On Our Minds

Slow versus speed

I saw this infographic reposted in several blogs today. For many of them, the main theme was “Isn’t it awful that Americans are so impatient?” or “Americans need to learn to slow down.”  As one of those impatient Americans, I take a different view of this. 

Created by: Online Graduate Programs

For me, there’s a time for speed and a time for slow. Savoring time with my daughter, watching the moonrise, enjoying a family meal are times for slow. Finding info on the person I’m meeting or how long it’s going to take to get to the meeting or sorting out the emails I need to respond to from the ones that are lower priority are times for speed. I don’t want to wait on a website or a search. In fact, I don’t even want to waste my time asking for this info. I want my assistant to know that I need that info and get it to me, right when I need it. That is the vision behind reQall Rover. An assistant that gets me the info I need in no time. 

Getting me the information I need to know before I need it, allows me to slow down for the special moments in life. Moments like this:

Here's to devices and assistants that allow us time for slow!

– Deb, U.S.

On Your Mind: Can't afford to forget

(Note: This is the latest in 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)

"My story is far more mundane than that of the Rabbi, or the person who had his left temporal lobe removed... but I hope you can use it.

I am a, writer, translator, English teacher, Coordinator of English Studies at my high school, plus wife, mother and grandmother. I live a very hectic life - running from class to class, meeting with students and staff, as well as running a home. There are a lot of reminder apps available for my iPad - I've tried quite a few of them - but none of them fully met my needs.

First, I need to be able to dictate my errands. Although I type very quickly, I simply don't have time to type in all my "to-dos". Sometimes I come up with an idea for a lesson plan and I just have to make a note of it before it slips away. Now reQall remembers for me.

And for me, reQall's best feature is that it allows me to *dictate *my appointments. These are then synced with my Google calender. I was able to set up individual appointments for a class of 14 students in less than a minute. Manually, doing the same thing would have taken me ten or fifteen minutes. That is quite a saving of time considering that I only have a ten minute break between my classes.

I like the fact that tasks are neatly categorized, with shopping lists kept separate from other "to-do's". I can also choose to see only overdue tasks or only my appointments for today, etc.

Many people depend on me, and there are certain things I just can't afford to forget. ReQall is definitely helping me stay on top of things."
-Sharon Tzur, Israel.

"My story is far more mundane than that of the Rabbi, or the person who had left temporal lobe removed... but I hope you can use it.

I am a, writer, translator, English teacher, Coordinator of English Studies at my high school, plus wife, mother and grandmother. I live a very hectic life - running from class to class, meeting with students and staff, as well as running a home. There are a lot of reminder apps available for my iPad - I've tried quite a few of them - but none of them fully met my needs.

First, I need to be able to dictate my errands. Although I type very quickly, I simply don't have time to type in all my "to-dos". Sometimes I come up with an idea for a lesson plan and I just have to make a note of it before it slips away. Now reQall remembers for me.

And for me, reQall's best feature is that it allows me to *dictate *my appointments. These are then synced with my Google calender. I was able to set up individual appointments for a class of 14 students in less than a minute. Manually, doing the same thing would have taken me ten or fifteen minutes. That is quite a saving of time considering that I only have a ten minute break between my classes.

I like the fact that tasks are neatly categorized, with shopping lists kept separate from other "to-do's". I can also choose to see only overdue tasks or only my appointments for today, etc.

Many people depend on me, and there are certain things I just can't afford to forget. ReQall is definitely helping me stay on top of things."

Changes at reQall

There are a lot of changes—good changes—happening with the reQall team, so we wanted to share a few of them. 

On March 1st, we are moving into our new office in Singapore. Jennifer, Progen, Mani, and Suesi have all joined us since the beginning of January as the first members of our Singapore team. They are doing Android development in support of our customers in Asia. So, we now have three main offices: India, California and Singapore, plus a few individuals in Colorado and Hong Kong. If you ever need to know how to work across lots of time zones, ask us! Skype and Google Hangout are essential.

We’ve also made several promotions in our India team. Vara is now the Team Lead for our networking and systems administration team. Arvind has been promoted to Architect. Ravi is now the Manager of our QA team. And, Giridhar has been named Director of our India Engineering team. Congratulations to all of them for the hard work and accomplishments that have brought them these rewards. 

