Erin's dashboard

Why not just start a blog?

It's easy enough to set up a free account. Set the permissions so that all your new posts are private, so it's all "for your eyes only". Then have Jott or Twitter send a message to your blog site, and they create a new blog post for you. Presto, a mileage log.

I know this is possible through Jott. Even now, updating a blog is free. (See http://jott.com/jott/jott-links.html You get 15 seconds of speaking time.) I'm not sure how to post to a blog from Twitter or SMS. But there should be something available.

Doing a quick search, I found BlogIt, letmeparty.com/, and http://textu.org/for-blogs/text-me-bo... that make posts via SMS.

Oh....I sooooo need this! If anyone has figured out if this is possible, please update the topic!

I don't need Jott functionality. I need to be able to Tweet or SMS my mileage.

Exactly what I'd like, too. Usually it's easiest for me to call Sandy, knowing that the confirmation email will trigger a gadget in my Gmail which will in turn make it get added to both my RTM and Gcal. But other times starting with Gcal is more appropriate, and I really hate having to do something twice, when a lot of the time I'm lucky to manage to do it once!

That's what I'm looking for too - I'd love to hear more about how sandy is going to address this.

Hi, Norbiq.

Thanks for the above post. You're right, this does let Sandy add items to Google Calendars. This only does about 1/4 of the job the job. Adding stuff to my google calendar works OK, but Google doesn't seem to re-read the feed. And there doesn't seem to be a way for Sandy to read what changes I may have made on Google Calendars.

I use a Nokia n810, an "internet tablet" pocket-sized device with some software called mCalendar. mCalendar sync's with Google Calendar, but it doesn't sync with Sandy directly. Plus, and maybe this is a problem with mCalendar or Google, but mCalendar doesn't sync with 'added' calendars, only with the default Google calendar. Now, there's a way to download an added calendar from Google to a desktop and then import it to my Google calendar and then it can be sync'd with mCalendar. So each time I want something I send to Sandy to appear on my mCalendar & Google Calendar I must:

1. Go to Google Calendar and remove Sandy from 'added' calendars.
2. Go to Sandy's site, copy the URL for her calendar feed.
3. Go to Google Calendar and paste in the URL.
4. Download Sandy's iCal file from Google Calendar.
5. Import the Sandy ical file into my GoogleCalendar.
6. Press sync on my mCalendar.

Now, I don't care about Google Calendar or mCalendar per se. I just want an online calendar I can sync with my pda. But even with the convolutions above, there is no way to remove something from mCalendar and have it disappear from Sandy. I really like the idea that Sandy can send me reminders and I can text notes to her when I'm using my phone or email, but unless there is some way to easily sync Sandy with my pda calendar, then she is not going to meet my needs.

Are there any plans to make Sandy truly sync with PDAs or Google?

I'm probably misunderstanding the question, but I'm using a Google Apps account and can see sandy's individual items show up in the google calendar. Is that what you're trying to do?

Since you can't modify the calendar entries directly and have the changes flow back to sandy, I treat it like a read-only view...

I went to sandy's settings page, turned on calendar sharing, found the blahblah.ics url and stuck that into Google App Calendar's "Add by URL" thingy and paste the ics url in there. (leastways, I think that did it).

Is that at all close to what you're looking for? If not, explain more and i'll try again.

Yep, good points.

A couple of problems with forgetting about Google Calendar.

First, Sandy doesn't have a proper calendar view. It's very convenient to actually *see* what you have scheduled. Sandy provides a calendar feed for this very purpose.

Second, Sandy isn't able to subscribe to external calendars. Lots of things could be posted on the internet in the form of a calendar feed. Maybe your kid's soccer games or the next meeting of your chess club, etc. Right now, you have to have your Google Calendar (etc.) subscribe to other calendar feeds. This will at least reduce the number of places where your schedule is located. Sandy and Google Calendar.

It's obvious Sandy was intended to organize your life. To do that, she serves as a repository of most of your items. Not just scheduled items. She stores Appointments, Notes, Bookmarks, Contacts, and Lists, It seems odd that she can't subscribe to calendar feeds. If she could, then she would be able to schedule your life better.

Third, It just seems strange that we are encouraged to use a separate calendar application to see our scheduled items, yet we can't update those items from within the calendar application. (Then again, maybe we can, at least partially. Sandy does provide several links in every item so that you can click on it and it will take you to the appropriate item in iwantsandy.com)

well, such a thing may exist in the future, Rael has mentioned it a few times.

But, if you just start managing your calendar with Sandy & forget about stuffy old google calendar, then you're all good

It would be nice to have an automated solution rather than a manual process that has to be repeated to keep Sandy uptodate.

If you go to the "Calendar Settings" of a google calendar, at the bottom you'll see 3 buttons for XML, ICAL, and HTML under "Private Address".. Click the "ICAL" and then click the long link in the popup, at which point you'll be prompted to download an ICS file.

You should then be able to attach that ICS file to a blank email addressed to sandy, and she'll import all the appointments.

yes. ;)

What do you mean by "full synchronization"? Currently Google Calendar can display Sandy's events as part of it's schedule (via iCal feed) or as part of Sandy's Gcal gadget (which is very similar to the Remember The Milk gadget). By "full synchronization" do you mean that you want things added in Google Calendar to show up in Sandy?

This kind of capability would also be useful for people who need to log their time or need to claim expenses -- e.g., "How many hours should I bill this client today?"

Perhaps a keyword "journal" with an abbreviation "j"?

I've tried to send an attachment to Sandy and it didn't work. Any ideas on how to make it go?

I don't understand. Can you help me out?