tomorrow").

[improved] Sandy will now notice and import iCal and vCard attachments sent from Gmail.

--Rael

Howdy!

There's a lot afoot here at Sandy's World HQ -- additions, improvements, fixes, and various bits and bobs. Here's an update on what we've pushed to the servers over the past couple of days:

[new] Let Sandy know how long before appointments you'd like a reminder. We've just added a Reminder interval setting, allowing you to change our default of 15 minutes to your preferred default. Prefer a reminder 5 minutes before appointments? 2 hours before? Need a running start 3 days before? It's up to you! Visit http://iwantsandy.com/settings/datetime.

[help] We're constantly adding to and tweaking Sandy's help pages to -- thanks to those who pointed out everything from typos to clarifications!

[improved] We moved the fairly omnipresent "Your settings" details to the bottom of the page (just above the footer) so that you always have them close at hand, but without all the clutter.

[improved] More in the name of de-cluttering, we hid the filter & sort advanced search panel. Make it re-appear (as if by magic!) by clicking the little drop-down arrow to the right of the search box. It'll stick around for as long as is useful; hide it at any time by clicking its [hide] link.

[fixed] Some of you noticed that when you didn't specify a date or time for a reminder but made it repeat using @daily, @weekly, etc. it didn't (well, ...) repeat. That's now fixed and Sandy will set a repeating reminder as expected at your default reminder time (7am unless you've changed it at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/datetime) if you don't let her know a time and for the next day if you don't mention a date either. A shout out you keen-eyed folk who spotted the bug!

[improved] Sandy will now make sure you know when you specified neither a date nor time that she'll be reminding you at your next default reminder time (the next morning at 7am if you've not changed your date and time settings).

[improved] Email responses when jotting or twittering are now more obviously so by prefixing "(via Jott)" or "(via Twitter)" to the subject.

[improved] Saying "hi" to Sandy via Twitter (or sending her a tweet she doesn't understand) now results in her responding with a little help to get you going.

[fixed] Sandy was to have been showing your to-dos by default in your Daily Digest (i.e. the @todo tag was to have been included) but for many they simply weren't. This is now fixed. We apologize for any confusion this caused.

[fixed] A UI bug when updating the details of a reminder or appointment with a date and time but no reminder time.

[fixed] Sandy will no longer send you duplicate reminders when you include just-about-duplicate details in the subject (e.g. "Subject: remind me about things") and in the body of your message (e.g. "remind me about things tomorrow at 2pm"). Thanks so much to Feckweed and NitinMadnani [http://gsfn.us/t/4gl], Joachim Bengtsson and WillisWasabi [http://gsfn.us/t/4gv], and others who helped us narrow this down!

[fixed] Sandy could be a tad over-exuberant when it came to recognizing numbers after the "update" or "forget" (especially the short-hand "f") keyword, and she'd then respond that she couldn't find what you were after. This has been fixed.

[improved] Jott is 5 rather than 9 steps to get up and running now that Sandy has her very own official Sandy Jott Link at http://jott.com/jott-links/.

[fixed] As some of you may have noticed, changing your date and time settings for a brief moment there reset your default alarm time to midnight. Sorry about that!

—Rael

Howdy!

All the changes that're fit to mention...

[improved] The biggest improvement in this release is that Sandy no longer requires you to hit return twice between "remember ..." links. Now you can write:

remember abc
remember def
remember ghi

Sandy understands where one ends and the other begins. Previously you'd have to have written:

remember abc

remember def

remember ghi

(Which, of course, Sandy will still understand as she always has.)

Also, if you apply different tags to each line, like so:

remember abc @one
remember def @two
remember ghi @three

the tags will no longer be applied to all of the items. "abc" will be tagged with @one, "def" with @two, and "ghi" with @three as you'd expect. Thanks to the folk -- clodia4761, mysbyu, Clayton Hynfield, and Larry Kollar -- who spoke up on this topic [http://gsfn.us/t/3ot]!

[new] We've added a Sandbox page (in the Sandy toolbar), a place for Sandy and we helpers to share some thing not quite ready for prime-time, experiments, and other diversions.

[new] Show your Sandy flair! Pick up a Sandy badge for your web site or weblog at http://iwantsandy.com/sandbox#flair.

[help] We added a little more detail (and linked to still more) on just what "following" means in Twitter-parlance.

