Would you use a basic email reminder service?
tl:dr
An email version of the !remindme bot on reddit, uses natural language parsing to figure out when you want to be reminded, and sends you back your message on your desired date. Would you use this for $1 a month?
Some Backstory
I'm a junior developer on my first job and I'm looking for a new one but finding it hard to get interviews. Naturally, I started looking at project ideas and in one weekend replicated a very basic email version of the !remindme bot on reddit. (if you don't know what that is some info here
How it works
It really is exactly like the !remindme bot, first line of the email you state a timeframe (tomorrow, next week, may 25th, etc), and then your message below that. The program scrapes its email inbox for new messages, categorizes the data and saves it, while also checking saved emails for whether or not it's their time to be sent.
My question
A few friends have asked me if I am going to host this so they can use it. If I take another weekend, make a nice landing page and basic signup, each email gets something like ~10 free reminders a month, after that it's an absurdly small price like a dollar or two a month for unlimited reminders, would you use it.?
I use extensively the remindme feature on Slack, so, that sounds exciting.
But, I'm not really an Email guy, so, on the other hand, getting email reminders would more disturb me.
Also, I think that Gmail also have a feature for that.
But for the others, I think that could be a life saver.
My gut feeling tells me you're on the right track but it's not clear what problem you're actually solving.
It might help to get more specific. Put yourself in the shoes of someone that might use this. What are they thinking? Why would they need a reminder? What would drive them to use this over something else?
For example, lets pick some random reasons why I might want a reminder:
You can pick any one of these arbitrary reasons and focus in on it. What would be a good solution to remembering my wife's birthday? Probably Facebook or Google Calendar. Paying the car insurance, well I get the bill in the mail before it's due. Workouts are stored in my to-do list app and I already get the reminder.
Even though there are already existing solutions to these problems it doesn't mean your idea is terrible. What is means is that you need hone in on solving a specific problem really well.
It's generally a bad idea to start with a solution looking for a problem to solve. Usually the best solutions are created because someone tried to solve a problem. Not the other way around.
Nonetheless, you've created something cool. Sometimes great ideas come from just making cool things and seeing where it takes you. I think you should put it online for your friends and see if you can get them to sign up anyway. That experience alone can be a real eye opener.
@sjpratt I just read through your original post again and to be honest I didn't fully understand what your idea actually did the first time.
Now that I read it again I think my reply yesterday was a little out of context. I think your idea is good. Of course, the principles I outlined yesterday are still the same, it takes time to fully refine your idea.
If I understand your idea correctly it would work something like this?
!remindmesyntax in it.Does that about sum it up? At this point I don't know if this is something I'd use but I do think it's something I would try. I am constantly getting emails into my inbox that I'd rather to deal with later. My current solution is to "star" the email so that it stays at the top of my inbox. It works okay, but I'd welcome a better solution.
Superhuman & Gmail have a built in remind me feature which I use extensively, this sounds super similar. Also doesn't seem to need NLP.