I have lots of friends. Lots. that wasn't true a year ago, but I digress. Unfortunately I'm an ADD freak. So what happens is that I'll forget to send emails, follow-up phone-calls, etc. What I want is a "system" (a term I use loosely) that will take use my current email software and address book as data sources, and monitor whom I communicate with and with what frequency. Then I want it to keep a little DDF (Dumb Data Format) database of how long it's been since I've sent an email to someone. Once a configurable (default plus individual contact override) threshold has been met, add an item to my todo list (in separate software someplace?) to send that person an email. The tickler could be anything: the os-x stickynote application, iCal's todo list (bleech) an OmniOutline "todo.ooutline" file, anything. But it would need to keep putting "reminders" in there until it discovered that I had sent the email. that way the todo list gets cluttered with repeat messages until I get off my arse and actually do something about it. Now I could do this in anything, which means I'm pretty much paralyzed by picking platforms. I'm guessing the simplest of all worlds would be to do it in AppleScript. (This of course would mean learning AppleScript, but whatever. I'm long overdue for learning a new programming language.) By taking a scripting approach, the only demands I place on the component applications is that they're somehow scriptable. I'm loving the idea of keeping this functionality way out of the hands of the core apps because god only knows what I'll decide I want to use tomorrow. (I'd likely make it web-based at my first opportunity. Then I'll replace the todo back-end.) thoughts?
4:38:21 PM 
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