[improved] All of our various buttons and linked images now sport both a title and an alt HTML tag for web-accessibility. Thanks, lovefaithswing [http://gsfn.us/t/4zh]!

[help] Sandy now mentions that she doesn't understand "update" and "forget" in twittered tweets yet rather than returning her regular help message. Thanks for helping me think of that, lovefaithswing [http://gsfn.us/t/551]!

Enjoy!

Rael

Howdy, folks!

There have been oodles of changes -- new functionality, improvements, fixes, etc -- over the past week. Here, then, is a whopping great update to catch you up.

= [new] Lists =

Make a grocery list, a wishlist, a list of New Year's Resolutions. Schedule it for a particular date or make it repeat weekly, monthly, or however often you'd like.

Lists are attached to confirmations, reminders, daily digests, and lookups as plain old text files you can open with any text editor (and view in portrait and landscape orientations on the iPhone).

Take a gander at the new Lists help page at: http://iwantsandy.com/help/lists

Thanks a ton to Omar, Pqs, Richmintz, Bob Horton, Non-Sequitur, et al [http://gsfn.us/t/5lz] for participating in the discussion that brought this new functionality about.

= [new] Tags just about everywhere =

As you leaf through your stuff [http://iwantsandy.com/list], you now have your tags as constant companions in the sidebar. Click a tag at any time to see only items tagged with that tag.

= [new] More context, please =

Many of you have asked that Sandy provide more context for the things she's remembered. Now when you take a gander at any item on her web site (click the name of any item in a list), you'll see a "More context >>" link; click it and you'll be able to read through every email message you've sent Sandy relating to that item. So if you were looking for additional information that was included in the email message you sent to Sandy about an upcoming meeting, reminder, to-do, or what-have-you, you've all the details at your disposal.

A shout out to Omar, Jason Kerchner, Pqs, Richmintz, Anon, Jos Yule, Bob Horton, C0n0r, Non-Sequitur, M-R, Forge42, Steveodom, and others [http://gsfn.us/t/5lz] [http://gsfn.us/t/3n5] for all the detail you provided which we found invaluable in working on this feature.

= [improved] Updating and forgetting from BlackBerry, Outlook 2003, and Yahoo! Mail =

The BlackBerry, Outlook 2003, and Yahoo! Mail don't give Sandy much to go on when you're asking her to update or forget something she mentioned in one of her prior email messages. This involves email headers similar to the To:, From:, Cc:, and Subject: you're more than familiar with if you use email at all. In addition to those email headers your email program does show you, there are tons more that are used behind the scenes by your mail program and the various email servers across the internet that route your messages to and fro. The two we're most interested in when you reply to a message from Sandy are: in-reply-to and references. These provide big hints to Sandy as to which email message you're replying to and, thereby, just what items you mean to update or forget when you say "update #1" or "forget #2". Unfortunately those headers are simply not included by BlackBerry (in most instances), Outlook 2003, and Yahoo! Mail and so Sandy needs to do a little digging around in her mailbox to match up your replies with the messages she sent you.

Making a long story short, though: Sandy is much better at working around the inadequacies of these not-so-helpful email devices and programs thanks to a lot of work by some of her helpers behind the scenes.

If you still find that Sandy's not able to find things you're trying to update or forget, please do let us know by sending email to help@iwantsandy.com so that we can look at your circumstances more closely.

= [improved] Myriad user-interface tweaks =

We tweaked various little user-interface bits on Sandy's web site, including:

* Friends are now listed by first name rather than full name along with the things you've shared with them -- this means more compact listings and less wrapping ugliness.

* Toggling to-dos are now immediate; there's no more spinner you have to wait around for.

* Toggling to-dos is fixed in Internet Explorer (they temporarily didn't do much of anything).

* Updates via the web interface are overall much faster now.

* The image links under the "Flair" section on the Sandbox page are now correct.

* The Advanced filter and sort sidebar panel is now absent by default, but available at the click of a link. This reduces clutter for the lion's share of Sandy's clients and the majority of page views.

* The detailed and editing views of items (when you click on their names from a list) now properly center themselves in your browser window (rather than disappearing off the bottom in some situations).

* Tags are now listed in alphabetical order.

* The return of the bottom border of the "Your stuff" menu ;-).

= [improved] Sandy continues to improve her understanding of names, numbers, dates, time, etc. =

* Non-telephone numbers are now much less likely to be confused for telephone numbers.

* Two digit numbers are less likely now to be considered years.

