No matter how good your memory is, there are times when you just can’t recall when something happened. I was thinking about a few events in my life and realized I couldn’t always pin down when they were.
Some times there are significant world events that help solidify when something happened. One example of this is when I went to DEF CONF IV. I’ll always remember that was in the summer of 1996 because I remember seeing the news about the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta while I was there.
I started to wonder if I could use this technique on some of my more fuzzy memories. So I tried to remember when I first started using Google as my primary means for searching the web. I started my current job on 1 May 1999, but couldn’t remember if I’d been using Google at my old job, or my current one. One item I could remember that was after I started using Google was Google’s purchase of Deja.com’s Usenet archive, which was on 12 February 2001. So likely before 2001, and maybe after May 1999. Not perfect, but it is better than the fuzzy void that comes up when I request the memory from my brain.
<Side Note> How’s this PR title strike you: Yahoo! Selects Google as its Default Search Engine Provider. Amazing what a difference six years will make. I didn’t realize how entertaining looking at old press releases could be.</Side Note>
How’s this for an old memory, I was able to track down roughly when I started reading JeremY!’s Blog because I remember that while I was searching for something about MySQL I ended up on a post about tooth repair. This puts my timeline around November 2002.
I’m starting to wonder if I can do this on purpose. Are there strong (or odd) events that I can link with new memories that I’m currently making? Certainly “bloging” about a thing or event helps because I can usually at least remember, oh yeah, I blogged that somewhere. To a lesser degree the same things holds true for my del.icio.us bookmarks.
How’s this for an easy thing to remember, my first daughter (Alice) was born on my 6th wedding anniversary (3 Jan 2002). If only every important date was that easy to remember.
Sometimes I forget things, I suppose we all do to some degree. I’ve come up with a few different techniques for reminding myself about things depending on the task/time/info. If someone mentions something at work at the end of the day sometimes I’ll leave a post it note on my monitor so that I’ll see it in the morning. Sarah does something similar at home, she’ll leave herself a note on the bathroom mirror before going to bed so she’ll see it in the morning.
A year or two ago I saw a friend of mine leave a reminder for himself by calling his work number and leaving a voicemail. I thought it was rather odd at the time, but since then I’ve done it a few times myself. What I find is that when I call work number (usually from my cell phone) and leave voicemail explaining what I’m supposed to remember, the mere act of leaving the voicemail tends to keep that info/task in my thoughts. As a result I usually end taking care of what ever it was that I needed to do before I even check my voicemail in the morning. So this idea of leaving reminders via voicemail seems to work, at least so far.
The next step from there is some sort of timed message reminder. I’ve done this before with alphanumeric pagers using QuickPage (qpage), which allows to schedule your alphanumeric page to be sent at a given date and time in the future. Many calendar systems do the same thing with email, reminding you of upcoming events. What I’d like to have schedule voice reminders.
I want to be able to call a number, leave a message and schedule when I want that message to call me (i.e. 4 Aug 2005 @ 4:15pm). I should also be able to tell it which phone number to call (cell, work, home, friend?) and optionally to try them all in a given order if no one answers, or if the voicemail or answering machine picks up instead of a person. On top of all that I should be able to optionally sync calendar items via some sort of text to voice via the same service. Perhaps with some email integration also?
I wonder if the mobile phone providers will jump on this idea. Heck, no reason the land line providers shouldn’t be able to jump on this. Anyone with a large capacity voicemail system should be able to add some extra smarts to implement at least some of these ideas.