Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

timeslot.me

71 pointschetan5150 comments

My experience:

1) submitted my signup details, the page never returned a response and just hung there, but I did receive an email and was able to login

2) There's no difference between "add item" and "insert after" on the last item - but there is no way to add an item to the start of the list. I have to insert after the first item then re-order

3) I could never use this on a daily basis but I could really use it for week-to-week planning, especially if it had an API

4) As such I would prefer gcal style dragging/gantt style blocks

5) If you could create a simple "time block allocation" tool I'd pay to use it.

The use case for me would be to plug my task system (for which I actually use my own CMS where I create pages for each "sprint"). I currently use Google Calendar but the API is kind of hellish and I've never gotten around to using it.

The fact is that daily planning revolves around a few things for me: things that arrive in my inbox, things i'm supposed to be working on (time blocked off in google calendar) sales/follow up tasks (I use highrise, this comes under "things that arrive in my inbox") and appointments (for which I use google calendar).

I then timesheet everything via an IRC chat room (as do my colleagues).

All that's missing is an elegant interface for blocking off time for tasks, being able to rearrange them and then export all the information via an API so that I can see directly how scheduling is affecting my cashflow without having to update a bunch of spreadsheet data.

So that's how someone would use the API. Other than it's current functionality, what more would I need to add to the API for you to be able to use it in your natural workflow?

Well, as I mentioned I would prefer it to be inter-day rather than intra-day - not sure how difficult it is for you to make that an option.

The API - I guess I need to be able to do this:

$estimated_days - numDaysScheduled($item_name) = $deficit;

where numDayScheduled is an API call. Then I would like a way to take a bunch of sprints I've added in my task system, and dump them into the calendar so that no task was overlapping for any one assignee - then I could go and play with the schedule.

This whole thing is straying pretty far away from your initial concept, though, maybe if you want to discuss it further send me an email.

+1 on the functionality to insert items before. I'm surprised this isn't there yet... seems like a pretty crucial component. Regardless, great app!

Here's a quick description:

Timeslot is a cross between a Todo list and a calendar. Simply add items to your day's agenda, and specify how long each will take. Timeslot will automatically generate start and end times for each item, so when you have to make a change, your entire agenda will update to flow around it.

An interesting tidbit you might notice about Timeslot: Once you log in, literally every bit of text on the screen is editable. I personally find this quite neat :)

A few things:

1. What technology is behind this? Ruby?

2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap.

3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than most people realize.

4. Mixing To-Dos in there with the Calendar would be killer. Especially if you let me bring over my To-Do list from popular To-Do list websites and then make your own version.

5. I love the fact that it's so simple and nice. Please keep it that way.

It's using Django on the server and Backbone.js on the client. It was quite a pleasure to code with these frameworks, actually.

As for your suggestions, I totally agree with all of them. They are all features I would love as well, and I have some ideas on how to make it so it's easy to plan on every level of granularity, from day to week to month to year, and to make them all play well with each other.

Best of luck to you then; truly great start it seems!

I would actually prefer not to have todos mixed in. IMHO, todos just clutter up a calendar (I've tried them in every single calendar app I've ever used that supports them, and stopped using them).

The problem I think is that calendars never seem to do todos as well as dedicated apps (or a plain text file for that matter, which is what I use now). To me this feature often seem tacked on.

Just my two cents. I'm sure others will disagree...

I was thinking of making todos part of a panel on the right that also includes canned events, stuff to be working on today based on due dates later in the week, and other such lists of items that you can easily pull into today's agenda. This side panel would be able to slide open and closed, so it won't clutter up the interface.

What do you think?

For me, todos wouldn't add much. Todos require something with more sophistication than any calendaring apps I use (BusyCal, iCal or GoogleCal, all at different times.); I use Things, and could probably stand to move to OmniFocus.

