I Want Sandy Back
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
I Want Sandy Back
I just found out that I Want Sandy is going to go offline from December 8th and it’s really depressing news. I’ve just gotten used to emailing “her” and getting prompt reminders when I need to get things done, and when I’ve shared the service with people like Chloe, they’re always impressed with Sandy’s ability to understand emails and convert them to appropriate email reminders.
A few thoughts right now:
1) This is a reminder of how, maybe, we shouldn’t place too much trust in the “cloud”. I have reminders with Sandy going till mid 2009, stuff that I thought I could trust to be off my mind until I needed to think about them in 2009, and now I can’t rely on that anymore.
2) It’s been echoed a bit in the comments on the news post, but although not officially mentioned, the CEO of I Want Sandy is working for Twitter now. Given Twitter’s a) unreliability, b) removal of text messaging for everyone outside of North America and Europe, the rest of us are probably not going to enjoy I Want Sandy, even if she was relaunched by Twitter.
3) Trust issues? I’m marginally on the fence for this. Lots of people are commenting that they feel a little silly now that they were evangelising I Want Sandy and encouraging people to sign up. They feel a little slighted by the CEO’s departure to Twitter. I understand that, but I also understand in this economy, if it was what he had to do, it was what he had to do. Still, it brings to mind “with great power comes great responsibility”. When you get so many people around the world to buy into your great idea (and Sandy is a great idea), they expect you to be there through it all, and not jump ship when another offer comes around.
Do you use I Want Sandy? Will you be affected by the loss of her? How would you feel if one of your favourite apps was pulled from the web? Remember the Milk? ReQall?
Tags: cloud computing, i want sandy, i want sandy is gone, productivity tools, remember the milk, reqall, should we trust the cloud?, twitter, twitter's unreliability, with great power comes great responsibility