Finally, in addition to the all the growth we have on the Android side, we’re looking to hire a few good men and women for iOS development. We expect these positions will be in India or in Singapore, so that the time zones are nearer those of our Asian customers. If you know of anyone who could be a good candidate for these positions, drop us a note at info@reqall.com.

- Deb

What is reQall Rover?

We've been receiving volumes of inquiries on what reQall Rover is all about and how it works. Rajib (Director, Design) proposed for a video clip and a couple of days later, he uploaded this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzWofXvIcW0. Amazing, isn't it? Kudos to Rajib! We hope our users can now understand what we've been working on and how better it can assist in one's daily life.

- Aparna, India

 

reQall Updates

We see that some of our users are concerned about updates to reQall, so we wanted to let you know what we're doing. We're working on our next-generation personal assistant application, reQall Rover. We're currently not doing incremental changes to reQall, as we expect what we learn from reQall Rover will influence the design of reQall. The features and capabilities of reQall are necessary for a complete personal assistant application, so reQall is definitely part of our future plans. We are tracking change requests, and will be looking at how we can address them in the future plans for reQall and reQall Rover. reQall is doing good and it's we who pressed the pause button for a while. We'll definitely announce when reQall is updated. We appreciate your understanding and patience.

--Rama, India

Silence on the reQall blog

Some of you have asked “why hasn’t reQall posted on their blog for awhile?” I apologize for our silence, and want to explain what’s caused this. First, we’ve been working in stealth mode with partners around the world. We plan to announce one of those partnerships in first quarter, and another in second quarter, with more to come.  In the long run these partnerships will provide people worldwide with some exciting, new, personal assistant applications. We are pleased to report that we have strong traction, but can't say much publicly yet.  

Frankly, we’re also not very good at blogs and such. We’re a bunch of engineers who like to solve problems, so our focus is always on what we can do to take personal assistant apps to the next level. We don’t think you should have to ask an assistant for help, and are working to make our apps smart enough to know what you need based on your context and who you are as an individual. Still, we recognize that just doing the work and not talking about it isn’t sufficient. We understand that we need to get better at communicating.

Finally, I (Deb) have generally been the person to post. However, I’ve had some personal constraints over the last year and a half as my house was destroyed in the Fourmile Canyon fire in Colorado last year. Until recently, I’ve only been working part-time as I dealt with the aftermath of the fire. Given the needs of working with our partners, I’ve let the blog lapse more than I should have.  We’re going to change this going forward.

Starting today, my reQall account has a recurring to-do that says “Write a blog post every month on the last Monday.” I know one post a month still isn’t enough. I’ll try to do more, but I’m also asking several other members of our team to post to the blog as well. So, you’ll start to see posts coming not just from me in the US, but also from members of our team in India and other places.

Again, I apologize for letting the blog go stale and hope this new approach will keep you informed and engaged on what we’re up to. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please ask on GetSatisfaction or send an email to support@reqall.com. We greatly appreciate your support.

--Deb, U.S

 

reQall Rover on Android beta launch!

 

Today, the reQall team is announcing a new addition to our family—the beta version of reQall Rover on Android. reQall Rover is a brand new type of mobile assistant that brings you your slippers before you ask and rolls over on command. Just kidding! Truthfully, reQall Rover IS a new type of assistant—one that goes far beyond the memory assistance that reQall has always provided.

What is reQall Rover?
reQall Rover is a personalized assistant that smartly anticipates your needs to provide you with the information you need to know . . . before you know you need it. reQall Rover uses your context, location, time, social networks, emails and more to learn what you need.

What can reQall Rover help me with?
reQall Rover prepares you for a meeting by pulling pertinent emails you’ve exchanged and by accessing background information, such as LinkedIn profiles or Facebook posts, on the person you’re meeting. reQall Rover can also give you travel estimates based on current traffic conditions and your location; provide email relief by summarizing just the action items in your Gmail; show news related to your interests; tell you what’s trending on Twitter; suggest places to eat; offer deals based on your location; and more! The more it learns about your preferences, the more it personalizes the information.

