Yes, I have a personal assistant.

Yes, her name is Sandy. We’re on a first-name basis. She remembers everything I tell her to,  and I don’t pay her anything to do it.

That’s because Sandy is my new virtual personal assistant. “She” keeps track of all my events, notes, and to-dos online. It’s amazing how helpful it is to have reminders of everything you need to do, online, in one place. Sandy acts as if “she” is a real person–right down to the reminders sent to your inbox. I’m going to share some of the many features of Sandy. Note: I will refer to Sandy as ’she’ throughout the article, I’m aware she’s not real… :)

Home Screen/Main Window

When you log in, Sandy will show you what you have planned for the current day. You can change the time span of the events shown, or only view items in a certain tag.

Ordering Sandy around

You can e-mail Sandy from up to two e-mail addresses. The best thing is, you can word your e-mail like you are talking to a real person. For instance, I can write:

Remind me to change my password weekly @todo

in my message to Sandy. Every week, she will add a To-do event telling me to change my password. Or, for an appointment, you can e-mail Sandy with:

Remember my dentist appointment December 12 2-4 PM.

and Sandy will make an appointment reminder. Basically, Sandy can recognize different things: the date, time, and the actual reminder/appointment details.

Click for full size

Daily Digest

Every morning (or at a certain time specified by you) Sandy e-mails you your “Daily Digest,” containing updates for the day ahead: both appointments and to-dos.

Tagging

Sandy also supports tagging, which is very powerful. Simply append a tag like @todo or @school to the e-mail you send to Sandy (with your event/to-do details) and they will be automatically recognized.

Look-up

Want to know what Sandy knows about something? Just email her with something like 

lookup <thing>

and she will e-mail you back with everything she knows about that topic: events, notes, to-dos, reminders–everything from your next physical to your Uncle Joe’s cell phone number.

It’s cool if you want to see all your @duedates, your @todos, or see contact details about a person.

Integration with the rest of your life

Sandy integrates with both Twitter and Jott, even with your cellular phone! Plus, when Sandy reminds you about an event or tells you about a person, she attaches a vCard and/or iCal event file with the e-mail message. You can subscribe to Sandy via iCal (or Outlook 2007, if you roll that way,) and according to this post on the Sandy user forums, the team is looking into allowing you to have Sandy subscribe to your iCal calendar, for the ultimate sync.

In closing, Sandy is a very cool and unique service. It’s helped me a lot this first week I’ve been using it, and I look forward to always being on top of things, with the help of my “personal secretary.”

Try Sandy for yourself: visit http://www.iwantsandy.com.