Loyal users of Voo2do,
You may have noticed that the pace of development on Voo2do has slowed somewhat. I am working on some major new features — group support, reminders, a variety of UI improvements — but I have also just started a new job. Please bear with me while I finish a few of these features, and keep on sending me your excellent suggestions!
Girish Bharadwaj has posted an Outlook macro that can automatically export your task list from Outlook into Voo2do and similar systems. If you’ve been an Outlook user, this is an easy way to try out some new systems.
Now if only someone would write something that went the other direction: from Voo2do into Outlook!
Web 2.0 directory eHub has posted an interview with me about Voo2do. If you’re curious about what prompted me to start Voo2do and where it’s going, check it out.
eHub: What is your design philosophy?
voo2do: Everything should be as simple, automatic, fast, and pleasant as possible. The problem with to-do lists and productivity methodologies is that it’s way too easy to let them slide and get off track. If its colors are warm and welcoming, and if the UI is packed with little wonders, that can be the little push that keeps you going. Conversely, if the application is slow or broken or ugly, it can be the little stumble that kills the whole process.
So unlike other projects I’ve done where I focused on developing something that was theoretically interesting, I have tried in Voo2do to focus relentlessly on quality of the user experience, from prospective user/newbie to power user. Whenever I think of adding a feature I try to do it in the most unobtrusive possible way.
New competitor! Remember the Milk is yet another to-do list manager with lots of Ajax interface tricks. I have to say though, I’ve found the navigation flow to be somewhat confusing. To do anything, you have to select a task, then click somewhere on the top or right side of the window to continue. I won’t be switching away from Voo2do, but hey, I realize I’m biased!
Of course, I use “competitor” in the loosest possible sense, because it seems neither one of us has any way to make money. In any case, I have a week off of work coming up and will be adding a number of cool features to Voo2do. So stay tuned, and keep on sending me those suggestions!
Here’s the current table of todo tasks for voo2do itself. The number in [square braces] indicates how many people have emailed me asking for this feature.
Feel free to take a look and let me know if you’d like a certain feature pushed to a higher priority.
Speaking of priorities:
1 = working on this right away
2 = very likely to be in next update (~2 weeks)
3 through 9 = lower priority but desirable
10+ = not even sure if this feature belongs in voo2do
In related news, one of the new collaboration-focused features will be “published projects”, whereby I will be able to have a public-readable URL that serves a read-only list of tasks in my voo2do project. You don’t want to know what a pain it was to get the table below into postable form.
On to the table… Read the rest of this entry »
Denis Perekhrest (of http://inforedesign.com) has invented a cool way to connect your del.icio.us bookmarks to Voo2do. He’s using RssFwd, a service that watches an RSS feed and sends you email whenever a new item is posted, and Voo2do’s new support for adding tasks via email. Very Web 2.0.
The full article is at inforedesign and in Russian, but Denis kindly emailed me an English translation:
Voo2do has grown rapidly in its month and a half of public existence. Here’s a chart of our confirmed user count to date (click thumbnail to expand):
Is there a pattern here? I don’t see one. When a well-read blog mentions voo2do, hundreds of people register. On slow days, 20-30 people register. I check the user count every day or two, but mostly I can tell when we’re in a busy period because I get a lot more email with suggestions, praise, and even a few bugs!
As documented, voo2do now has a handful of useful new features, including adding tasks by email, time zone support, autocompletion of project names, printable task lists, and backup/restore of your tasks.
Voo2do now has over 2600 users! Thanks, everyone!
As usual, you may need to hit your browser’s reload button to load the new changes. Enjoy!
Voo2do’s web server experienced downtime from about 4am to 10am EST this morning. This was due to some unexpected consequences of a bugfix I made yesterday; it worked fine when changing code on the live server, but failed when starting the server from scratch. So when the web server process was automatically restarted at 4am, it didn’t come back up. Luckily it only took me a few minutes to fix this when I woke up, but unfortunately I didn’t wake up until 9:45. Anyway, everything should be back to normal now. Sorry about the downtime, and thanks for bearing with me.
New features coming today… expect another post in the next few hours!
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