HassleMe is a cool looking free service that I ran into recently.

Not eating enough fruit? Forgot to feed the fish again? Need a little help keeping your New Year’s resolutions? Tell us what to hassle you about, and we’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals.

I like the simplicity of it. I also like that you can configure a rough timing scheme. I could see myself configuring a ‘hassle’ everyday for only a short time. Either it would get ingrained into my head to do the thing everyday and I wouldn’t need the nagging anymore or it would be too much and the virtual nagging would become a little too real.

It would be fantastic for things that don’t happen quite as frequently. I know I’m no the only one that on occasion realizes that a month has passed by without me knowing.

Methinks the integration can go just a titch deeper – instead of just reminding, allow the notification to be actionable. For instance, if I mail you a reminder to blog, if you respond to the email, your response could be posted directly to your blog. Same goes for a journal.

An identity system with a delegation mechanism is really needed here. If I really want this service to post to my blog, well, I shouldn’t have to give it my blog password. I should be able to grant access to an application (the reminder service) to post a blog entry or whatever else without me disclosing my password. AtomPub can get us a lingua-franca to converse with all these web services, but it doesn’t provide the identity part.