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What is an alternate service to I Want Sandy?
I completely rely on I Want Sandy to remind me of dozens of things by email. I realise there are lots of other to-do list products, but is there something that will take input by email *and* automatically remind me by email as well?
I’m concerned
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Inappropriate?Remember the Milk will send & receive emails. It also has a Twitter interface, as well as AIM, ICQ, and other instant messaging platforms. In many ways, it's superior to Sandy.
But it's not as friendly. I tried Remember the Milk before I found Sandy, and I found it too easy to ignore. For some reason, I didn't want to disappoint Sandy when a reminder came in. Call me a sentimental old geek who's read way too many cyberpunk stories involving software agents.
Here's a sample email I sent to RTM:
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:14:51 -0600
From: "Dave Ross" <dave@XXXXXX.com>
To: "Remember the Milk" <XXXXXX@rmilk.com>
Subject: Try out RTM again
Due: 11/25 midnight
priority: 1
I’m not sure I'm going to use RTM or not
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Agree.
I think this highlights how wonderful even a rudimentary "natural language" input is. Which is only one of the many things I will miss about IWSandy.
I can't believe RTM would expect users to learn that syntax for emails. Although I suppose RTM has a multitude of other ways of sending tasks to RTM. -
While natural language is the best way to go, I have a shortcut that gets me around the lousy syntax of RTM. Most phones have a "autotext" option that allows you to type, for example, "din" and have it replaced with "dinner". On my phone, I replace "rtmk" with:
"Task:
Due:
Priority:
Tags:
List:
---
Note:
-end-"
So I can start an email by typing "rtmk" then just fill in the spaces. Not so bad. But in a pinch, I can use Dial2Do to phone in my tasks. -
I really, really WANT Sandy. Remember the Milk is probably fine, but it just doesn't feel right. I got my first email from RTM this afternoon, and it just wasn't like seeing Sandy's name. RTM doesn't wish me a cheery good morning, doesn't call me by name. There was something special about having Sandy remind me to do something. RTM is just me reminding myself; if that worked, I wouldn't have wanted Sandy to begin with.
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Inappropriate?I know Backpack has reminders, but can't find any docs that imply I can input reminders via email or anything other than the web interface. Anyone know more about how this works?
I’m kinda frustrated
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You can find their info on emailing stuff into Backpack at this page: http://www.backpackit.com/email/
I used to be a big fan of BP, but once they relaunched it as a business intranet tool, I sort of lost interest in it for personal use. -
I agree about BackPack. My wife & I use it for a shared grocery list and to track Christmas presents we buy. Other than that, it doesn't fit my needs very well.
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Inappropriate?Vitalist looks good, too. But, it's really geared for a GTD workflow. I think the deal breaker for me is that it doesn't let you specify a due date when you email something to it. It takes the email subject as the task name and the email body as notes, and just dumps the whole mess in your Vitalist inbox, where you can enter further details once you sign in to the site.
I’m still not sure what the right Sandy alternative is for me
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Inappropriate?The service I feel serves as a really good alternative is Go Ping Me at http://gopingme.com. You can get reminders by text and email and it understands similar types of protocol for setting reminders. There are also some neat features it has that Sandy did not like the pester feature.
I’m silly
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Definitely looks like a viable alternative. With Dave, Ross, I had also tried RTM and replaced it with Sandy. Go Ping Me looks similar to Sandy functionality. Thx for the find. :)
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I agree with you Fox. Go Ping Me looks good.
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Inappropriate?A commenter on the Values of n blog recommended Deadline, another free to-do list that integrates with email and IM (SMS might be coming soon).
I’m intrigued
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Inappropriate?I think http://www.reqall.com is supposed to be somewhat similar. What was nice about Sandy was the ways you could query the "database" and retrieve info. That's what Reqall does -- you store notes, todos, contacts, appointments, then you can get them out whenever you need. But I'm not sure as email-based as Sandy. It's more phone, IM, and web-based. Haven't used it, just read about it... -
Inappropriate?Hi folks.
I just had a pointer to the new 2.0 version of ScheduleWorld arrive in my inbox in case it is of interest to any of you.
http://www.ScheduleWorld.com/sw2/
Best,
Rael -
Inappropriate?I use toodledo for my reminders. http://www.toodledo.com. It allows me to email my todo's and emails me back for reminders. Tons of options and variety of ways to organize yourself.4 Comments Add a comment
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I also use Toodledo. I checked out Sandy but decided against it as it didn't seem robust enough. Toodledo also has the ability to link into your twitter and tweet you reminders as well as take in tasks via twitter.
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Toodledo cannot set a "due time" via email/sms. Useless (to me)
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Toodledo cannot set a "due time" via email/sms. Useless (to me)
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^ I agree with Wayne. PingMe is pretty good, but doesn't support iCal. There doesn't seem to be an 'IwantSandy' alternative.. from what I can see.
