Multi-Modal Reminders 2Go

For mobile minds on the move, portable reminders are often a must-have tool. But where to find such tools and how to use them in a cross-platform way (email and SMS) is not 1-click obvious.

My friend, CC, found this out when she wanted to help her kid at college remember to test her blood and take her meds before she risked an episode. Daughter was always a few steps short of overload, and so mobile it seemed there was no one good way to prompt her even if Mom was willing and able to set her own alarms and sit at her desk pressing "Send" 4x per day. (Yes, Mom could insist that her offspring manage the problem for herself, but failure is not an option here.)

Each tool she looked at had its limits, and only some of them would work if either Mom or kid was unplugged from the Net. When CC came up empty after several searches for multi-model cross-platform repeating auto-reminder tools, my own Internet Bloodhound kicked in.

Voila and I should have known that Lifehacker would have lots of links on this topic. For CC and her issue, the following looked especially interesting:

Remindr is a web-based service that pings cellphone, email, twitter, and gTalk  simultaneously. There is no registration required, simply visit the site and plug in your information: the reminder, the date and time, and the info for the services. For another way of reminding yourself with multiple services, check out iReminder, an iGoogle widget.

Deadline: Free appointment/event manager and reminder service aims to keep everything simple, from its minimalist  interface to its text-centric update. Deadline parses your text to figure out when things are due—like "Call Linda for brunch Sunday"—and offers reminders and subscriptions through email, RSS, and iCal feeds. You can add updates and get reminders through your Jabber/Gtalk IM client, and the email is minimal enough to work through a cell phone's text messaging. Deadline delivers on what it promises for those looking for a scaled-down, agile reminder service. Deadline is free but requires a sign-up.

And for those times you need to hit a virtual Snooze, but truly want to be reminded again, LifeHacker also reports on these below:

HitMeLater: ... sometimes you might not trust yourself to get back to something on time. HitMeLater, a free service, will re-send any emails you forward, based on when you said to send it. So when mom emails to ask you for an answer Friday on the gift for your sister, forward it to friday@hitmelater.com, and it appears at the top of your inbox Friday.

Resnooze: Resnooze sends timed email reminders to yourself and friends and gives you the option to "hit the snooze button" on the reminder to get it again later. Resnooze [via Webware]

All of the above, of course, begs the question of whether email and SMS are the best for this particular use.

Couldn't aforesaid offspring, say, wear one of those multi-alarm watches? Yes she could, my friend agreed ruefully, but it makes her feel too lame to be wearing a virtual Mom on her wrist where anyone near can see and hear it. A beep or buzz on her desktop or in her pocket is a whole other thing, completely private, but hard to ignore unless the recipient wants to resist.

As for that itch to resist -- the real crux of the issue -- the pill or process that works to prod a young adult past that hump has not been invented yet.

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Footnote from the Machiavellian Mom Dept.
If this were about me and one of my offspring, I'd be tempted to rig it such that the kid would want to shed the training wheels. I'd set up the initial reminders, and even the Snooze service thing. But then I'd also set up an independently repeating message from me, perhaps 45 minutes later, which asked "So did you really do it?" and prompted for a reply. The point in that case would be less about whether my child would lie to me, but whether she would lie to herself -- and that point would be made either way.