You can't beat the frictionless entry of a native application, and it's probably not worth trying. Right now, with some improvements, I can see your app as a way to either replace my current calendar (doubtful right now…native + natural language entry via AlfredApp and QuickCal is hard to beat), OR a way to fluidly plan my day/week in real-time, changing it as I need it. A way, more than anything else, to keep me focused by shooing out any thoughts of planning.

But I may not be your ideal user, and this would be a new tool with efficacy TBD.

I completely agree with the syncing comment. I think supporting CalDav would be the right(hard) step. I would also like the ability to export a text file of all the data.

Looks interesting, but I don't want to sign up just to try it out. Have you considered a demo mode where you can fill an empty schedule, or edit a prefilled one, without being able to save changes? That's how I'd decide whether I was interested enough to give you my email address, generate a password, etc.

Exactly. Now I have to go through countless number of clicks (register, check email, click on the activation link, confirm activation, insert login details again) just to try the service.

Good idea. How about replacing the big screenshot slideshow on the landing page with a smaller, interactive agenda that is pre-filled with some items that you can edit / add to?

I'm a business guy that has a lot of meetings. Why would I use this and not Outlook?

I'm surprised I haven't had an answer to this. I thought I was the target market.

This looks like an inferior web based edition of Exchange/Outlook functionality. It was a serious question - is there an advantage to using this? If not, you might need to do some market research to better target the problem you are trying to solve.

From the short presentation on the home page I did not get the impression that you (a current exchange/outlook user) are the target market, actually. (But I could of course be wrong or we got a different branch of an A/B test)

I think the examples are pointing in a different direction, i.e. a simple and straightforward tool to help you juggle daily life with a focus on spontaneously rearranging tasks, rather than fixed business meetings and scheduling events for teams even.

Meetings are fixed events that work well in something like Outlook (so you should definitely use it for that). But for planning an entire day, hour by hour, it's hard to plan in Outlook, and making small changes is very difficult when every item / event is steadfastly fixed, even though you don't particularly care about when it happens.

In short, Outlook is great for keeping track of fixed events and appointments, and Timeslot would be great for planning the things you need to do in a given day, hour by hour.

I really like this idea, and have been meaning to code up something similar for a while. A few points:

* I would like to set lengths of time shorter than 15 mins. * If you visit a URL like http://timeslot.me/agendas/#day/2011-4-29 without being logged in then the interface appears, and slightly works. A redirect to the login would be better * As others have mentioned, drag/drop of tasks and length would be great * And a random idea: I would quite like to have a "repository" (todo list) of tasks with the length already set which I could drag onto a day.

With the drag and drop functionality I would happily pay a few dollars per month for something like this.

* I'll make the duration selector better, so that you get a drop down of 15 min intervals, but also you can type out an exact duration if you want to.

* Yup, I'll fix that.

* The todo list idea is on my todo list (haha, see what I did there?). Thanks for the suggestion!

This is a really interesting idea. A few thoughts:

I personally think the click+drag interface in Google Calendar or iCal is more efficient for setting the length of events. The select box with all the time intervals from 15 min to 24 hr in 15 min increments seems hard to use. I personally would even prefer typing "15 min" or "1 hr" to trying to scroll through all that.

It would also be great if this pulled automatically from Google Calendar (or any iCalendar) to fill events. I would probably use this to schedule my day if I didn't have to manually put in my recurring events, meetings scheduled with Tungle, etc. that are already in gcal.

Nice work -- thanks for sharing!

Drag to extend / shorten duration of events is on my todo list; it would definitely improve the interface.

It seems like Google Calendar syncing is something everyone is looking for. I'll be sure to focus on that. Thanks!

This is a great start to solve the calendar and time management problem. Here are a few points.

1. The Mobile App will be a killer feature. I'm not in front of the computer 24/7, but my mobile is. It's faster and quicker to take my mobile and start typing.

2. Your App works for daily usage. However, I can plan things on the morning but I can also plan them a day or more before that. There is a need that your app account for that (calendar), but no sure how the implementation should be.

3. Smooth integration with Google Calendar can be a killer feature too. For example, if I set day xx is my friend birthday, so it remembers me to plan for it the day before.