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Inappropriate?I agree with mathys about Toodledo. Excellent for task/to-do management, great reminder functions, and flexible emailing of tasks to it. The developer is very active daily in his forum and responds quickly to feature suggestions and requests, though he does keep a priority list and sticks to it as long as the top items on it were all requested by the most members.
Doesn’t do what Sandy does but it is a good start to at least manage your to-do's and reminders.
Jim
I’m cruisin'
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Inappropriate?I don't like any of these. I just want Sandy. I live and breath in email and these are all too complex from email. Maybe the open source Sandy will take off. I hope so. http://sandysback.blogspot.com/
I’m sad
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Inappropriate?I'm surprised no one has mentioned Jott. Lifehacker.com has some good tips about making best use of Jott:
http://lifehacker.com/search/jott/1 Comment Add a comment
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Probably because the good features are pay only.
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Inappropriate?The 'Sandy' feature I really valued was the ability to specify which reminders went to my mobile. I also valued iCal. So a quick summary of the programmes I've investigated:
PingeMe - can specify mobile, but no iCal
RTM - iCal, but can't specify mobile
Toodledo - same as above & can't specify a freaken 'due time' (for email scheduling).
Deadline - too basic
Backpack - not free
However, I've found a work-around to specify mobile reminders for RTM using Gmail.
Simply create a filter in your Gmail to forward any reminders with the word 'mobile' to your mobile's email address. Of course when creating the initial reminder in RTM be sure to include the word 'mobile' in the subject line.
Made a couple of test runs & it appears to work fine.
Also, according to Wikipedia RTM has over 750,000 users so is unlikely to write us a 'dear john' letter like Sandy.
I’m feeling like I've wasted lots of time investigating alternatives
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Probably an even better solution would be a character before mobile such as @mobile or +mobile. This way it won't forward any emails that happen to mention mobile. I live in Mobile so naturally that would be a problem for me. ;)
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Wait, wait, wait. It just occurred to me what you actually said, or rather what you were referring to. RTM does allow SMS reminders. It's under Settings > Reminders tab. Just scroll to the bottom. Is it that your service provider isn't listed?
Unless you're talking about adding events via SMS. You can still do that, but you have to do it via Twitter. -
Yeah, I realise you can add as many mobiles or emails you want on the RTM reminders tab. The problem is I want to differentiate my reminders so only some go to my mobile. With RTM reminders - it's either all or nothing.
So that's why I came up with my work around.
So it goes from:
RTM reminder > Gmail > Gmail filters for the word mobile > Vodafone email > Txt message
You have to turn on the txt message notification on your Vodafone email (or whatever your carrier is).
Yeah, it's a bit convoluted, but it works.
So an example of an RTM mobile reminder would go like this:
'Hockey game on turf 2 mobile'.
You can substitute any word for mobile - just make sure you set-up your Gmail to filter for it e.g.
'Hockey game on turf 2 PurpleMonkeyDiswasher' -
Inappropriate?I ditched reQall for Dial2Do and I'm using Google Calendar (gCal). Between those two, I'm fairly good. The only problem I have is setting reminders via SMS. As far as I can tell, gCal won't allow me to do that. I can set an event via SMS, but I cannot change the default reminders.
RTM is okay. It's just something about the layout that bothers me, it's too confusing. Users that do use it love it, so there must be something to it. -
Inappropriate?I've tried RTM and find the interface very confusing. This is the third time I've tried to get into it, but I just can't deal with the way that the interface deals with selecting tasks. It drives me nuts! I know some people get around this by only using the FF add-on for RTM so the tasks show up in gmail, but I don't get that one either.
I like ReQall in that I have the Blackberry app for it and I love being able to record a to-do on the BB and have it sync to ReQall. I don't have to dial and wait for a service to answer and I don't have to have signal to make it work. Now if they could add the basics of a decent to-do list, like repeating events, tags, etc., it could be great.
I’m still looking
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Inappropriate?I actually use and love Hiveminder. It doesn't get much attention compared to RTM, but it has some features that I rely on and haven't found in other tools:
- Task dependency -- making one task actionable only after another has been completed -- is as close to a killer feature as a "TODO" tool can get.
- The "Task Review" feature makes task management a breeze for me by forcing me to go through all my tasks and take some sort of action on each, whether that's to complete the task or defer it -- a true GTD workflow.
- I also like the ability to bulk update tasks.
The interface is clean and, compared to RTM, easy to understand. Most importantly, Hiveminder integrates with MS Outlook, iGoogle, Google Calendar, or any other tool that supports RSS or iCalendar formats. It allows you to add tasks by email, SMS, Twitter or IM (AIM or Gtalk/Jabber), or Jott.
The one thing that's missing for me is a native iPhone app for offline task management. The mobile-friendly web site is a nice option, but offline support like that offered by reQall or Jott would be valuable.
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