3mindme - Dead Simple Reminders | Hacker News Reader

3mindme - Dead Simple Reminders

3mindme.com

68 points_pius21 comments

Good implementation.

You could cut the text on the homepage way down - the complexity of the instructions is incongruous with the simplicity of the system. You could dump all the text I've put in square brackets:

[Hi! Thanks for contacting 3mindMe.com, here are some instructions to get you started:]

Quick reference: help@3mindme.com - Emails you back this information <when>@3mindme.com - Emails you at <when> echo@3mindme.com - Emails you at the <when> specified in the Subject:

Quick examples: tomorrow@3mindme.com - Emails you in 24 hours 5pm@3mindme.com - Emails you at today 5pm (in your timezone) 5pmPSTtomorrow@3mindme.com - Emails you tomorrow at 5pm PST 2days@3mindme.com - Emails you in 48 hours

What does 3mindMe.com do? Basically, we're a gateway to your future self: email us anything, and we'll mail it back to you at a future time and date of your choosing.

[How much does it cost? Nothing! This is just a fun project for me.]

[put this on a separate page] What's new? (updated 2008/5/3) Hooray, the first update not for timezones! Unfortunately, it's for spam. Luckily, I did something really tricky, so I'm hoping it won't be a problem... If you do get any spam via 3mindme, let me know. [/put this on a separate page]

How do I use 3mindMe.com? There are two primary ways: - Email <when>@3mindme.com and your email will be reflected back to you at whatever time or date you specify. - Email echo@3mindme.com and it'll be sent back to whatever time is set in the Subject line

[What do you mean by "<when>"?] You can construct your <when> in three steps:

[1) Ask yourself "When you want your email sent back to you?"]

2) Write that down just as you'd say it out loud, for example: friday tomorrow noon next tuesday at 5pm PST 2 weeks 5 minutes before January 1st 2008

3) If you're emailing echo@3mindme.com, you're done! Just put that on the Subject: line of the email and send it, and it'll be sent back to you at the time and day you picked. For example, you could make the subject: 5 minutes before January 1st 2008: Get champagne, quick!!

4) Alternatively, just take all the spaces out and stick @3mindme.com on the back, and mail to that. For example, the above ones would be converted to: friday@3mindme.com tomorrownoon@3mindme.com nexttuesdayat5pmPST@3mindme.com 2weeks@3mindme.com 5minutesbeforeJanuary1st2008@3mindme.com

[put this on a separate page] Do you store my mail? Only as long as it takes to deliver it. After it's sent back to you, the mail is deleted. [/put this on a separate page]

[What's with the crappy name? Ya, 3mindMe.com doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but all the good names were taken. Please don't hesitate to email me suggestions at dbarrett@quinthar.com.]

[put this on a separate page] Who are you? I'm David Barrett, and you can read more about me at http://quinthar.com, or just email me at dbarrett@quinthar.com. [/put this on a separate page]

[Thanks for using 3mindMe.com, and enjoy!]

[-david]

For the most part, I agree with what you've chopped, but I'd leave the developer's information on that page--it's small enough that, with the rest of the edits, it'll be above the fold and present the entirety of the app's information in one screen!

I agree. It definitely needs to get down to one page. I'm not sure if it was by design, but the page I saw was just a bunch of plain text on the screen with no text wrapping. The service might be great, but to an uninformed user it might look like there's something wrong with the site, causing him to leave without reading. Based on the title alone, I expected to have some sort of interaction with the site itself, I didn't realize that my only interaction would be via email. Great idea, and a great home page will help it appeal a wider audience.

Spoofing of email addresses?

---

Great service, really very nice.

One problem obviously is there's no verification of the email address being yours to send.

So annoying spammers can 'remind' people of their viagra and what Paris Hilton has been up to lately.

This is an SMTP problem, not just 3mindme. Maybe they use DomainKeys or some other cert scheme.

I really like this. It's something I've wished for, and have set up with other systems (various online todo/calendaring etc. apps) but never this easily. I think the simplicity is what's incredible.

I like the <when>@3mindme idea, but I'll probably just be sticking to using echo@3mindme, just because I can store that as a contact to save typing, since I'll have to type the <when> anyway.

Regardless, I'm impressed. This doesn't seem to be trying to be more than it is, and that's a great thing.

[edit] Jumped the gun with the submit. Have you considered having a more appealing front page? I know that you're striving for simplicity, and having a page like that appeals to me as a member of the HN audience, but I can't imagine someone like my dad thinking this is something he would use based on how it looks.

I think it's a great idea, but too many people have beaten you to the punch. I googled "email yourself reminder future", and just from the first page of results I come up with:

http://www.futureme.org/ http://futuremail.bensinclair.com/ http://emailfuture.com/ http://www.hitmelater.com/ http://www.resnooze.com/ http://www.emailfuture.com/ http://www.mailfreezr.com/index.php

So what makes your site better than those?

An SPF record would be useful, so mail doesn't get unnecessarily queued with some providers (like GMail.)

Cool. Similar to http://www.poingo.com/Home.php (which I tried, but was flaky).

Ultimately, though, I wanted an email interface to write to my Google calendar, so I hacked that up for myself.

  > Basically, we're a gateway to your future self: email us
  > anything, and we'll mail it back to you at a future time
  > and date of your choosing.

Isn't 3mindMe a gateway to your past self?

Well basically your past can send stuff to your future self, in effect its both ways

How can they reliably ensure that an email will arrive at certain time? Does email protocol support this? (just asking)

I imagine they receive your email, extract the requested time, create the reply, then store the outgoing email in a cron-like outgoing batch system. Then at the appointed time your email is sent back from their system. Emails are usually prompt, and they probably assume a flight time of seconds.

If I'm right then the system will work pretty well almost all the time. It's a simple but great/fun idea. Their ability to interpret times may be taken from something like the *n?x "at" command, but it looks quite nice.

Don't rely on this working to sub-minute accuracy, though. Email flight times can be significantly longer when things go wrong.

But I like it - I may well be using this.

>> Don't rely on this working to sub-minute accuracy, though. Email flight times can be significantly longer when things go wrong.

Yes, this is exactly what I was asking...what do you do when "things go wrong"...and they do with email, occasionaly. So this I see as an issue...whether you can rely on it.

Brilliant, great re-use of existing, tested and proven technology.

I'd love to see how it scales, I'm guessing well?

http://www.ohdontforget.com/

Same concept, but for SMS.

I love it. Simple enough for me to actually use. That's rare.

cool---could this be a decent substitute for iwantsandy?

That's what I was wondering. I was a big fan of Sandy, especially with its (her?) Twitter integration.

Any chance of seeing that, I wonder? Emails are quick to send, but a tweet is even quicker for many people

I reckon I am about 1 month away from a 'Sandy' type replacement - hopefully by publicly saying this (even if only a few see it), I will actually pull my finger out and get it finished, instead of wasting time on HN!

Hadn't thought of Twitter integration all the same, and I never actually used Sandy (started working on this before I even heard of Sandy, very much a part time project) so I may be in danger of disappointing fans of Sandy!

google cal has reminder emails, but it's a bit more of a hassle to setup.

Great service. If you could cut down the amount of information on the front page that would be great.

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