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Yes, amid the smoking ruins of the financial system, some green shoots are popping forth. And one of them is called Reqall.
The service has been around for awhile, but it was just reintroduced with new features and a Pro version; more on this in a moment.
In a nutshell, Reqall is an effortless personal reminder system. You speed-dial its toll-free number (888-9REQALL) and dictate whatever it is you want to remember. “Meeting with Jacobs Monday at 5 o’clock.” “Buy frozen grape juice.” “Remind Shannon to pick up the kids early tomorrow.” “Anniversary present every Sept. 15.” “Idea for Act 2: Henderson turns out to be an android.”
(You can also create these reminders by e-mail, by typing them into a Firefox plug-in, or even by typing them into an instant-message program once you’ve set up Reqall as a buddy. But unless you live at your computer, using the cellphone is the real killer app.)
That’s it. You go through your life, dictating these little tidbits that would ordinarily be relegated to scraps of paper or the back of your mind — and therefore, probably, lost.
Reqall transcribes your utterances into text and collates them at Reqall.com. You can also have them sent to you by e-mail or as text messages to your cellphone.
If your reminder included a date or time, Reqall recognizes it as a calendar event. It can shoot a reminder to your cellphone 30 minutes in advance.
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Or, at your option, it can add these appointments to your Google calendar, your calendar in Microsoft Outlook, or any calendar program that can subscribe to Web calendars (like Apple’s iCal or Now Up-to-Date).
But wait, there’s more. If your utterance contains the word “buy,” then Reqall adds the transcript to a master shopping list.
The Help screen wryly urges you to be careful. “I don’t buy your argument” also lands on the shopping list. At any time, you can call in to hear your shopping list read back to you, or request to have it text-messaged to your cellphone — a great feature when you’re out on errands.
If your utterance begins with “remind,” “tell” or “ask,” Reqall can send the transcription to other people’s e-mail addresses or (if they’re Reqall members) cellphones. Great way to remind your spouse to do something so you can quit worrying about it.
Almost everything else you dictate winds up on a general to-do list. At any time, Reqall can play back your list over the phone, send it to your phone as a text message, or display it as a message in your chat program. or you can just check it online. These to-do items also show up in your Outlook task list.
You also get a daily summary, a beautifully formatted agenda and to-do list for the day (and the next few days), sent by e-mail. It looks like something a fancy executive secretary may have waiting on your desk each morning.
There are even free Reqall programs for the iPhone and BlackBerry. They make it simple to dictate new items and reminders; you just tap to record (instead of making a phone call). They continually display your up-to-date shopping lists and to-do lists, too.
Finally, they unlock a potentially amazing new feature of Reqall: location-based reminders. If your iPhone or BlackBerry has GPS, the Reqall program displays, at the top of the reminder list, items pertaining to your current location .
For example, your phone knows that you’re at the mall, so it displays all of the errands you’re supposed to take care of there. Similarly, you could be reminded to visit a client when you’re in the neighborhood, or to hand in a form to the teacher when you’re picking up your offspring after school.
In theory, this feature could be an astonishing time- and money-saver. In practice, it involves a fair amount of upfront work. For example, you have to begin by defining the Places in question, like Mall, Downtown, School and so on. Then you manually assign each to-do item to one of these Places. Finally, the Reqall program must be open and running on your smartphone.
So why does the new Reqall represent positive economic news? Because it gives you so much utility at so low a price.
Consider, for example, what happened to a rival service, Jott.com. It, too, transcribes to-do items that you dictate by phone. It, too, got a lot of people very excited, especially because it was free.
Then, last August, Jott gutted the free version, leaving the real goodies to the Pro service. Unhappy customers fled in droves. Last month, Jott closed down the free version altogether.
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