| This space of "handle tasks in email" is starting to explode since pg called it as a giant opportunity. Indeed, I believe Mail Pilot are launching their public beta soon - the timing makes me think these guys were (savvily, tbf) trying to jump in alongside it. It's not just another "todo list", it's really dealing with the pain of remembering the promises you make in email, and the fact email is used to discuss all the work we do, but is completely disconnected from our other management tools. It's also obviously a positive thing that lots of innovative new products are getting involved: a single pioneer does not a movement make. Disclaimer:
I've been working on ActiveInbox for Gmail[1], first as a hobby project and later as a bootstrapped business, since 2006. In fact I think we were the earliest, certainly for Gmail. Oddly enough the transition from hobby to business came about in a very Kickstarter way, but long before it existed -- early users simply wanted to give money to keep us going, we refused at first because it was a "hassle to deal with tax" (this is also long before Lean Startup: customer validation was clearly not something we were tuned too), and eventually set up a PayPal donate button. And I'm really proud of our community - we've been discussing ways to improve email very openly since we started. They drive ideas, and we implement them to create a very experimental product. I'd really like to write up our experience for HN, including the experience of getting an invite to YC, but not a place. There are a lot of stories of how regular people - our customers - pulled a business out of a geek hobby, and lots of mistakes and missteps I've made that could have been avoided. [1]: http://www.activeinboxhq.com |
On the same note, I've been hoping that Google would flesh out Google Tasks for a while now -- technically Tasks ties in with Gmail and Google Calendar already, but that integration is fairly primitive, and Tasks is still missing extremely basic things like search, labels, and a usable (non-widget) UI in Gmail. Of all the projects Google is letting stagnate, this one hurts me the most. I could make great use of it if it were more complete.