Organization in Web2.0: I Want Sandy

About 6 months ago I realized that trying to manage work, home, and 2 kids is a scheduling nightmare.  Especially as the school year wraps up and you've got school programs, dance recitals, half days, parties, work conferences, PTA meetings, and so much going on that even if you can remember it you have to master astral projection to actually go to all of it. My decicion then was to simply start carrying a planner.

After a few happy months of finally having some way of managing all this, I started to wonder if there's a better way.  I spend all day working on and around computers, surely there's some computerized way that will work for me. I've tried PDA's and various other tools before but never found one that worked to my satisfaction.  Finally, a few months ago I stumbled across "I Want Sandy".

I've been amazed at how easy I was able to work Sandy into my flow, and with my new iPhone I've found it even more indispensable.  Sandy works almost entirely by email, turning your inbox into a scheduling system.  Upon registration you're given a custom email address that you can use to communicate with her and send her simple emails like "remember Dental Appointment september 11 8am" or "Remind me to take out the trash tuesday night @weekly", and she'll parse the text and put it on your calendar.  Items can be added, searched, edited, and removed entirely via email.  Also, every morning you get a nicely formatted "Daily Digest" showing all your upcoming appointments for the day, plus anything else you've deemed important enough to be included.

But that's not all.  Email is the main form of communicating with her, but she also integrates nicely with Twitter & Jott, allowing you to do the same operations via those interfaces.  Also, she can do more than just appointments. She can understand and remember URL bookmarks and Contact information, and just plain notes.  It's all stored in a nice searchable way via their website,  and can easily be requested remotely via any of the means above (Email, Twitter, Jott). 

While Sandy's website leaves some to be desired, she can export all of your information as RSS or iCal feeds making it easy to add her calendar to your favorite tool (Google Calendar in my case).  This way I can easily get a quick look at what's going on for the next week or month.

So Sandy's done alot to help me keep organized.  Rael Dornfest, lead developer of Sandy & my old blogging tool Blosxom, has done a fantastic job and I look forward to seeing what tricks Sandy learns next!  I really loved using Jott to talk to Sandy, but it seems Jott has decided to start charging for that ability (Currently at $4 a month), so I've had to stop using that.

But Sandy's not the only tool I'm using in the Web2.0 space to stay organized. Come back next week for more information on some other tools!

Technorati Tags: iwantsandy, productivity, gtd