Letter 48: November 31, 2008
A few months back I recommended - enthusiastically but with lawyerly caution - I Want Sandy, a delightful online calendar, reminder and to-do service with some unique features. Some of the readers who respond to these messages responded to that one, indicating they would give Sandy a spin. I don't know who went ahead with that, or how their relationship with her developed.
I'm glad of my caution now. I warned you I had no information on the people behind Sandy's scenes. And in the next few days - the next few days ladies and gentlemen - Sandy will be permanently offline. The developer and "CEO" has accepted a real job with Twitter (a large and growing web-based communication tool very popular with the Youthful Smart People Today).
And good for him. Really. I sometimes wondered how he was making any money out of this operation. So I thought about what my own business plan would be, and it was exactly what has happened: invent a cool new tool, grow a customer base by giving it away free, and then sell out for (I assume and hope for him) a chunk of capital. I'd have done the same. Full marks to Rael... almost.
There's a lot of disappointment and ever anger among users. Some of it is the spoiled adolescent egocentricity that you so often see online, from people who seem to think that all the rest of us live with our moms too and that software engineers don't really need salaries.
But there is also some understandable annoyance about the short notice being given to people who have come to rely on the service. Since I too run a free automated web-based service (not described here because it's irrelevant to writer's block and because I don't want new users right now anyway), there's a lesson there. Folks do place trust in you and that deserves to be honored.
So; anyway; the practical thing you had better do today is that if you followed my suggestion and entrusted any valuable information to Sandy, this is the time to take it back and to make sure all your important reminders are in some other diary (for US readers, calendar). There are tools on her website for doing this.
But I still say that other, similar, services are a great tool for anyone who's dealing with the everyday, ordinary experience people call "procrastination" or with the everyday, ordinary experience people label "ADD" or just with the everyday, ordinary experience that is the overwhelm of 21st-century life.
Oh, that's not you?
So let's check out some alternatives. One service I've been aware of for years and which seems to have a decent reputation and stability (so far) is rememberthemilk.com . Others to look at if you have time are - a random list in random order - gopingme.com, gottakeepup.com and tadalist.com. And don't forget the splendid calendaring system that came free with your Gmail, your Yahoo! mail or whatever else it came free with, and that you've never looked at.
Once bitten, but still technophiliac, something I think you should do today is the same as it was at the start of all this: choose a time management system that might work for you and give it a spin. Empty the paralyzing inbox. Scrap the overwhelming to-do list. Let me know what tool you find that works, and I'll do the same for you.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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