Comments on: Knowing when it’s been too many Days Since

By: rik

rik — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:23:12 +0000

I see. Well, I vote for fixed reference option (with a line that turns red or something); don’t like the auto-sort based on average days to reset reset thing. Who’s with me?

By: Bernie Thompson

Bernie Thompson — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:24:45 +0000

I realized that people have two kinds of reminders for days since — ones they’re trying to do more regularly (kids bath) and then perhaps those that they don’t ever want to do again (take a drink). You want to see those items fall to the bottom as they fall into your past.

With this in mind, I’ve done a small update to sort the items you’re actively resetting above those you aren’t, so you can mix the two types. And if you’ve never reset, then older items sort lower.

We’ll see what sort of feedback, firestorm, or fizzle this creates ..

By: Bernie Thompson

Bernie Thompson — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:09:53 +0000

Hi Rik —

With the current version, items don’t sort by “the most days past” — they sort by how near/over they are to your historical average. If you’ve tended to give your kids a bath every 4 days, the “give the kids a bath” reminder will float to the top as it gets close to, then over, 4 days. The effect should be much like what you described. Are you seeing this work, as you’re resetting your short-timeframe items?

The problems seems to be that you had some hand-grouping that automatic sorting messed up from your perspective — one solution which would work regardless of whether the gadget sorts or not, is to add several copies of the gadget and put the different groups in different copies.

What some people have asked for is the ability to provide a fixed recurrence (My kids should have a bath every 3 days, and I want the item to be overdue if it’s been longer!), rather than something based on average. That’s still possible, and could potentially live alongside the automatically calculated recurrence that’s there now. The downsides are UI complexity, and a few less reminders that’ll fit, because of Google’s ~2K character limit on preferences.

By: rik

rik — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:40:26 +0000

I’m sorry, but this Idea of having things go to the top that have the most days past, is, well, stupid.
I have some items that need attention every couple days, some only a few times a year. so, this automatic sorting is of no help at all, and in fact, disorganized my items so they are no longer grouped as I wanted. Please, just add an option to set an “alarm” day passed. This would not be confusing for a monkey!

By: Bernie Thompson

Bernie Thompson — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:28:02 +0000

Hi Jeremy – That’s a good way of doing it to serve the power user while not distracting the novice. For starters, we have a method that’s more automatic, but doesn’t provide as much control — we’ll track the frequency on which you’ve previously reset the item, and let you know (with color, probably) when an item is “overdue” compared to how often it was done in the past.

Once that is in, a way of explicitly setting a fixed expected frequency makes sense. Thanks for your ideas!

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 01:11:45 +0000

How about a simple parser, no additional UI, as you enter the title of the new item if the string contains something similar to “-overdue 30″ it will consider it overdue in thirty days.
“-overdue 30 repeating” would be nice.
only two or three command words should be necessary, and non “power” users would not even know it is there…
What do you think ?