* Sandy will now do an even better job of recognizing some of the formatting oddities of email sent by web-mail clients like Hotmail and so have an easier time of reading them.

= [help] Incorporated details about the RemoteCalendars add-in for Outlook 2003 to the Feeds help page [http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds]. Thanks, Quepol! [http://gsfn.us/t/5dd] =

= [improved] Lookups by date (e.g. "look up today") now properly return results in date order =

Sandy was returning things in the order in which they were last updated (latest first) as she does for all other lookups. But now when you're looking things up by particular date or date-range, she returns them in date and time order (earliest first).

This also means that if you twitter to Sandy asking her to "look up today" (or, more accurately "d s l today"), she'll return the first appointment for the day.

= [improved] Speed improvements across the board =

Sandy will now look up your stuff, update it, etc much quicker than she already had been. (We're pleased to note that aside from extremely complex lookups, you'll not notice the change at all.)

Phew! And there's more to come in the next day.

—Rael

SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE
Friday, December 14th
9:30-10:00am PST (Los Angeles/US time)

Hi, folks!

Sandy will be taking a quick break *tomorrow* (Friday, December 14th, 9:30-10:00am PST (Los Angeles/US time) while we upgrade some of our server infrastructure.

You should feel free to continue emailing Sandy with things to remember and remind you about. Your mail will be queued up, awaiting her return, at which point she'll catch up as quickly as she can (somewhere on the order of a few minutes).

During this brief maintenance period:

* 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.
* You won't be able to visit Sandy's site at http://iwantsandy.com.
* You won't be able to jott to Sandy.
* You should be able to twitter to Sandy, but there will be a delay in her dealing with and responding to your tweets.
* Anything you email or twitter involving relative time (ex. "in 15 minutes" or "in an hour") will be off by a few minutes.
* Reminders that were set for this time period will be delayed by a few minutes.

We've had Sandy add a banner to every page (for those logged in) of her site with a note about this scheduled maintenance so that everyone will be sure to know about it.

I'll be posting an update under both Updates and Status topics on Get Satisfaction tomorrow morning to let you all know what's what.

I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you and assure you that we'll keep things as brief as possible.

—Rael

Good morning!

Sandy didn't want to keep you waiting for more than a few minutes today and so she kept her self-improvement session to just shy of 15 minutes. With greater clarity, invigoration, and further-improved memory, she's back on the job, reading and responding to your email, tweets, and jotts after having caught up on getting your reminders out to you.

—Rael

Hello,

And a wonderful weekend to you all!

Fresh from the code-ovens of Sandy's helpers...

[new] Everybody's tag walkin' - Browse your stuff by single tag or confluence of tags!

Visit http://iwantsandy.com/list.
Click a tag in the right-hand sidebar to only list things matching that tag.
Click another tag to show only things matching one or both of those tags.
Click either of those tags again to remove them from the mix.
Enjoy!

[improved] Editing an item's start date (on the web site) and including a time overrides the "All day" checkbox (rather than just throwing out the time you typed in).

[help] We added examples to the date and time fields in the "New"/"Write to Sandy" form [http://iwantsandy.com/messages/new] to remind you that you can type any form of date and/or time that Sandy usually understands.

[improved] Hot hot hotmail - Sandy is doing some compensating for Hotmail's HTML email exuberance.

Enjoy!

Rael

Howdy, folks!

We just pushed a massive set of additions, improvements, and fixes to Sandy's servers. I'll be digging down into some of the new features shortly; in the meantime, however, here's our usual quick but comprehensive update on what you'll find to like in our newest roll-out.

= All the Twitter you can eat! =

We hope you've been having as much fun twittering with Sandy as we have. And finding it as useful as we are.

Being able to offload a passing thought or set a reminder for something you're sure you'll forget to do sure is a stress-reliever. And doing so without any sort of context switch means being able to let that thought go and stay focused on the task at hand. Whether you're sifting through email, IM'ing with a friend, or boarding a plane, mobile phone in hand, Sandy's never more than a few keystrokes away.

For the past two weeks you've been able twitter "remember this" and "remind me about that" tweets to Sandy, look things up, and receive reminder tweets. Today we've added the ability to update and forget (delete) items too -- just like you're already used to doing by email.

Here's a sample Twitter conversation with Sandy to give you some of the flavor...

