Monica Valentinelli at the Words on the Water | Freelance Writing Blog has a thoughtful post on professional freelance writing. After a review of the financial benefits of fiction vs. nonfiction writing, she covers the process of working as a writer and managing the projects and various people involved. She suggests using a tool like Voo2do to track the many ongoing tasks a writer faces.

Though I’m not a writer, I recognize a lot of the same concerns from my work as a software developer. You have a variety of bosses expecting different deliverables at various deadlines. They all get angry if you run late, and even angrier if you don’t tell them you’re running late until after the deadline. It’s probably even harder for writers; I often feel like I need some hard-to-invoke inspiration to finish a software project, but the role of inspiration in writing a story has got to be much greater.

Still, it’s good to know that Voo2do can help writers with their work just as it helps me with mine.

Update: The transition was completed successfully. If you see anything broken, please email support@voo2do.com.

Hi everyone! Long time no post. I hope Voo2do has been treating you well.

I’m leaving my job with Renesys. They’ve been kind enough to host voo2do in their data center for about 405 days. (I know this because the server has run continually since installation.) Anyway, since I’m leaving, I’m moving Voo2do onto a new server. To make the move, Voo2do will be down briefly tonight. Total downtime should not exceed an hour.

This blog is already running from the new server, so please feel free to post any comments/questions here. Thank you for your patience.

The server that previously hosted Voo2do crashed on Friday March 16, 2007 due to a hard disk failure, bringing down Voo2do and some related sites (like this blog) along with some of my personal web sites. Long story short: Voo2do came back on the 19th and I’m gradually reassembling the rest. Long story here.

I apologize for the inconvenience and thank everyone who wrote during the outage to offer encouragement and support. Thank you all for your kind words and continued interest in Voo2do.

I recently upgraded to Firefox 2.0. Nice changes all around — but when I went to Voo2do, my usual Alt+S key press to save tasks simply didn’t work. According to this blog post, this is because Firefox 2.0 has changed the access key combination from Alt to Alt+Shift.

So try Alt+Shift+S to save tasks and Alt+Shift+K to add a new task. This is a confusing change and many web users will be affected by it.

UPDATE: The last day to apply was Wednesday, October 25, 2006. No more applications are being accepted.

I get about five emails per day with questions or suggestions from Voo2do users. I’d like to work with someone who knows Voo2do to help me answer them promptly and helpfully.

Requirements for this position include:

• fluency in written English
• knowledge of Voo2do functionality — regular users strongly preferred
• ability to respond to emails using a GMail or similar account, which we will share
• availability of 2-3 hours per week, in 3 or more chunks
• ability to work hourly, over the internet — candidates welcome from anywhere on earth

This position will handle first-line support for Voo2do. You will respond to user questions directly. You will thank users for suggestions and tabulate those suggestions, so I can easily see how many people emailed us to request, say, the ability to upload files. You will escalate some inquiries to me.
To apply for this position, send the following to support AT voo2do.com with “CANDIDATE” in the subject line:

• your resume
• 1-2 paragraph summary of your current Voo2do usage (if none, describe your experience using other web applications for communication or personal productivity)
• hourly wage requirements

This position offers the opportunity to help thousands of users enjoy Voo2do. It also offers the possibility to grow into pre- and post-sales support as Voo2do explores a variety of commercial possibilities.

Hi everyone!

It’s been too long since my last post, and I’ve had limited time to work on Voo2do. But there’s a new version in the works with a number of great features I hope you’ll appreciate.

Coming Soon

• customizing the dashboard: you’ll be able to hide and rearrange contexts on the dashboard. Your arrangement will be stored in a browser cookie, so you can see work first on one browser but home first (and work hidden) on another.
• hit “Save” more efficiently: another “Save” button is now available at the bottom of each task list, and a new style for buttons highlights the available keyboard shortcuts.
• backup and restore notes: the backup function, limited so far to task data only, will now include the text of your notes.
• numerous bug fixes
• and a shiny new logo!

Thanks for trying Voo2do, and I hope you’ll appreciate the many new features and bug fixes coming out Real Soon Now.

Voo2do was included today in a comparison of online to-do list apps at TechCrunch. TechCrunch is a popular blog about the latest cool technology stuff, and I’m happy Voo2do made it on there. A big thanks to our many devoted users!

Do you use desktop calendaring applications that can read iCal-format calendar files? Then you’ll appreciate Scott Fleckenstein’s Voo2do2iCal, which provides iCalendar-format export for your Voo2do tasks. I’ve been planning to integrate iCal export into Voo2do, but haven’t gotten around to it; Scott’s API application works today. Enjoy!

P.S. If you don’t use a desktop calendaring program, such as Apple’s iCal or Mozilla Sunbird, you probably don’t need iCal export.

P.P.S. Don’t miss the Window tray application and other cool applications built on the voo2do API.

Today marks the release of several oft-requested new features for voo2do. If you’ve seen the beta, you’ve probably helped me debug these. Announcing:

• Renamed views to contexts, and added ability to assign a task into a specific context.
• Inactivation (and reactivation) of contexts and projects makes it easier to get old stuff out of the way.
• Support for D/M/Y and Y-M-D date formats, in addition to M/D/Y.
• Ability to edit (not just add and delete) notes.
• Task-specific menu (click on ).
• Notes button now opens in a simulated window rather than an actual new browser window, making this interface operation faster on many browsers.
• Initial collaboration support, including ability to assign tasks to a person and to publish tasks for public viewing.
• New Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

UPDATE: the beta is no longer available; this version has been installed on the main voo2do.com.

Good news! A new version of voo2do is now available for testing. I’d like a few people to try it out and identify any severe problems before I switch to the new version completely. It’s a chance to help the voo2do community, get a sneak peek at new features, and offer suggestions and bug reports that I’ll try to address promptly.

The beta is on a new server and is using a copy of the voo2do database from the morning of Mar 25, 2006. Modifications you make on the beta server affect the beta server database only. They will not affect your data on voo2do.com and will be deleted in a few days when the beta period ends. After that, I’ll upgrade all voo2do users and data to the new version.

To play with the beta version, please:

1. Read the line in bold above. If you don’t understand what it means, don’t use the beta. Your data on http://voo2do.com will not be affected.
2. Read about the new features.
3. Go to http://beta.voo2do.com.
4. Test lots of things. Discover bugs and confusing designs.
5. Tell me about them.

Enjoy!