Today is the last day for my personal assistant Sandy, whom I took on back in April. She’s retiring tomorrow.
Well, duh, she’s a virtual assistant. A piece of software. And the company that made the app is shutting down. But you’d think she’s a real person, the way people are going on about how they are going to miss her.
It’s a simple enough idea. You send a reminder, a piece of information you want to remember, along with time description (”tomorrow,” “next week,” etc.) to this service, and it will store and organize it for you, and remind you at the right time. Anyone who’s read Getting Things Done, Bit Literacy or similar other titles in personal productivity will know at least a few applications similar to IwantSandy.com.
In my opinion, what made IwantSandy.com great isn’t so much the way it combined todo list, calendar, memo-taking, and general personal productivity tools in one web application, though it did do a pretty good job of that, for sure.
It’s the way it humanized productivity, and made it interactive.
[besides, it’s a brilliant marketing idea, to make a piece of product a person. It’s done in other places–that awful paper clip dude from Word comes to mind–but never done so well]
When I signed up with the service, I got this email:
Doesn’t that just make you feel warm inside? Comic sans and all! I know designers hate this font, but in this case, it’s perfect for the brand.
A shame it had to go away.
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