On Our Minds

Dude, Where’s My Car?

2010-03-03T06:34:44-08:00

“Before reQall, I used to park a 10-minute walk from my place of employment and pay $8 a day, three days a week for parking. Since getting reQall, I park in a two or three-hour parking space that’s a three-minute walk from work. I set a reQall reminder to move the car to another spot just after midday – the parking inspector usually doesn't get around on time, and I need to move the car only once a day. Apart from two parking tickets – not reQall’s fault, since I neglected to act on the reminder – I have saved $24 a week since November 2008.

reQall has saved me at least $1200 (Australian) and covered the cost of my $879 pre-paid, unlocked iPhone I purchased on the first day it became available – not to mention the fact it has also saved me many hours of walking around.”
– Doug Young

reQall Saved My Bacon – and Remembered the Beer

2010-02-24T09:08:11-08:00

“My wife and I were about to go grocery shopping. I was walking around adding stuff to a hand-written shopping list.

I had just installed reQall on my Blackberry. She took a few minutes longer to get ready, so to test it out, I decided to read the shopping list to reQall.

When we got to the store, I realized I'd left the shopping list on the kitchen counter! My wife wasn't pleased, and told me I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on, and she's probably correct there! She said we'd be bound to forget half of the stuff we wanted.

Then I remembered I'd used reQall!

I brought up the app on the phone, and there, transcribed, was the shopping list! My wife was happy, peace resumed and we were able to get everything we needed. It probably saved my bacon, as that was one of the items on the list that we might well have forgotten to buy! My wife was so impressed that she installed it on her Blackberry too, and uses it all the time.

Not sure if I like all the ‘honey dos’ but, I got my own back last week. I called reQall and said: ‘Ask wife to buy a six-pack at store at 5 p.m.’ As she was leaving her downtown office, the message from reQall popped up on her Blackberry and she swung by the store on the way home. When I got there, there was cold beer waiting for me!

Thanks, reQall. Twice.”
– Ian B. May, North Charleston, S.C.

On Your Mind: Mother's Little Mobile Helper

2010-02-16T14:26:05-08:00

“I’m a new mother that had a mad case of Crazy Brain before finding reQall.

I went back to work just six weeks after my daughter was born. I very much underestimated the life of a working mom, and would very often forget things – even really important ones! So I had to take a stand and get my life back in control.

I am an iPhone user, so I did a little research and found that many people enjoy reQall. I tried it for free and now I can’t live without my reQall Pro. Thanks for such a great application!”

Gerri M. Kimble

reQall: Top 10 Productivity App and Top 10 Overall App for Dummies!

2010-02-09T10:09:51-08:00

We're very excited that reQall is featured in a new book, Incredible iPhone Apps For Dummies, by Bob LeVitus. reQall is listed as one of the Top 10 Productivity Apps (Chapter 11) and one of the Top 10 Overall Apps (Chapter 17). A few quotes from Bob:

"reQall is smart and different from most organizer apps."
"I think what I like best about reQall is that it remembers things for me with the least possible effort on my part."
"I love it so much that it's one of the sixteen icons on my home screen."

Thanks, Bob! The book also includes great recommendations for apps for business, education, food, fitness, sports, travel and more. It's available now in stores and online.

2009 review, 2010 preview

2010-01-21T15:48:01-08:00

In the spirit of the new year, here's a quick year-end review and year-ahead preview.

Looking back on 2009

Between the improvements that came from your fantastic feedback and the new features that came from our R&D team, the list of changes was huge!

The biggest change was the release of reQall Pro, with major improvements such as the Here and Now page, locations, Google Calendar integration, Outlook integration, add by email and reply by email. At the same time both Pro and reQall Standard were updated to add recurring dates, sharing with non-reQall users, integrating with your iPhone/BlackBerry contacts, and call/email/browse from your items. Some other changes in ’09:

reQall for iPhone got push notifications, maps of your items, creating Places from the map, recording on the iPod Touch, and eyes-free recording.
reQall for Blackberry now provides real-time location-based reminders, an offline mode, an automated connection setting, and support for locations on Verizon Storms/Tours (many thanks again to reQall user Maxx for helping on this).
On the web, the 3^rd party contact import code was completely replaced, and the Memory Jogger pages were added.
All 3 major platforms were updated to include Evernote integration.
Outlook integration got a lot of attention with support for Exchange, Outlook 2000/2002, 64 bit platforms, setting reminders and two-way sync.
Keyword recognition was changed to add extra words, recognize your places and allow you to strip keywords.
We replaced our computer transcription software with Yap, which provides a much better automated transcript.
There were many other changes that you requested, such as changing the subjects of reminders, adding Canadian numbers, changing the distance for location notifications, supporting new browser versions like Firefox 3.5, etc.