> d s remember chris likes french cheese

> [Sandy] #1 I got: chris likes french cheese

> d s update #1 chris likes good french cheese

> [Sandy] #2 I updated: chris likes good french cheese

> d s forget #2

> [Sandy] I forgot: chris likes good french cheese

You can also now snooze reminder tweets, like so:

> [Sandy] #3 Reminder: go for a walk (Wed, 12/19/2007 12:45pm)

> d s remind me in 5 minutes

> [Sandy] #4 I updated: go for a walk (Wed, 12/19/2007 12:45pm)

You'll find far more detail on Sandy's Twitter help page at http://iwantsandy.com/help/twitter.

Or head right on over to Sandy's Twitter settings at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/twitter and start twittering with Sandy.

We hope you find this a useful and natural an addition to Sandy's abilities and look forward to your sharing your experiences with us.

= To-dos all round! =

We haven't called nearly enough attention to one of our favorite features of Sandy's Web interface: the to-do/done/not-to-do toggle. And so, after making a few more tweaks, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do so now.

Not since the days before the Appointment/To-do Accord of 1790 have To-dos and Appointments lived in such harmony. No more are your To-dos relegated to a sliver of real-estate off to the side of your calendar (let alone shuffled off to yet some gated to-do-only community.)

Visit Sandy's list of your stuff [http://iwantsandy.com/list] and you'll notice a column of light-colored "X"s down the left hand side of the list (one for each of the items).

Click the X once and it's a to-do: a bookmark to visit, note to read, list to follow, person to call, etc. (Look closely and you'll notice that the item has been tagged with @todo for you.)

Click it again and it's @done (the actual doing we'll leave to you, I'm afraid).

But we didn't stop there. Click it a third time and it's neither a @todo nor is it @done: it's a not-to-do. You now have the ability to decide that something simply isn't to do -- without removing it from your To-do list and putting it somewhere else, without the guilt of seeing it undone each and every day. And if you decide at some later stage to go ahead and do it after all, just click it once for @todo, twice for @done.

It's once, twice, three times the to-do.

= Everybody's tag walkin' =

We made some further improvements to the tag-browsing we added a few days ago [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...]. Browse your stuff by toggling tags in the right-hand sidebar on and off and you'll now find items listed in relevance-order: in order of the number of tags they match. So if you have: "thing one @home @todo" and "thing two @home" and click both the "home" and "todo" tags in the sidebar, "thing one" will be listed first, followed by "thing two" and then anything else that matches either "home" or "todo".

What I personally find rather useful is to bookmark a list of all my @home @todos and another with my list of @sandy @ui @bugs so that I can quickly jump directly to those items by combined context.

Thanks to all who mentioned the need for this sort of interface -- most recently BRS [http://gsfn.us/t/5zl].

= "Write to Sandy," now with Subject and Cc =

The renamed "Write to Sandy" menu on the toolbar (formerly the duller, less-descriptive "New") now allows you to set a Subject and Cc other people -- more like your regular email application.

So if you're away from your laptop and want to dash off a quick message to Sandy, just log in to iwantsandy.com and click "Write to Sandy."

You'll even receive a reply as if you'd written in by email.

= More examples =

Need some inspiration for what else you can have Sandy remember for you? Check out the new examples listed under the "Examples" menu from the home page (or jump right to http://iwantsandy.com/examples/of/con... to see this in action). You'll find examples of: reminders, appointments, to-dos, contacts, bookmarks, lists, and notes.

Have some examples of your own we should add to the list? Please do reply to this posting!

= Quarterly! =

Anything tagged with @quarterly will appear on your calendar and remind you on the same day at the same time every three months, for example:

> remember to prepay taxes on Monday @quarterly

This is a nice boon to those of you who are self-employed or in charge of quarterly reporting for your company.

For a full list of Sandy's support recurrence intervals, check out: http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#tags...

Thanks, Lista, for the suggestion! [http://gsfn.us/t/5z1]

= Improved: Confirmations in the Web interface =

Some of you mentioned that you'd not noticed the little green, orange, or red confirmations off to the top-right of the sidebar saying things like "I've saved your settings." You'll now find a prominently-displayed message bar showing up at just beneath the menu bar on any page. This is where you'll see any and all confirmations, planned outage notices, status messages, hints, alerts, etc.

Thanks to Joseph in particular for pointing that out!

= Decluttering =

We did a little more de-cluttering of the sidebar, showing only a couple-three most-relevant sections at a time.

