New eMail-based notes manager released for free!
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Hello everyone… sorry for the delay since my last update, Becky and I are both working on fighting off this killer cold that’s working its way through Colorado!
Last night, I cooked up a new service to allow you to manage notes via email. It’s free, and is really aimed at mobile email users (and, in particular, Peek users). It’s really easy to use, it doesn’t require signup, and I think it’s pretty cool.
To get started, all you have to do is pick a secret email box. The harder to guess, the better, because if anyone guesses it, they can get into your notes! This can be any sort of string you want, like “dahsgdjhab1234″. Then, after this string, add “@hdev2.com”. So your note email box would be dahsgdjhab1234@hdev2.com. Don’t tell anyone what it is! Not even me! Just start sending notes to it. When you send the first note, you’ll automatically get a message back with instructions on how to use the service. Here’s what that message might say, if you’re curious:
Hi! Either you just signed up, or you want some help, right? Well, you came to the right place! First things first, you should probably write down your notes email address. This is really important, as I can’t communicate with you without it! Always send your requests to:
THE SUPER SECRET ADDRESS YOU CHOSE!
Now, if you want to store a note, just send it to that address. It’s that easy! I’ll put it into my database and keep it safe for you. If you want to do stuff with your notes, just put one of the following basic commands at either the beginning or end of the subject line of your email, and I’ll act on it!
!a – All Notes. If you use this, I will send you the title and body of all of your notes. If you are a heavy user, this could be a big email!
!l – List of Notes. If you use this command, I will send you a list of the titles all of your notes (even the ones you deleted!)
!h – HELP!!! If you use this command, I’ll send you this email againThere are some advanced commands, too. For these, you have to put the Note ID of the note you’re talking about as the first thing in the body of your email. If you don’t know the Note ID, ask for the list of notes first, and that will have the IDs of all your notes!
!s – Single Note. If you use this, I’ll just send you the note you ask for.
!d – Delete Note. If you use this, I’ll delete the note you tell me to. (Actually, I won’t really delete it, cause I think you might want it back some day, but I will make it inactive so it doesn’t clutter up your workflow!)
!r – Restore Note. If you use this command, I’ll undelete your note. (See, I knew you’d want it back!)
And that’s that!
Questions, comments? Post em below…
So, as my clients know, my web server bit the dust recently. On Sunday it went down. I kept receiving assurances that it would be right back up. This piece is broken, no biggy. Then another piece, then another piece. After 24 hours of reassurances, I finally said “time to go!” and got set up with a new provider. But then there’s the latency in DNS switchovers, the hassle of moving files, and the dreaded discovery of all the information you haven’t backed up recently. Not to mention the databases. I’m a web developer, not a designer, so customers come to me for database-driven content. Everything lives in databases.