kevin1's dashboard

I like this idea. We need an easy way to keep track of simple projects with multiple steps. Some people call it a checklist, some people call it a GTD style "project" it's all the same.

One question, are the items in the task list in a specific order? Does the next task in the list depend on the previous one being completed? My nickname for that is a "dependency list". There have been several discussions about possible additions to lists.

See these links. http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... – kevin1, on July 16, 2008 07:26

In order to do what you're suggesting, Sandy would have to be able to refer to lists by name. To "name" lists. There has been some discussion about how to update lists if this were possible. It might look something like this.

> update #Books *War and Peace -*Catcher in the Rye
> update Books list. +War and Peace -Catcher in the Rye

Through Jott
> update Books list. Add war and peace remove catcher in the rye.

I tried to make a "list FAQ" to answer questions like this. It doesn't work very well, but you can see more here. http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... – kevin1, on July 16, 2008 07:13

This idea sounds like it has several parts to it. 1) be able to give a name to an event. 2) be able to refer to the event by name, 3) be able to refer to the date inside a named event, 4) be able to create a new event that is scheduled for some date relative to the anchor event. (some amount of time before or after the anchor event) 5) have the new event be "dependent" on the anchor event. If the date of the 2009 CSF meeting changes, then those events that are relative to the anchor event should change as well.

There have been some discussions about #1 and #2, they might be coming. I don't have any information on #3, #4 and #5.

OK, I see what you were getting at. My mistake. They could certainly try a new Sandy account. Although I expect the feed in the new account would work. We haven't been seeing a lot of new posts from disaffected users recently. The problem does seem limited to them. – kevin1, on July 16, 2008 06:06

Will, can you be a little nicer please? it's not helpful to be amused at someone else's misfortune. Sandy has plenty of bugs, this seems to be one of them. This thread is long with their attempts to fix the problem on their own. Also, using a new Sandy account isn't a realistic option because there isn't any way to copy all of the info from one account to another. – kevin1, on July 16, 2008 05:30

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I sometimes get the same behavior. Whatever the cause, it's certainly inconsistent.

My best guess at the moment is that this is due to the length of the pause before or after the "tag with". I'm guessing that if there is a long pause after "tag with", then Jott starts a new sentence instead of converting the "tag with sms" to be @sms.

Look in this thread and see if it addresses your problem. http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... – kevin1, on July 16, 2008 05:11

There was some recent discussion about dependencies. Having task B appear on your todo list after task A is marked @done.

I think this is a great idea, and I'm glad to see some thinking along these lines. Because I'm trying to help, I'll point out there that this feature can be seen as a particular instance of a more general case. It might make more sense to spend the time solving the general case, in order to make something that is truly extendable.

Fundamentally, I think the dependency feature means that Sandy should "do something" (mark an item as a @todo) in response to "something happening" to another item (the user changing the item and marking it @done). Or, in programming speak, Sandy should perform a particular "action" in response to a particular "event*.

Taking the long view, Sandy already has some actions that she can perform, and some events that she can respond to. Right now, the "event" is usually 1) user interaction on the website, 2) an email or communication that is received, or 3) the time changing. When the current time changes so that it matches the date and time in a reminder, Sandy can perform any combination of the following "actions". 1) send a reminder by email, 2) send a reminder by SMS, 3) send a reminder by Twitter, 4) send both you and your "friend" email reminders, 5) send you the contents of the email that you had Sandy store.

My idea is to extend the list of possible actions that Sandy can respond with. Maybe there could be a special field or a drop down box, text area, etc. where you can enter the action and the object upon which the action should act. This is truly extendable. (The field can be visible or not depending on the user) When the correct time is reached, the action gets performed. The dependency feature requires one additional thing, it requires that Sandy recognize an additional "event". When the user marks a special, dependency item as "done", then Sandy should recognize that event and it should trigger Sandy to perform the action of changing a different item (the next item in the dependency list) and marking it as a "todo".

JohnJay,

I like your idea. See this thread for some more discussion. (http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... )

benbanjo,

Sandy already provides an RSS feed of the Daily Digest. Although it's a little hard to find. Add the text ".rss" to the end of the URL. For example: http://iwantsandy/digest.rss

The most visible link to an RSS feed is located in the group of the links at the bottom of every Sandy page. Along with two calendar feeds, "subscribe" and "download", there is the "subscribe" to the RSS feed. This link works the same way as above. It makes an RSS feed out of the "list" page (recently updated page). (URL http://iwantsandy.com/list.rss ) The feed lists the last 25 or so of your updated items, in the order they were last updated. It's the same as what's displayed by going to http://iwantsandy.com/list (Although it also lists past appointments and items marked @done.)