Thanks for your feedback!

1. Yes, I will definitely be making a mobile version of the app. Maybe it can be part of a paid plan?

2. You can actually already plan any day of the calendar. Just click on the date of the agenda to edit it.

3. Yup, another great idea I plan on implementing in the near future.

> 2. You can actually already plan any day of the calendar. Just click on the date of the agenda to edit it.

Editing the date of the agenda seems quite counter-intuitive. I would think that editing the date would move all of the current events to that future date.

> 2. You can actually already plan any day of the calendar. Just click on the date of the agenda to edit it.

Put little < and > arrows around the date to indicate that it's not static.

I would love it if this had Google calendar integration As well. Particularly if it pulled in my appointments for the day and let me schedule around them.

Google calendar/Thunderbird's lightning integration will make me use it as that is where my scheduling already takes place.

This is quite good.

I look forwards to todo integration.

I'd add that forcing a item to start at '4' probably shouldn't default to 4am.

Start with one-way gcal into Timeslot - things I've scheduled into my calendar are less likely to be movable since there are other people involved.

I quite like the simplicity of the UI, but there needs to be more signaling in the UI that things are editable - the date, especially. I did not think I could edit it until after I tried editing the URL.

Thanks for the feedback, you're quite right. I'll make it more obvious that everything is editable.

Somehow I added in a 12 hour free time slot. I WISH I had 12 hours free but I don't. I can't get rid of the 12 hour free time slot.

That's the end of the road for me and this app.

I small feedback, I am assuming you are using django-authentication which might have few problems, 1. User can register many accounts with same email(make it unique to avoid any problems) 2. While I am authenticated I can still visit register and login pages, may be you want to redirect user to avoid any confusion. Otherwise looks good to me, just added few slots on my account. cheers

Another Suggestion: I like the interface, but iCal sync and/or having it printable with checkboxes, etc. would be really helpful to get it OFF the computer (or cell phone interface, jQuery mobile, etc). I like how you currently implement the add to day interface, keep up the good work!

Does the program learns how bad my time estimates are? That would be the something interesting for me.

If I already knew how long it takes me to do each thing, I probably wouldn't need the app.

I don't understand. I signed up, I logged in, but it only lets me add an appointment at 7AM. Is this a bug or a feature?

EDIT: I guess I have to edit by hand and type the time? Not liking that.

You can edit the start time of the day -- just click on it. I guess it's not clear enough that's editable, I'll fix that.

This is really cool. I would send this over to Sebastian Marshall at sebastianmarshall.com. His blog has a good amount of readers and I think he would love to cover something like this.

Thanks! I was wondering how to spread the word about this. I think Lifehacker would be interested too. I'll be sure to contact Sebastian Marshall.

Sebastian is great.

But I'd also just start contacting literally every news blog you can think of. TechCrunch, TheNextWeb, GigaOm, CenterNetworks, ReadWriteWeb, everyone.

What can you lose ;) ? And just getting one of those will get you a lot of hits.

    What can you lose ;) ?

Mostly agree, wouldn't like to get all attention at once, thoug.

I reviewed it on Useful Tools: http://www.usefultools.com/2011/04/plan-your-day/

I added the item "マイクカードウェル" and it worked. Then I refreshed the page and every character was replaced by question marks. You need to fix your encoding.

Will do. Thanks.

Consider making an API available, perhaps as a paid service? I can think of several projects that would like to be able to use something like this.

Sure, that would be no problem (it's already built on a REST interface). How do you think other projects would use this?

buddy, you need to go to drawing board again. As a user, at this moment, it is of no use to me. Complete it then share with others. IMHO, it is incomplete. Let people feel privileged to give opinion about your work. People reading this site are serious. Wish you luck.

Downvoted.

I read your comment as condescending and I strongly disagree with your advice for the OP to complete the app before asking for feedback.

Interesting idea. Will try it. Congrats.

this is a really neat idea and I like the clean design.

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