Can reQall Rover speak?
Yes it can! reQall Rover provides a voice interface so you can hear a summary of what you need to know. The app can also hear and understand when you ask for help. Its vocabulary is limited right now, but over time, its understanding of words and commands grows.

Does reQall Rover work with reQall?
Yep! You can see your reQall To Do’s in reQall Rover as well. So you’ll have a one-stop source for all kinds of assistance, including memory assistance.

Is reQall Rover just for Android users?
The initial reQall Rover beta test is on Android. We’ll add other platforms in the future.

How do I get reQall Rover?
We’re starting a limited beta test where invited users can offer feedback to help us improve the app before we let everyone play with it. We’ll be sending our loyal reQall on Android Pro users a special code to give you priority access in a week or so. We’ll also let you invite three of your friends to try it. Others can sign up on the waiting list at http://rover.reqall.com/rover.

Feedback!
The reason we’re doing a limited beta is so we can get feedback to make reQall Rover the assistant that you need and want. Send us your scratches, hugs, er, we mean, comments, questions, suggestions to support@reqall.com.

 

reQall Rover Summary View

 

Meeting Prep

 

Gmail Action Summary

Voice Summary

News: Android, Web, Features

Lots of news today.

First, for all of those loyal reQall fans who have been asking/demanding/pleading for it: reQall for Android Beta is here. We implemented the top reQall functions: Here & Now, All Items list, Add by voice and text, Location and time-based reminders. We want and need your input to shape where the product goes from here. Please try it out and let us know what you like, what you don't like, and which of the other reQall features should take priority in coming to Android. Download it at http://www.reqall.com/android. It's a public beta, so everyone has access.

Second, there's a completely revamped web interface. We've done a lot of user testing on this and believe it is a significant improvement over the past interface. Again, try it out and let us know what you think.

As part of the web changes, we've introduced a bunch of new features that users have requested. Those include categories, tags, adding locations by address, new lists and viewing options, a configurable Today list, favorite lists, bulk operations. You can see what's new at http://help.reqall.com/whats-new.html. We'll be migrating many of these features into the iPhone (next) and then Android.

Thanks for all of your support. Our user community keeps us going during the long days that lead up to a release like this. And a special thanks to our beta testers who helped over the last month by finding bugs and making many suggestions for improvements. 

Getting Things Done

 “I work as a programmer and web designer and it involves a lot of concentration. I can either let interruptions occupy my mind and forget about it permanently – or reQall it!
 
If I need to come back to something later, I reQall it and keep going with my train of thought. No more loose ends. If I see a great design idea, I grab the phone and leave myself a reminder instead of sending myself email or writing on scraps of paper. It's much safer when driving, too.
 
When I finish one task, I can open up reQall to see what I need to do. Today, reQall reminded me to call and ask a question. I hit the ‘show related items’ button and there was my Evernote snapshot of the business card with the phone number I needed. Brilliant time saver!
 
David Allen of Getting Things Done says, ‘Anything that does not belong where it is, is an “open loop” pulling on your attention.’ With reQall, I am better able to keep my attention on what I am working on instead of what I have to do later.”
– Jim Sewell, programmer, Key West, Fla.

Game, Set and Match

"I'm a professional tennis coach and I live my life mostly on the tennis court. I work over 30 hours as a full-time coach and it can get hectic, especially as my clients can sometimes swap and change times with little notice – and that can happen whilst I'm concentrating on coaching someone else.
 
Before reQall, I was using different applications. Many of them were quite useful, but they never really satisfied my idea of a memory jogger or an app that I could use to help me remember things, such as booking courts or creating lesson plans for my tennis groups.
 
After coming upon a clip on YouTube about reQall’s full range of uses, I got really addicted to it and used it on an hourly basis at times. I use the SMS and email notifications to remind me of the little things that I have in my brain.
 
reQall Pro allows me to organize my thoughts in so many simple ways. Since then, I've managed to remember 90 percent of things – the rest is just me being lazy and not remembering to input information. I must add that the sharing of information, which allows me to remind my girlfriend of things from my iPhone, is so useful. I find it amusing that even with her amazing memory, she can find my reminders that I send to her quite useful.

Thanks, reQall. You have inspired me to remember more!!"

– Lam Huynh, Birmingham, England