Looking ahead to 2010

As you can see from everything we created in 2009, our goal is to take the strain off you and let reQall handle it! This is our mantra for 2010—we’re going to be releasing more upgrades and features within reQall, all of which are designed to make your life easier.

This is why our main focus is on a new user interface. We’ve gotten feedback from you and from Don Norman, our Chief Mentor, on ways we can improve the interface to both make it simpler AND give you more control. We also found that the existing interface couldn’t easily handle some of the new capability we’re working on, like categories and tagging. This new interface should be available in Q1 on the iPhone and Web. We’ll then put it on the BlackBerry.

We'll also start on our next high-priority item—reQall for Android. We know many of you want this yesterday, and we wish it were available. We’re driving to get it done as quickly as possible and will come back with an expected release date.

Other than these 2 specific items, our focus for the first half of 2010 is on making reQall even more intelligent. We’ll be doing more with locations and with helping you to take action on your to-do’s. Our chief brain, Sunil Vemuri, has a major new feature coming so that more than ever you can let reQall handle it. We’ll let you know about this soon and get some of you to try it.

Like any fantastic group of users, you’ve given us many more things to do. For some requests, we’re waiting on others, like any-time location alerts on the iPhone (Apple needs to allow apps to run in the background) and BB OS 5.0 support (RIM needs to release the 5.0 SDK). The list of your requests is too long to get everything done this year, but we do have many things queued for the first 6 months of 2010.

Thank you for 2009, and we wish you the very best for 2010. We’ll be working for you throughout the year, so please don’t forget - let reQall handle it!

Clean off your desk!

2010-01-11T13:38:07-08:00

I've heard from several sources that today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day. Luckily, I cleaned my desk over the holidays, and it hasn't yet slid back into chaos. In case your holiday was more fun and the piles are still on your desk, here are a couple of links to get you motivated.

John Campanelli at The Plain Dealer provides some motivating stats, including "Almost 21,000 -- Number of bacteria per square inch on the typical worker's desk." Ugh!!!!

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, says in her blog that part of cleaning off is dealing with "notes on a scratch pad--mostly to-do reminders" that "pile up quickly".

Marjorie Geiser asks if you're a "post-it junkie". If so, ask yourself if you're going to take action on them. If not, toss them.

And what do we at reQall say? Tell Gretchen, Marjorie and your friends to get rid of post-its, scratch pads, AND the bacteria by putting those reminders into reQall. Happy cleaning!

- Deb

Remember Your Resolutions

2009-12-31T06:52:11-08:00

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? How long do you keep them? A day? A week? This year, use reQall to help you make those changes in your life. Here’s how some of the reQall team are using reQall to keep their New Year’s resolutions.

Fitness: One of my resolutions is to bike to the office at least 2 days a week to keep up my fitness. I’ve chosen Tuesday and Friday as my work out days. I've added two reminders to reQall. One to remind me to go to bed early the night before the ride and one to remind me to take the ride. Why two? Two reminders are better than one! – Giridhar Bandi, reQall Developer

More Fitness: I’m not big on resolutions, and 2009, the year of letting the gym membership go to waste, was no exception. For 2010, I plan to change that. I resolve to use reQall to remind me every few days to not only get in there but to reach specific benchmarks. I like to work out in the morning before the day begins to overwhelm; I’m sure that the push notifications from reQall will make a difference. – Mark de la Viña, Consort Partners

Naughty or Nice?: Last year, I made a New Year’s resolution to have a more regular exercise regime. I knew that I would do everything possible to break it as soon as it started, so I used reQall to send me guilt-tripping messages to catch me out. One example was: ‘you think you can ignore me? This is your conscience speaking… do something, now!’ I plan to use reQall to be nicer to myself in 2010! – Dominic Johnson, Consort Partners

Resolution Locations: I'm tying locations to my New Year Resolutions for 2010. I'm going to make a concerted effort this year to eat healthy by creating a places directory of restaurants around the world that serve healthy foods. An example is Sprout Cafe in Palo Alto (http://cafesprout.com/) that has an excellent choice of delicious salads. Whenever I am in Palo Alto, I am reminded by reQall to eat there. I am also creating a places directory of running trails in different parts of world. When I am there, I am going to depend on reQall to remind me of the trails. – Ash Vasudevan, reQall Co-Founder

