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My favorite VA, Sandy, just quit on me. Sure, I never paid her, but it still stings a bit!

Long time readers of this site know that for many months I’ve been singing the praises of IWantSandy, an online personal information management program that featured an adorable, anthropomorphized character named “Sandy.” Unfortunately, the company behind Sandy, Values of N, is about to shut it doors and Sandy – and the equally popular Stikkit – will be going offline on December 19. This left me with a problem, because I’ve come to rely pretty heavily on Sandy.

You see, Sandy was more than just a calendar, to do list tracker, or contacts list manager (although she did all of these things very well). The genius of Sandy was that you could talk her like a human. Her pretty good natural language recognition meant that you could send her an email with the subject line, “Remind me to buy my mother some flowers in 3 days,” and she would send you an email at 7am on Thursday telling you to buy your mother some flowers. She interfaced very well with Jott, could be contacted by and send text messages, and was even on Twitter. (Angry note: Twitter actually bought Sandy’s code and has decided to shut down the service rather than keep it going. Booo Twitter!!)

After just a few minutes of getting used to her, I found that Sandy just worked in a way that most software can only dream of!

Now all of that is going away, and after a few days of gnashing of my teeth and beating my breast, I realized that it was time for me to move on and make new cyber-relationships.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a true replacement for Sandy – isn’t that the way is always is with a truly great assistant? – but there are tons and tons and tons of alternatives.

But I Don’t Drink Milk

In a quest to find the next Sandy (maybe named Mandy?), I kept finding one service recommended above all others: Remember the Milk. Like Sandy, RTM is a robust PIM that can handle calendars, tasks, contacts and a whole lot more. It’s used extensively by the Getting Things Done crowd and is actually feature-rich enough to be used as a team project management application.

I spent a couple of days trying RTM out, and I have to say that the results left me a bit cold. The website is much more complex than Sandy and offers a lot more functionality than I need – or want to deal with! RTM works with Jott (which I use enough to pay the Premium membership for) so I can call it up and add tasks. However, the voice recognition is different and I’m still learning the syntax to be able to use it properly.

I was just about to give up on RTM when I discovered that it has plug-ins that work with GMail and Google Calendar (GCal). As you can see here:

I have the plugin set up on my Google Calendar and it adds a row of check marks to the display, just above the timeline. From this interface, I can add and manage tasks in RTM without ever having to visit the website! This simplifies the process a ton and makes me much happier!

Two Emails are Worse Than One

After figuring out that I can ask Google Calendar to email a daily schedule to me (yes, I’m a bit slow to catch on), I’ve come up with a two email solution for my day. RTM sends me a list of my daily tasks, which looks a bit like this:

And Google Calendar sends me a daily schedule, which follows this format:

I can ask either service to remind me of an appointment via text message (I do this for haircuts, which I tend to forget a lot!).

The result is that I can keep track of my day about as well as when Sandy and I were working together at our most efficient, but the solutions available seem to lack a bit of soul. Sure, Gcal’s email is efficient and the layout is classic Google, but where is the panache? Yes, Remember the Milk keeps track of my tasks and has a nice notes feature for expanding on each item with helpful information, but where is the chipper greeting every morning?

The Quest Is Just Beginning

Although my current setup seems to be working, I doubt that it’s going to last forever (or even a year). As you’ve probably figured out, I not thrilled with it, even though it is effective. There are so many alternatives in this space, that I’m sure I’ll find a solution that is more intuitive than Remember the Milk. Some possibilities include:

• KeepUp. I’ve started experimenting with this site for scheduling recurring tasks and annual events like holidays and birthdays. Sure, Gcal and RTM both do this, but I like the community aspect of KeepUp, and it can be used with groups. In the end though, I may dump this one.
• PingMe. This looks like a potentially good solution because I relied on Sandy most for future hard-scheduled tasks. In other words, Sandy remembered what I had to do in the future so that I didn’t have to. PingMe seems to do similar things, and they’ve even written a guide for people switching from Sandy.
• Just Gcal. With Jott integration and SMS notification, it’s possible to use Google Calendar for everything I need. I could just add tasks as all day events (If anyone has a more elegant solution for this, PLEASE let me know!). I just find it so… sterile. Sigh.
• Sandy’s Back. A group of disgruntled programmers have gotten together to create an open source replacement for Sandy. As soon as they start soliciting donations, I’m going to send them $20, but it looks like it will be a long time before anything comes of the project.

So, as you can see, I’m still on the rebound from my recent breakup with Sandy. I can keep hoping that she’ll come back to me – I’d even pay to keep her, just as I do with Jott – but I have to face the facts that she may be gone forever.

Have you found better solutions in the quest for the perfect, truly Virtual Assistant? Please help me and other grieving souls recover the loss of a steady companion. Suggest alternative services in the comments section below!

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