A cellular reminder for the stuff that matters
Every morning, heading out the front door, I slap my right hip, just to make sure I've strapped my cellphone on. It's a handy little habit that keeps me from forgetting it.
But now, my phone can slap me back. It can spit out SMS text messages, reminding me to meet with my editor or pick up a dozen eggs. It also lets me add items to my daily calendar by simply talking into it. By linking my phone to a new online service called Reqall, I may never again forget anything that really matters.
Reqall, based in California, India, and Hong Kong, was cofounded by Sunil Vemuri, who earned a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by studying how digital devices could aid human memory. Vemuri hooked himself up to an audio recorder that captured all his conversations. He then dumped the audio file into a computer that used speech recognition software to analyze the words and create an index. The result was a sort of personal Google, where you could look up information on everything you'd done, every day of your life.
Vemuri soon realized that this was a lousy idea. "There's too much bathwater along with the baby," Vemuri said on a recent visit to MIT. Only a handful of our daily activities are interesting enough to track; most of his collected data was useless babble.
So Vemuri refocused on helping people easily record just the stuff that matters most -our appointments and to-do lists. Better yet, he figured out how to let us record this information in a host of ways - via keyboard, touch screen, or voice. And he set up a multitude of methods to ping you with reminders, including e-mail, instant messages, and cellphone text messages.
You sign up for the service at Reqall.com, then provide an e-mail address, phone numbers, instant messaging account information, and the like. You're now plugged into a networked reminder service that'll use any or all of these resources to keep you on schedule.
Say you and a colleague have agreed to a meeting on Friday. Whip out your phone and dial a number provided by Reqall. A computerized voice asks whether you want to add some new information. Say "add," and you hear a beep. To set up an appointment, say "meet," and then describe the get together in everyday English. For instance, "meet Bill in the conference room on Friday at 2." Now hang up.
Reqall's server computers translate your voice into text. I found Reqall's speech recognition system quite accurate; it understood my words correctly about 90 percent of the time. Meanwhile, additional fancy algorithms figure out the context of your words. You said Friday, right? So Reqall assumes you mean Friday, April 24. And since most meetings happen at a civilized hour, it figures that you mean 2 p.m.
Why does this matter? Because Reqall can automatically feed this information into Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook information manager or Google Inc.'s online Google Calendar. Check one of these digital datebooks, and you'll see a new appointment set for April 24 at 2 p.m.
Still worried you'll miss your appointment? Set Reqall to e-mail you a list of each day's appointments. Or program it to ping your phone with a text message 15 minutes before the meeting. Or have Reqall send a text message reminder - it's compatible with Google Talk, AIM, Jabber, and Yahoo Messenger. You can also type new appointments into these instant message programs and add them to your Reqall calendar.
Still think you've forgotten something? Dial the Reqall number and say "recall." The service reads off a list of your appointments and tasks. If you entered them by voice, you hear a playback of your words; if you typed them in, you'll hear a computery sounding text-to-speech replay.
Reqall works with all kinds of cellphones, but the iPhone version displays all your appointments and tasks on the phone's screen. The iPhone version also uses GPS location technology. You can program in favorite locations; home or work, for instance. That means Reqall's "Here and Now" screen shows you only reminders related to your job. Other tasks not related to work are concealed, so you can keep your priorities straight.
It'd be nice if Reqall for the iPhone could be programmed to ping you as your location changed. It could remind you to pick up milk as you and your iPhone approached the supermarket. A Reqall spokeswoman told me that the limitations of the iPhone's current software prevent this, but she said a pending upgrade to the iPhone's software will allow this feature.
Even with its present limitations, Reqall is a remarkably powerful and practical tool, and an inexpensive one. A stripped-down version of the service is free, but the full-fledged edition costs $24.99 a year. That's a small price for 12 months of digital dope slaps, the kind you'll be happy to receive.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
