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Software that Schedules Your Appointments For You?

Posted by Cliff on from the your-own-time-mentor dept.

Lappie asks: "Say you've got a couple of things to do. Usually, you write them down in your diary, PDA or via some online calendaring solution. In every case YOU decide when to carry out a task based on it's priorities etc. That's not how I like to work. Having used a Psion Revo for a few years now, I got quite used to a program called Mentor which schedules my tasks for me. It may sound scary to some, but it actually works quite well. With my Psion dying on me, I'm trying to find an alternative to Mentor either as Windows, Linux , web-based or PDA based software. However, I haven't been able to find anything after several days of googling around, and I'm getting so desperate that I even considered closed source payware. To date, I can't find a comparable product in the market. Is Mentor and its capabilities a unique piece of software, or have I not looked carefully enough?" "Based on three criteria, the program determines what tasks you have to do on a given day. The criteria are how committed you are to carrying out the task (committed / must do, fairly committed / upcoming 2-3 days, bonus), when the task should be completed (ASAP, soon / this week, sometime / this month) and how long you plan for the task to take (15m, hour, half a day or a day). Mentor knows how/where to plan tasks because for each, so called, role you play (e.g., Sysadmin, Webmaster, Home etc.) you can assign (repeating) time slots over a day. So Mentor places a task in a time slot when the duration fits the slot and when the 'urgency/priority' variables fit the distance between today and the date when a task has to be completed. Of course, Mentor automatically respects the appointments that you have, and after a quick reschedule every morning, you're all set to go for the day."

11 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Is not this scheduling problem NP-complete??? by PaulBu · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hmm, putting my tin-foil hat on, maybe the Mentor guys DID solve it, but it invited too much heat from one or two of TLAs... ;-)

    Paul B.

    P.S. Good luck in your search though!

  2. I know the product you are looking for. by m_chan · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's called Wife1.0. You won't ever have to worry about not having tasks scheduled for you again. Whatever free time you had will be filled automatically with any number of tedious jobs. Unfortunately, v1.0 it turned out to be ridden with nagware.

    I've since gone back to bachelor 1.0 and don't really think about upgrading.

    1. Re:I know the product you are looking for. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nah, that's the same old shit, repackaged, slower, and more bloated. What he needs to do is find himself a copy of Hot Fuck Buddy 1.0, the No Strings Attached edition. Unfortunately it was a very limited pressing, and clean copies are difficult to come by.

    2. Re:I know the product you are looking for. by zo219 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Honey, Wife 1.0 was going to expire on you anyway. Some guys know what it is to appreciate a fine piece of, um, software. And oooh, does that app ever perform. For them.

  3. Well... by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why don't you stick with mentor, and from their download page on the right column download the version for the PC EPOC emulator - I presume this will run on windows and then you're set.

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

  4. Above and Beyond by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke · · Score: 4, Informative
    From http://www.1soft.com/. It's designed to work in exactly the way that you describe.

    Been using versions of it for many years, and can't fault it. The web site looks like a leftover from 1995, but don't hold that against them. Windows only, and doesn't run under Wine (at least not the last time I tried).

    It supports tasks, projects, statuses, alarms, all that sort of stuff. Notes against items are just text files - easy to search or edit externally if you want to. Tasks can be imported or exported too if you wish.

  5. Psions and Mooks by fm6 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Mentor does sound interesting -- I've never heard of anything that did that kind of personal scheduling. If you can't find something similar for another platform, you might look into trying to get it running on a Symbian-based cell phone. Since Symbian is basically the current version of EPOC, that's probably easier than porting the software to PalmOS, which seems to be the author's current plans.

    Or you could just get another Psion off of eBay. They'll probably be available for a long time to come.

    I have to mention that overdependence on "Mook" software can lead to loss of actual identity, as described in Bruce Sterling's fiction.

  6. Manna by hab136 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    See also Manna, a story about such software, and its logical extrapolation.

  7. Re:Is not this scheduling problem NP-complete??? by chjones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, it's not NP, it's most certainly polynomial. Turns out that this "scheduling problem" can be arranged into a matroid, and therefore a simple greedy algorithm will work. Basically, this will *always* just end up with the next "highest priority" item that fits into the current time slot.

    (For a final note, I'm not in any way affiliated with mathworld.wolfram.com, but it is a useful reference.) ;-)

    --

    Christian Jones
    Medicine. Mathematics. Mediocrity.

  8. Mentor with Voice by BladeMelbourne · · Score: 3, Funny
    Guy: Organiser, please schedule 10 minutes this afternoon so I can go to the bathroom and take a crap.

    Organiser: Acknowledged. This appointment is scheduled for.... 5:50PM.

    Guy: I was hoping for some time before 12 noon.

    Organiser: Sorry, you all booked up. [snikers... and all backed up too]

    Guy: But I already have a peeper!

    Organiser: I do not understand. [Yes, you have nice brown eye protruding from your read-end. For the rest of the day I hope I'm kept in the front pockets of your pants.]

    Guy: Right. So what am I scheduled to be doing now?

    Organiser: You have a meeting at the unemployment office. [Patethic carbon based life form]

  9. my own project by brw12 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    on the subject, i've been working on my own php/mysql app, "prioritexter", which is basically a glorified todo list, that sorts items by a combination of priority you set and proximity to their due date. I needed it because I keep dozens of items on my todo list at one time, and need them all to come up frequently so that I don't forget them, but don't want to have to look over my whole list every day.

    A demo is at http://www.mekhaye.net/webdev/prioritexter and a .zip of the program (view README after unzip, no install necessary) is at http://www.mekhaye.net/webdev/prioritexter.zip. I made it for *nix with php/mysql but I imagine other platforms would handle it ok.

    It should be considered gamma, or delta, or something short of beta. please give me feedback.