Diet: In 2009, I used reQall for to shift from a carbohydrate diet to protein-rich. This was important to me as I have a family history of diabetes and my readings were borderline. I set reminders on what to eat over a period of time. reQall helped during the early stages to reinforce my practices until it became a habit for me. In 2010, I’m using reQall to archive and retrieve the recipes of what I eat along with photos (stored in Evernote). Even though I’m the CEO, I paid $24.95 for reQall and got my money’s worth many times over. As a result, I‘m in perfect health. – Rao Machiraju, reQall CEO and Co-Founder

Happiness: My resolution this year is simply to be happier. I've only read the first few pages of "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin, but already I found my first reminder–go to bed! Gretchen found that happiness is influenced by sleep and exercise. Like her, I struggle to get to bed--there's too many things to do. So, I've created a new reminder for every day at 10:30 pm that says "Remember: you'll be happier if you go to bed NOW!". I'll let you know if I find more reminders as I finish the book. – Deb Miller, VP of Products

On Your Mind: Organize your RSVPs like a VIP

2009-12-17T12:18:43-08:00

(Note: this is the third in a new series of stories from reQall users, describing how reQall helps them in their daily lives. Have a story? Please send it to stories@reqall.com. Happy New Year!)

“I get a lot of invitations to events, all of which have RSVP dates, of course. It's a constant stream of paperwork with snail-mail invites and related RSVP deadlines. I had been using Evernote to keep digital copies of the invites, so I would have access to the RSVP date, the event date and where I need to be.

The problem is that I'd forget the invite was there! Now, with reQall, I get the invite into Evernote and tell reQall to add the event date to my calendar and the RSVP date to my to-do list. When it's time to RSVP, reQall reminds me, and brings up the invite with RSVP details in Evernote.

When the event date comes, I'm reminded again, with the Evernote photo of the invite, complete with address, host info and all. I never worry about missing RSVP dates anymore!”
– Jason Baker, Campbell, Calif.

On Your Mind: Answered Prayers

2009-12-09T15:53:54-08:00

(Note: this is the second in a new series of stories from reQall users, describing how reQall helps them in their daily lives. Have a story? Please send it to stories@reqall.com. Happy Hanukkah!)

“I am a Rabbi serving a congregation of 1,200 families. I use reQall every day on my iPhone to remember to-do items and appointments.

If a member of my community mentions they are going into the hospital or someone is in need of pastoral care, I take out my iPhone after the conversation and make a quick voice note. I might make 20 of these a day from all sorts of places.

The next day, when reQall sends me my digest, I have all of my to-dos and I can start ministering to my community. It’s a godsend! The program I have been praying for!”
– Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, Temple Judea, Tarzana, Calif.

reQall for BlackBerry 1.3 is here with location-based reminders!

2009-12-03T09:31:24-08:00

We've released a new version of reQall for BlackBerry that includes many of the things you've been asking for. Here are some highlights:

BlackBerry notifications – Now Pro users can receive reminders directly on your BlackBerry. No need to use your text message credits. You can also set it to have a sound or vibrate when the reminder comes up.
LOCATION-BASED REMINDERS – In my testing, this was simply the coolest new feature. With reQall's new BlackBerry notification feature and the BlackBerry's GPS capability, Pro users can receive a "pushed" reminder of what they need to do wherever they are. (iPhone users, we know you want this too. It's an iPhone limitation that keeps this from working.)

Modify what "near" means – How far away from a location do you want to be notified? Set it to 300 meters, 1 km or 5 km.
Offline mode – All users can now add/edit items when there is no network connection. Your changes will be synced once you're online.
Add dates/times separately – If you want to set a date, but don't want it in the content of your item, press Menu-->Add due date.
Edit recurring dates – Change a recurring date directly on the BlackBerry instead of going to the web.
Edit unsynced items – Make changes in items that haven't yet been synced to the reQall server. Press Menu-->Show unsynced items.
Auto connection – No more need to manually try all the connection settings. reQall will try them for you and use the one that works.

BTW, you'll have to update reQall directly by going to www.reqall.com/blackberry from your BlackBerry's browser. The upgrade button in the app won't work this time. Once you've tried it, let us know what you think.

Deb