Taskforce (YC W11) Helps You Organize Your Inbox and Become a Taskmaster
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
>from President Obama to me:
>How are you? Was wondering if you could give me a quick intro to Julian Assange. Or even just his current address would be nice.
I realize that it's useful, and a great product, and I'm not implying otherwise, but this model seems to stretch the startup concept very thin.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that more and more I'm seeing startups that are features, not products. It's certainly not limited to this instance, but this was the most glaring to me, which is why I brought up the comparison and posed the question.
As PG once said to us, "Microsoft started with a BASIC interpreter for the Altair."
Perhaps this is just the beginning, helping you getting things done, by first organizing your mail, transforming them into traceable tasks, and next would be a full blown task-force solution
If you havent mastered the skill in organising your life so your inbox doesnt take over your life, no tool is going to make that any better for you.
Its a delusion.
The productivity field is an interesting area where, if you want to build something great, you need to do some real research on human behavior and psychology. If you had the world's most delicious ice cream, I doubt you'd try selling it in Siberia. Nor would you sell balloons at a funeral. Or cars without gas in the tank. So what's troubling is, plenty of people make seemingly-great productivity tools, and then promptly ignore obvious issues... like the fact that people tend to lose motivation over time. There's a reason we're building Taskforce in the inbox, and it's not because we're hopping on the "email overload" bandwagon.
We think that with enough intelligently-directed effort, we can create something that really does make people better at what they want to do.
I stand corrected and humbled. Even im going to sign up to this thing.
Where do i sign?
The plugin has no concept of projects as far as I can tell, which could be by simply tagging in gmail. As it is, I can simply drag the gmail url to my current desktop application icon which creates a task.
Perhaps for someone whose only work related tasks come in through gmail, this would be an improvement over just tagging an email.
Even if it were my case, I cannot see myself relying this app. I moved away from Things to The Hit List because it had VIM-like keyboard controls, and am used to being able to move around in gmail with the keyboard as well. As far as I can tell, there are no keyboard controls for this plugin.
Hum... installed but it doesn't work, did all things and still nothing.
I clicked on the link to return and it says can't login. And the directions don't make much sense.
Also, if I do end up sticking with this, please don't sell this and shut down the service, like etacts did (the last YC company to do a gmail add-on, IIRC), although I never used that much.
Congrats on the launch!
a. The privacy policy should be a little more clear about the data (if any) being accessed from Gmail. Email is something around which people (or just me) take privacy seriously. The privacy policy is well written (not canned legalese), but does not cover issues around what kinds of data is collected. Rapportive (http://rapportive.com/privacy), also a YC startup has a very fresh approach to privacy policies.
b. at least for me, one of the best things about gmail are the keyboard shortcuts. Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/) does a great job of respecting gmail shortcuts.
c. Maybe they already have keyboard shortcuts, no way to know as there is no help or manual or faqs. (Not sure they need one either)
Key board shortcuts are a great idea, that definitely increases accessibility and speed.
We do have a user guide: http://www.taskforceapp.com/guide - and we also maintain a getsatisfaction page.
screenshot http://cl.ly/1h3U3e0u2i012j1v081G