Can't afford a personal secretary? It doesn't take much to outsource your life, at least for a few errands. Ask Sunday (also here) promises to answer your pressing questions by phone or e-mail in about an hour through its agents.
The New York City-based service asks for a monthly fee upfront of between $29 for 30 incidents or $49 for 50 requests. With that out of the way, you can share your passwords for services including Zipcar and Amazon, just in case your questions might involve renting a car or buying a book. You'll also fill out details for contacts as well as preferred airlines and hotels, complete with their rewards plans if relevant.
I started with an easy question via e-mail: which hotels in San Francisco offer Wi-Fi in their lobbies, not just in the rooms? I received a confirmation note within 10 minutes. I didn't request a rush job of 60 minutes or less, so I prepared to wait up to 72 hours. But within less than two hours, an AskSunday agent from New York e-mailed me a list of 10 hotels, addresses and phone numbers included, where I could chill in the lobby with a laptop. One entry warned of a weak signal, saving me from stomping over there. I'm not sure if that's an exhaustive or fully accurate list, but it looked like a great start. There was more information than I asked for, such as exact prices for the seven hotels that make you pay for wireless Internet.
AskSunday showed where I could chill in a warm lobby with Wi-Fi.
However, having been raised by the maxim that if you want to do something right, then do it yourself, I recommend that you choose your questions wisely. How many things can you really not answer yourself in between an hour to 72 hours through some clever Googling? And if you need to change a dental appointment, for instance, it takes probably takes more time for you to send an e-mail to AskSunday and wait for a reply than it would to pick up the phone and call the doctor.
Still, this seems like a great service for a busy parent or businessperson juggling too much to handle so much minutia themselves. DoMyStuff, by contrast, will handle in-person errands as well. AskSunday's parent company Sunday LLC, only does that in the Big Apple. It charges additionally by the hour to provide tech support, travel bookings, and other services. There will likely be many more customized personal assistant services cropping up in the future, providing new gigs for those who want to moonlight as digital researchers.
Thrillist, a NYC-based e-mail list that features everything from bar picks to gadgets, has tipped us off to some pretty cool webware recently. (The site currently operates "everywhere," NYC, and LA versions with San Francisco coming soon.) They do, however, tend to be targeted toward Thrillist's key demographic of party-ready slackers. Like this one, for example: Do My Stuff. It's a way for you to find people to, well, do your stuff: lawn mowing, house painting, moving, posing for photographs (ahem), you name it.
The thinking behind it is sort of an eBay-Craigslist hybrid, with a dash of slacker attitude thrown in. Like eBay, you can register as either a buyer ("to get stuff done"), a seller ("to do stuff"), or both. And also like eBay, you don't just put your name in the hat: you place bids. Therefore, potential hires are practically jumping at the chance to be in your employ. There are also message board features so that you can offer suggestions or advice without actually bidding.
If you browse the lists of tasks that people have posted on Do My Stuff, you'll see a pretty wide variety--right now, as I look at it, there's "clean my house," "sell my truck," and "organize my home office." So it's looking like Do My Stuff is turning out exactly as it was intended: a way to get people to do stuff you don't want to do, Tom-Sawyer-gone-digital-style. (Except we hope you'll actually pay them.) It makes me wonder if we're now seeing the same for classifieds sites as we have for social networking sites: MySpace is big, and that has its advantages, but there are some niche-based networks on the rise that cater to people who are looking for a smaller, easier-to-navigate community. Likewise, Craigslist is huge; will "niche" classifieds sites start to spring up in the wake of its growth?
If Do My Stuff is successful, we could indeed be seeing a pattern.
- prev
- 1
- next
