Nancy's dashboard

I like jott, it works

I would gladly pay for Sandy if I could trust it to work everyday, I don't care about paying as long as I get my reminders on time which is not happening and tech support which is not happening either

That "13 cents a day to pay for Jott" is a sunk cost whether you use Jott each of those days or not. And it totals up to almost $50 a year. Plus, that only gets you 15 second Jotts. I find that if I try to get what I want to get to Sandy into a 15 second Jott, the transcription is unreadable, senseless. And if you want to have 30 seconds per Jott message, which you will most likely need in order to spell out the words that Jott chokes on, you'll be paying about $150 per year!

Nah - not me!

Or you could just cough up the 13 cents a day to pay for Jott. I find that to be the easiest solution.

I set this up just the other day to test it out.

1) create a ReQall.com account.
Connect your phone to it. (Settings -> Phone access)
Store the ReQall phone number in your phone's address book.

Copy the RSS feed address by going to Settings -> Feeds
http://www.reqall.com/user/feeds/rss/...

2) create a Twitterfeed.com account.
This means that you need an OpenID account.
(Try myOpenID.com if you don't have one.)

3) create a new twitter feed.
Enter the Twitter account username and password.
Paste in the ReQall RSS feed address.
Update frequency: every 30 minutes.
Prefix each tweet with: "d s ". (That's: D space S space)
(Make sure to include the ending space.)

4) call ReQall and "Add" a new item (press 1).
Every half hour, Twitterfeed will pull a new version of the RSS feed from ReQall, check to see if anything is new, and then publish the new items to Twitter. Twitter will send a direct message to Sandy (because of the "d s " prefix).
So Sandy will receive a new Tweet from Twitter with your instructions.

Remember that because this workaround goes through Twitter, you're limited to 140 characters.

This hack is necessary because
1) ReQall doesn't have a "link" to Sandy like Jott does. It's not as easy to send Sandy a voice transcription of what you said.

2) TwitterFeed only feeds Twitter. (and laconica). It can't feed your Sandy account directly. You also can't set up Sandy to subscribe to the ReQall rss feed.

3) ReQall can send you new transcriptions by email. If it was easy for Sandy to accept emails, we could use this method and bypass Twitter.

It is possible to set up ReQall to send email to your email account ever time a new transcription is made. You could set up a filter in your mailbox to forward mail from ReQall to Sandy. However, you'd still have to tell Sandy to accept email from the ReQall email address. (The "From:" field remains set to reqall.com). As a result, it means that using ReQall email notification requires you to use the ReQall address as your second Sandy email address.

4) ReQall can send you new transcriptions by IM. If Sandy understood IM, you could have ReQall IM Sandy and skip the whole Twitter thing.

Rage, outline for me then: you call reQall, and choose to...what? Add? Share? Sorry, but reQall seems so cryptic sometimes. Your solution *appears* to make sense, but I'm having trouble with the implementation

Native app would be incredible. – Logan, on September 04, 2008 22:12

Got it!

Set up Twitterfeed to process the ReQall Feed.

Choose the option to prefix each feed with "d s " (without quotes but with the trailing space)

I use Windows mobile and have unlimited data, so can use the reqall app to create items with my voice but without a phone call, and after they are transcribed, 30 mins later Sandy gets the update.

Faster and cheaper (no minutes used) than Jott.... even free Jott.

Thanks, Yeraze. I misread. I thought sending personal emails was still free. – Alysson, on August 30, 2008 02:42

Alysson, as I understand it using Jott to send Email will become a premium service (part of the pay tier) in just a few weeks.

Although the Jott->Twitter->Sandy route still works, if your coordinated enough to say "d s remember"

I found a workaround that is ok for me and wanted to share it in case it helped anyone else.

1. To Jott to Sandy (for free) I set up the workaround seen here (http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...) using Gmail

2. I used the name "assistant" for my Gmail account for Jott because it had too much trouble understanding "G-mail"

3. I added the email address for sending things to my evernote account to Jott (under the name Evernote) - This worked better for me than Requall or Dial2do

3. I use my iPhone apps for Jott & Evernote to manage these

This solution only syncs Sandy with ICal and Mobile Me. It doesn't put events back to Sandy – Nancy, on August 26, 2008 15:58

Oops, "lest" wires get crossed.

Yes, bummer. And now I learn that I can't remove Reqall as a friend, either.

Guess I'll have to use Dial2Do until such a time as Reqall and Sandy can work together. I was trying to eliminate having yet another service in my GTD mix. If Sandy could take voice input, she'd be all I need (other than my calender and task list).

Bummer.

I added reQall as a friend. I had tried adding reqall@reqall.com as a secondary email address, but someone has already added it, meaning a total of one (1) person in the world can use reQall with Sandy using this workaround. Also means I'd better remove it as a friend, too, less wires get crossed somewhere and I start getting cc's.

So until Rael and Sunil get together and fix roadblocks standing in the way on both ends, looks like there's no way to do this. Rael and the people behind Jott figured it out, so there must be a way.

When you get a reminder from ReQall, what address does it come from. And if you put that in Sandy's settings in the "I will also accept mail from" box, will it allow it??

I'm trying to figure out that one myself, now. I'm trying to add it as a friend.

I can't get it to send to Sandy, either, even though I've set it to send e-mail of shared reminders.
I'm wondering if you have to somehow specify the ReQall address to let Sandy allow it in (like you do with your default e-mail address)

Ok, another test: instead of using my phone I added a Shared item on Sandy's reQall website. I did get the reminder via email, but from reQall, not Sandy.

Here's the thing: the item had quotes around what I said. Rael, is that why Sandy isn't getting the messages sent through reQall?

Rael, I'm currently still running into the same problem Nancy is. I posted my supposed solution above. I've waited close to half an hour and while it's posted on Sandy's reQall account, I haven't yet gotten a notification. I've sent myself a couple of reminders and it's not putting any weirdness that I can see in the email.

I picked reQall over Dial2Do because of some additional functionality that it has over Dial2Do. Could you possibly talk with them and see if you can get this to work? You have a good record of being responsive to your users.

Nancy, did you go into Sandy reQall account settings and set Notify to email? It doesn't default to this. I would have thought it did, but it didn't. I'm testing it now.