TimmyHA To-Do list that writes itself
June 23rd 2008 07:40
The main problem with To-Do lists and schedules is that you have to fill them damn things out and that alone should be point 1. But a new generation of free online schedulers are promising to end the boredom of the writing. These Web applications are voice activated, processing natural language and spoken commands to write a list or build a calendar.
Based in San Francisco, one of the most effective is Presdo, which launched in late April of this year. Presdo’s homepage is absurdly simple: a floating text box in which the visitor types a simple command which is interpreted into data and brings you to a page where you and anyone else involved in the To-Do can check and change the details of the event.
Presdo founder Eric Ly says the system allow users to be general and talk naturally and the software can react easily. Commands like “next month” or “about a week” are fluid and don’t need to be transferred into dates and times. Nowhere on the site will you find a calendar and that is an intentional aspect of the programming. As Ly says, “We really wanted to make it very easy for people to express what they wanted in terms of time. We felt like the natural-language approach was going to be more flexible and expressive for users.”
Presdo gathers information and uses other applications like Google Maps to simplify your language and keep it organised. “One thing this made me acutely aware of is how weirdly people speak," says Rael Dernfest of IWantSandy an online personal-assistant program based in Portland, that uses simple text-based interactions to generate calendar items, to-do lists, and reminders.
“There are little things that are sort of classic. When I say 'next week,' do I mean the week upcoming or the week after that? The problem is not about parsing. It's that if you said it to 15 people, half would interpret it one way, and half the other way.”
“Sandy” inspired by free-softward advocate Ti O’Reilly’s real personal assistant, intelligently reads e-mails, texts and Twitter feeds. Dornfest calls this “natural language-ish processing: It's basically English, with a few keywords to help Sandy recognize common tasks. Telling her to remind or remember something generates an automatic e-mail or text-message reminder; adding "@todo" to your message places it on your to-do list.”
But the real advantage is the simplicity. “By using ubiquitous communication tools like e-mail and text messaging to interact with Sandy, users can get organized without stopping to think too hard about it,” says Dornfest
reQall, another new program developed by QTech in India pushes the idea one step further by allowing users to place a call to the service on a toll-free number and leave a message. This means that whatever your favourite medium of communication its easy to communicate with your organiser.
Based in San Francisco, one of the most effective is Presdo, which launched in late April of this year. Presdo’s homepage is absurdly simple: a floating text box in which the visitor types a simple command which is interpreted into data and brings you to a page where you and anyone else involved in the To-Do can check and change the details of the event.
Presdo founder Eric Ly says the system allow users to be general and talk naturally and the software can react easily. Commands like “next month” or “about a week” are fluid and don’t need to be transferred into dates and times. Nowhere on the site will you find a calendar and that is an intentional aspect of the programming. As Ly says, “We really wanted to make it very easy for people to express what they wanted in terms of time. We felt like the natural-language approach was going to be more flexible and expressive for users.”
Presdo gathers information and uses other applications like Google Maps to simplify your language and keep it organised. “One thing this made me acutely aware of is how weirdly people speak," says Rael Dernfest of IWantSandy an online personal-assistant program based in Portland, that uses simple text-based interactions to generate calendar items, to-do lists, and reminders.
“There are little things that are sort of classic. When I say 'next week,' do I mean the week upcoming or the week after that? The problem is not about parsing. It's that if you said it to 15 people, half would interpret it one way, and half the other way.”
“Sandy” inspired by free-softward advocate Ti O’Reilly’s real personal assistant, intelligently reads e-mails, texts and Twitter feeds. Dornfest calls this “natural language-ish processing: It's basically English, with a few keywords to help Sandy recognize common tasks. Telling her to remind or remember something generates an automatic e-mail or text-message reminder; adding "@todo" to your message places it on your to-do list.”
But the real advantage is the simplicity. “By using ubiquitous communication tools like e-mail and text messaging to interact with Sandy, users can get organized without stopping to think too hard about it,” says Dornfest
reQall, another new program developed by QTech in India pushes the idea one step further by allowing users to place a call to the service on a toll-free number and leave a message. This means that whatever your favourite medium of communication its easy to communicate with your organiser.
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