Have something you wouldn't mind seeing in the sidebar for easy access? Please do reply to this posting and let us know.

We also had Sandy slim down some of the unneeded lookup details she was including in her email replies.

= Fixed: "R" behaves just like "r" =

Talk about minding your "P"s and "Q"s! Sandy now minds her "R"s and "r"s so that all of the following work the same way:

> remember lower-case letters
> Remember lower-case letters
> R lower-case letters
> r lower-case letters

= Improved: Printing =

As Missbossy [http://gsfn.us/t/5zv] pointed out, the print version of Sandy's lists left a lot to be desired. The print stylesheet had completely slipped off our radar. But I've just put it back on and we'll be doing something rather cool with it shortly. In the meantime, I've put in a few fixes to make it much more readable -- if a little spare.

= Improved: Dialog boxes behavior issues =

Some of you were finding that the detail dialog boxes you open by clicking on any item's name in a list were sometimes meandering below the fold and so weren't close-able (not to mention readable). Sandy sorted them out and they should be equally accessible to everyone and in every browser (at least all those we tested).

Tip! Rather than clicking the "Close" button to hide detail, just hit the "Esc" key on your keyboard.

= Fixed: Server errors in some situations on the Settings page =

Sorry about those, folks! It took us a while to hunt down the particular corner case that was causing some of you to experience the dreaded "500 Infernal server error" when changing your account settings.

= Fixed: Swapping primary email addresses =

Some of you ran into some trouble swapping out your primary email address, getting into a stuck state where neither the new nor old primary email address worked for you. We (and by we I mean Marshall!) hunted the issue down and squashed it forthwith.

If you're still in a stuck state or need any further help on this front, please don't hesitate to let us know and we'll be glad to unstick you.

And there's still more on the way tomorrow...

Rael

Howdy,

Both Sandy and Stikkit will be wandering off for just a few minutes for a brief bout of unscheduled hardware maintenance.

During this brief maintenance period:

* Your email will be received (it _won't_ be bounced or lost), but there will be a delay in Sandy and Stikkit dealing with it.
* You won't receive a reply from Sandy right away when you send her email; the same will be true of Stikkit.
* You won't be able to visit Sandy's site at http://iwantsandy.com or Stikkit at http://stikkit.com.
* You won't be able to jott to Sandy.
* You should be able to twitter to Sandy, but there will be a delay in her dealing with and responding to your tweets.
* Anything you email or twitter involving relative time (ex. "in 15 minutes" or "in an hour") will be off by a few minutes.
* Reminders that were set for this time period will be delayed by a few minutes.

We're sorry we couldn't provide more advanced notice on this downtime.

I'll post with an update within a few minutes.

—Rael

Howdy,

Both Sandy and Stikkit are back online after only around 10 minutes downtime.

We do anticipate needing to do the same thing again (we're estimating around 20 minutes) in the next couple of hours. I'll post again with an update when we're ready to do so.

I apologize for any inconvenience this might be causing you!

—Rael

Hi again,

Both Sandy and Stikkit will be offline starting now [2007-12-21 16:11 PST] for about 20 minutes.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience.

—Rael

P.s. For details on just what this means, please see the couple of messages of earlier today to which this is a reply.

Howdy!

I'm thrilled to announce the return of Stikkit and Sandy, both as chipper as can be after some minor backplane surgery.

Sandy has completely caught up on her email, Twitter direct messages, and any reminders you had for around this time should only have been a few minutes delayed.

Thank you from Sandy and the rest of us for your understanding!

—Rael

Howdy,

And a happy holidays to you all! Sandy's busy little developer elves have been hard at work (albeit quiet) over the holiday weekend, bringing you some delectable functionality treats and nourishing improvements and fixes, featuring:

= New-ish and Improved: Message bar

You've no doubt already noticed a brand new ever-visible-yet-unobtrusive notification bar just beneath Sandy's menu-bar on the site. The notification bar gathers together into one visible spot: announcements, confirmations, alerts, tips, hints, and more to come...

= New! Power move: Create multiple appointments and to-dos without repeating yourself =

See the announcement at [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...].

= New! Power move: Remember entire email messages =

See the announcement at [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...].

= Added: More examples =

We've sprinkled some more examples throughout the site to provide some inspiration for ways to work with Sandy that you may not have come across quite yet. You'll find these new examples in the sidebars and the new top notification bar (just beneath Sandy's menu bar).

