Sometimes you just need to take a step back.

Check out this FAQ on Streetcar:

Some common mistakes which prevent your [car rental] extension going through:

Wrong: "Extend 1hr"	Right: "Extend 1"
Wrong: "Extend 30 mins"	Right: "Extend 0.5"
Wrong: "Extend my booking 1"	Right: "Extend 1"

Can I suggest that if this is a common mistake, how about making some really simple changes to the SMS parser to support common mistakes? Is it really so hard to strip out the bits above? No it isn't. It's amazing how little things like this are so annoying for users, yet technically are so, so easy to implement.

Yours in eager anticipation for this change,


Julian,
Streetcar user.

Update 26 Jan 2010. Twitter rocks:
streetcarhq@julianharris Thanks for the comment, I have the Tech Team looking into it now...


(Wouldn't it be cool if this blog automatically took twitter comments and stuck them here? That's what Salmon is all about it turns out...)

Android has a useful GTD (task mgr) app, 'Shuffle'. Can't find a direct link to it but 1.4 is awesome in that it syncs to the cloud via Tracks which is an open source GTD web app. Create an account at http://my.gtdify.com and link it to your phone. Very nice.

Useful things Shuffle does:

1. As for all GTD apps, it has a context for a task so when you shift contexts you can filter tasks based on that. For instance I have a context 'at home before work' which I check before I leap out the door. 
2. Also has Google calendar sync -- it can create appts in your calendar. Although current version doesn't allow you to select the account. 
3. Its all free and open source (Shuffle | Tracks)