What other applications would you like to use the Daily Digest in? I'm curious because some newer applications might need to use the newer RSS format, called "Atom". (Sandy doesn't yet provide an Atom feed. Though this omission hasn't been much of a problem so far.)

I think the date format used in the URL bar should be the international standard (ISO 8601). Year, then month, then day. 2008/08/03 is August 3, 2008.

It's less confusing. It's very simple and unambiguous. It's the same standard used for email. It's easy to tell if the date is wrong. It's international. It uses a fixed number of digits for each section. (i.e. A month and day less than 2 characters use a leading 0.) Example: http://iwantsandy.com/digest?date=200...

However, the problem people are experiencing isn't due solely to the date format used in the URL bar. The problem seems to be the use of two different date formats in different places, and no conversion existing between the two.

Different parts of the Sandy webpage use different date formats, and there is no format conversion. As far as I can tell, the "sidebar_calendar" on the Daily Digest page uses the date format that the user selected in their settings (i.e. European). The URL bar doesn't accept a different date format depending on what the user selected, it always uses the USA format. When the user clicks on a date in the sidebar calendar, that date is used as-is, without any conversion, and put into the URL bar to fetch the next page. The URL bar doesn't expect the date to be in European format, and the error occurs.

Can you give me some more detail about how exactly you'd like this to work?

I'm guessing that you mean Microsoft Entourage for the Mac, right? I'm guessing that you are the creator of the appointment/event. You create an event in Entourage and have it email a calendar invite to all the people you're inviting. You'd like to be able to add Sandy as a CC or even a BCC and have her automatically add the appointment to the list of stuff she has scheduled for you. Are you trying to have Sandy remind people on the invite list, in addition to yourself, or do you only want her to remind you?

Entourage provides a calendar, right? Supposedly Entourage allows synchronization of calendar events. (I read it also supports Microsoft Exchange, via WebDAV) Can you synchronize Entourage with a web calendar like Google Calendar? If Sandy could subscribe to a calendar feed, and subscribe or import your calendar from Entourage, (or from Google Calendar, etc) would that solve your problem?

What is the type of the "calendar invite" that Entourage sends out? Is it some standard calendar invite or is it specific to Entourage? I'm wondering if other programs, evite.com or Google Calendar, or anybody else use the same calendar invite. If it's a standard, then there's a greater chance that Sandy could be made to recognize it.

I see, replying to Sandy with "snooze until next week" changed the name of the event to "Until".

Somebody else had the same problem a couple days ago; see this thread. (http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... ) I was initially worried that this error would have erased all the details of the event, so you wouldn't have any idea what the event "Until" was for. But then I realized that the event still has the original context (the link "more context") and the email above seems pretty extensive. Interesting how Sandy kept your email around and replied to your reply rather than generating a new email reminder.

Take some care when posting an email, though. It took me too long to read through the email and try and figure out what the problem was. A brief summary of the problem would have been appreciated. Also, by posting the email, you have now exposed to the world both your personal email address and the private email address that Sandy provides you. I suggest that you go change your Sandy private email address. (See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... )

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. It's just one of those weird errors Sandy sometimes has when reading emails.

I tried your example and it worked for me. I did exactly what you describe. The weird thing was that Sandy seemed to get two commands from my second email. She updated the "packing list" with items 4 and 5 AND she created a new list called "r packing list" with items 1, 2, and 3.

My guess is that Sandy is picking up some keywords from the previous email and interpreting it as a command. The word "forget" is in the confirmation email that she sends, and so is "remember". I don't know why she grabbed the "forget" in your case, or what actually happened in mine. I did receive a new item though, and it includes the context that created it.

Is it possible to update a list through Jott?

Currently, no. There are two problems with this. First, Jott doesn't make it possible to use the multiple lines and asterisks that are currently required. Second, Jott can't respond to messages from Sandy. So you can't say "update #1" because there is no #1.

Keywords might help with the first problem.
> update #1 add bananas remove milk

Having Sandy recognize names might solve the second problem. Assume that the list could be named "wine" or "trader joe's"

> update #trader joe's, add case of 2 buck chuck for the party

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

Is it possible to create a list via Jott?
(See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...)

Currently, no. Currently creating a list requires multiple lines and use of asterisks. Jott doesn't have that. However, I understand that a lot of options are being considered on how Sandy could best create and update lists from Jott. One idea is that Sandy could be made to recognize a few keywords. Some of the keywords could be "list" and "and" and "add" and "remove".

> remember groceries list eggs and butter and toast.
> update #1 add butter remove cheese add bananas

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...