= Improved: Sidebar reshuffling =

We moved the calendar, filter-and-sort, and tag cloud boxes up in the sidebar after moving some of the hints and tips into the message bar. Props to brs [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for mentioning this! You'll also find the calendar appearing any time you choose from the "Today" menu (basically anything based on date) and the "Filter and sort" sidebar box appearing any time you choose from the "Your stuff" or "Tags" menus. (The "Filter and sort" box no longer needs to be toggled on and off manually by you but appears when it is most useful.)

= Added: Jott audio links =

Any time you Jott to Sandy, you can now jump back to that original Jott audio. To do so:

1. Click the name of any item in any list.
2. Click the "More context" link.
3. Click the "Listen to your original Jott" link.

= Fixed: Secondary email confirmation conflict =

A couple-three of you got stuck between an old and a new secondary email address, able to use neither. This issue has been fixed and I do apologize for any frustration it might have caused those of you affected.

= Fixed: No more reminders for done to-dos =

Sandy will no longer remind you about things that you've marked as done (tagged as @done).

A shout out to Norbiq [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for catching that!

= Fixed: Order of items in email replies =

In some cases Sandy would get a little confused about the order of items in your replies to her replies. We got that sorted and you shouldn't see any more "I couldn't find that..." messages from her.

= Help: Tag things via Jott by saying "tag with..."

The Jott help page [http://iwantsandy.com/help/jott] now includes some help on tagging things when jotting to Sandy.

Since "@todo" and "@done" and "@errand" are hard to pronounce ("at todo?"), to tag items you're jotting, just say:

> tag with [tag name]

For example:

> "remind me to call Hazel tomorrow tag with phone"
> "remember Jim Broadstreet's number is 503-555-1212 tag with friends and bookclub"

Enjoy!

—R

Howdy!

A few improvements and two of the most-requested features...

= New! Choose how you'll be reminded -- or not =

See the announcement at [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...].

= New! Let Sandy know if you'd like an email reply -- or not =

See the announcement at [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...].

= Improved: Default names when you Subject: remind or remember =

When you simply put "remember" or "remind me ..." in the subject line so that Sandy can keep track of all the text in the email you're sending her, she'll now use some of the first paragraph in the email body to give that item a name.

Thanks to Lista, Forge42, and Non-Sequitur [http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...] for all their testing!

= Improved: Too chatty? =

We re-added a "Too chatty?" P.s. to replies with a link to change your email reply settings.

Happy new year!

Rael

Howdy,

And a happy new year! I trust you all had happy and healthy celebrations and are diving into 2008 with abandon -- or at least easing in with something approaching abandon ;-).

Today's update features some bug fixes and minor nits we wanted to take care of before pushing on...

= Changed: Vodafone UK removed from SMS carriers =

After much hand-wringing -- by us and by some of you -- we have decided to give up on letting people keep hitting the Vodafone UK email-to-SMS gateway wall. To that end, we've removed Vodafone UK from the list of SMS carriers at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/mobile.

If anyone actually has Vodafone UK working for SMS reminders, please do let us know as we'd love to glean what you did right and try applying it to your fellow Sandy clients.

= Added: Reminder and reply tag hints =

We've added some hints on using Sandy's new reminder [http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#remi...] and reply [http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide#replies]. You'll see these appearing along with the rest at the bottom of Sandy's usual replies.

= Fixed: "remind get back to Mike" dropping "get back to" bug =

In the midst of readying some further functionality (which you'll all no doubt love when it's done ;-), a bug was introduced which caused Sandy to sometimes drop words before "to", for example: "Remind get back to Mike" ended up in a reminder titled "Mike" rather than "Get back to Mike".

We test rather comprehensively to assure that these sorts of things don't creep in, but every now and then one sneaks through. I apologize for any confusion this might have caused you.

= Added: All the recurrence tags to the Tags menu =

We corrected an oversight in not adding new recurrence tags to the Tags menu -- you'll find the full complement there now.

= Fixed: You can now set reminders through the web site for unscheduled events =

There were some odd interactions between setting a "5 minutes from now" or "1 hour from now" reminder on something that either wasn't scheduled or was scheduled as an all day event. Setting reminders through the web site now works as expected across the board.

—Rael

Howdy,

It's been a jam-packed couple-three days here at Sandy Central. Here are a few things we've whipped up and into shape...

