Search and Destroy

Now you can delete stuff that you do not need anymore. Finally!

I have begun using this feature to maintain my tasks. The following shows a typical session:

Maya discovers the world wide web.

For the impatient: Your notes are now available at http://www.mayafile.com/home.html.

For the rest of you, hope you are finding your Google Talk buddy useful.

Me, not so much. Since Gmail is my primary email, I end up using talk@mayafile.com quite a bit for saving various tid bits. I have reached a point where managing these dozens of notes is sometimes unwieldy from a chat-only interface.

On the other hand, there a lot of other things Maya should do, being able to delete and share notes, which are easier when done the point-and-click way.

The solution? A new and shiny web interface!

Go (right now!) to http://www.mayafile.com/home.html, and sign up using the same email address you use for your Google Talk. As a bonus, the web interface allows you to do things that you have been asking for a long time - for example, deleting notes :-)

On the website, you may have noticed an email address at the bottom of the page: team at mayafile dot com (spammers made me write it this way). Now you know who to blame when things don't work.

Bookmarks on the go

A couple of weeks ago, an friend asked me if Maya could remember his bookmarks.

"Yes", I said, "it will store anything that you ask it to!"  He agreed but clarified further by way of an example. Once he has stored his favorite Family Guy video from YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJ0SkbPxAk, surely he can search for it as '_AJoSkbPxAk' among other things, but it can be a little tricky. One should be able to search for it using its title, "Family Guy - Stewie Beats Brian". Hmm.

Despair no more. If you are storing a URL of an HTML page, Maya will now store the title of the page so that you can search on it later. Here is how I stored the video:

me:  /store http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJ0SkbPxAk

talk:  I have stored the URL (YouTube - Family Guy - Stewie Beats Brian).

me:  /find stewie

talk:  1 note found:

[2 hours ago] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJ0SkbPxAk

Go on, store some URLs!

Make talk@mayafile.com your Google Talk buddy to get started. It may take a few minutes before it appears online in your friends' list.

Maya is a week old

Many people have said they found the little buddy useful, and would love it if it did more. Before I go on to what's been cooking, there are some little goodies that you might not have noticed!

• If you just type '/find' without a query, it will show you your most recent notes. The search works as before of course.
• Notes now also show when you saved them.

For example:

me: /find

talk: You can search notes too. For example, '/find john' finds notes about john.

Your most recent notes:

[3 minutes ago] Talk to Sarah about the cleaning appointment.

[1 hour ago] Car audio code 5114

[8 days ago] alice phone 415-912-6730

[9 days ago] google office phone 650-253-1001

[9 days ago] mom phone number 231-900-1223

UPDATE (April 29th)

You can now cruise through all your notes using the '/more' command.

Many of you expressed displeasure with the limited set of results returned by search ('/find query') and browse ('/find'). There was just no way of seeing the rest of 'em.

Until now that is. Go on, do some searches and discover /more joy yourself!

Introducing: A chat buddy that remembers your note

On April 12th, talk@mayafile.com came into existence. It is an infant, but carries a big brain!

Make talk@mayafile.com your Google Talk buddy to get started. It may take a few minutes before it appears online in your friends' list.

It remembers what you tell it to, so you can retrieve it later.

Example:

 me:  /store google office phone 650-253-1000

 talk:  I have stored your note.

 me:  /find phone

 talk:  3 notes found.

alice phone 415-912-6730

google office phone 650-253-1548

mom's phone number 231-900-1223

Do tell me your experiences and the stuff you would like this little chat buddy to do for you.