On Our Minds

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

2009 review, 2010 preview

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!

 

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

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