= New: Google Calendar Gadget =

For details, click here: http://gsfn.us/t/7xb

= Added: Resend Welcome email message =

We've added "Resend Welcome email message" link to Sandy's Welcome page at http://iwantsandy.com/welcome just in case your mail program has managed to misplace the original.

= Fixed: Some intermittent unruly timezone behavior =

A few of you here and there were running into oddities where the timezone for one of your appointments was incorrectly set to UTC or, well, someplace else, rather than your own time-zone. Marshall set it to rights and so you'll not not be bothered by that bug again.

And along the same lines, you should no longer have the odd to-do showing up a day early or a day late in your Daily Digest.

= Fixed: Multiple "Updated a month ago" groupings =

You'll find your stuff is now grouped properly by when it was last updated rather than appearing as multiple "Updated a month ago" groups.

= Fixed: iCal to-do toggling links =

Thanks to our friend R for pointing out that the to-do toggling links that appear in the notes column in iCal were not working as they should.

—Rael

Howdy,

Here's a little something for all you BlackBerry-toting Sandy folk...

= Added: Email attachments setting =

You can now now let Sandy know whether or not she should include iCalendar (calendar invitation) and vCard (contact) attachments in her replies.

So whether you just don't need the attachments, have already subscribed your Outlook or iCal calendar to Sandy's iCal feed [http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds], don't have a calendar or address book to fill, or whatever your reason, you'll find a new "Email attachments" setting at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/email to turn them off (or back on again -- the default).

This setting is particularly useful to those of you emailing primarily from your BlackBerries as the silly (yet incredibly useful) devices don't seem to know what to make of anything but plain text (and a modicum of HTML). (If you're interested in the gory details on this, take a gander at http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search... .)

A great big shout-out to Non-Sequitur, George, JT, and others [http://gsfn.us/t/7z9, http://gsfn.us/t/7zj] for helping us narrow down the issue and proposing this as a workaround!

—Rael

Howdy,

We've been pretty heads-down the past few days, working on improvements, fixes, and some fabulous new functionality you'll see appearing over the coming week -- starting with a couple of nice new features we pushed in last night's update...

= NEW! Goals: Focus on what's important =

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.

= NEW! Invite your friends =

Everyone deserves a personal assistant! That's why Sandy makes it simpler-than-pie to introduce her to your friends, family, and co-workers and share appointments, to-dos, and other details just by Cc'ing her.

Some of you have been asking us to bake invitations right into Sandy's web site so that you can see exactly what Sandy will be mailing off to your friends as well as having the chance to include a note of your own.

And that's just what we've done. At the top of any page on Sandy's web site you'll find a brand new "Invite" link that leads to a brand new "Invite a friend" page at http://iwantsandy.com/invite .

* Invite one or many friends all in one go.
* A handy "Add from my address book" wizard gives you easy access to your friends' email addresses, wherever they're stored: AOL, Yahoo!, Outlook, Gmail, Plaxo, Palm, ...
* Because you know your friends better than Sandy does, you can choose an invitation template for Sandy to use.
* Enclose a personal note to your friend(s).
* Anyone you invite is added to your Friends list [http://iwantsandy.com/friends], where you can choose what you would like Sandy to do when when they share something with you.

Give the gift that keeps on reminding!

= Added: An iPhone/iPod WebClip bookmark icon =

If you're packing an iPhone and want to keep Sandy -- and your stuff -- close at hand, give the iPhone's new WebClip functionality a whirl.

1. Visit http://iwantsandy.com/home and pinch and twiddle the page so that it's focused on and zoomed in to just the right spot.
2. Tap the [+] at the bottom of your iPhone's screen.
3. Tap the "Add to Home Screen" button.
4. Name the WebClip "Sandy" or "I want Sandy".
5. Click the Add button at the top-right of your iPhone's screen.

Poof! Sandy appears as a shiny new WebClip icon (we even gave her a special iPhone WebClip-specific icon) right on your iPhone's home screen. Any time you need to consult the stuff Sandy's remembering for you, toggle a to-do to done, or the like, just tap the Sandy icon on your home screen.

= Here's an idea: Valentine's day insurance! =

Valentine's Day is only 24 days away. How about a little Valentine's Day insurance?

Send email to Sandy and include:

Please remind me @yearly @valentines +
* find the perfect Valentine's Day gift by 2/13
* Valentine's Day on 2/14

Sandy will not only make sure you don't forget to wish your loved-one a happy Valentine's Day on February 14th, but she'll also drop you a last minute reminder to pick up something special in case you've cut it a little too close.

= Improved: Lists =

Some of you were running into some issues with lists (particularly lists of multiple items you wanted Sandy to remember) [http://iwantsandy.com/help/lists]. We've worked with Sandy to put in some fixes and lists should now be behaving as you would expect them to. In particular, Sandy now takes into account that some Web mail services introduce oodles of blank lines into your replies.

If you're still running into trouble working with lists, please do forward one of Sandy's responses to an attempt at a list to help@iwantsandy.com and we'll tuck right in.

Much deserved kudos to Chris, Scott Ott, Bsoist, Beck, Mike, Netdiva, and others [http://gsfn.us/t/8xz] for your troubleshooting, suggestions, and patience!

= Improved: Tag visibility =

A minor tweak to the way tags are displayed in lists makes them stand out rather nicely.

= Fixed: Sorting and grouping =

Some of you found that the headings associated with groupings of appointments, reminders, and to-dos were off by a few hours -- even though the reminders themselves arrived right on time. We hunted down and took care of the bug, so date and time headings should now be spot on.

= Fixed: Dropped words =

Sandy was occasionally dropping a seemingly-special word or two like "schedule" or "book" from the names of your appointments. You should run into this sort of thing no more; if you do, please do let us know.

We're very much appreciating all the incredible feedback, suggestions, and other discussion here on Get Satisfaction. Please do keep it up and we'll respond just as quickly as our worn-down-to-the-nub programmer fingers will allow.

—Rael

Howdy!

And welcome to another episode of "As the Sandy learns." On today's show...

= NEW! Sandy's email is now richer, prettier, and even more fun! =

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!

= Improved: Lookup results =

Some of you noted that when you looked something up (e.g. "Sandy, look up @todo"), you were surprised to see matching email messages thrown in with your appointments, to-dos, etc.

We've tweaked things in such a way as to vastly improve lookups and return only the results you were after.

* If Sandy finds any matching appointments, to-dos, etc., she'll return just those and not litter her reply with superfluous email matches.

* If she finds no matching items, she'll fall back to looking for email matches and return those instead. This is very useful in those cases when you've simply asked her to "Remember @meeting_notes" so that she's tag the contents of an email message with @meeting_notes.

In addition, all results now include context just in case there were some additional details around what you asked Sandy to remember for you.

We're always working with Sandy to hone the information she provides in her email replies and reminders and so very much appreciate all of your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. A big shout out in particular to Robozoid, Solarkid, Thalia, JT, JWard6971, and others [http://gsfn.us/t/9hp] for all your input on this!

= Fixed: To-do toggling =

Some of you pointed out that in some cases toggling a to-do to done abjectly refused to, well..., toggle that to-do to done. (I know I found it maddening when I finally ran into it myself!) To-dos now toggle as expected!

= Fixed: Your stuff > To-dos =

The "To-dos" choice under the "Your stuff" menu once again brings up the list of all of your undone to-dos (i.e. anything tagged with @todo).

Thanks, Tutva and Steveisaacs! [http://gsfn.us/t/9hz]

= Fixed: Lookup Friday =

Some of you ran into an issue where every so often looking up a particular day's appointments or to-dos (e.g. "Sandy, look up Friday") didn't return them, but did (incorrectly) when you looked up the next day (e.g. "Sandy, look up Saturday").

There was a minor nit in lookups in some situations that was causing this -- it's been fixed and should bother you no more.

(Note that while lookups were running into this nit, Sandy's understanding of what day the appointment or to-do was actually scheduled for was spot on and reminders delivered on time.)

Thank you Steffen, Norbiq, and Nadia [http://gsfn.us/t/9i9] for helping us nail this down!

= Tweaked: Stylesheets =

We tweaked a bunch of stylesheet issues some of you mentioned; please do let us know if you still notice any wrapping bugaboos.

= Improved: Toggling to-dos, archiving, and editing retain short date or time format =

When you toggled a to-do, archived, or otherwise edited an item on the site, the updated item showed up with date and time in long form. Toggling, archiving, and updating is now smarter about context and so retains the nice short form date and/or time (e.g. "9am" instead of "Fri, 1/25/2008 9am").

If you're the sort of person who notices this sort of thing, you should notice the change right away ;-).

Enjoy!

Rael