Taskbox - Turn your inbox into a task list | Hacker News Reader

Taskbox - Turn your inbox into a task list

kickstarter.com

34 pointsljoshua24 comments

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

Email has been very closely integrated with task management in Outlook for a while now.

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.

I got the impression from a single conversation I had with Google back in January (please take this as the single data point it is), that they really did re-route the entire organization to focus on Google+, and were prepared to scale back efforts on Google Apps for at least a few months. For reference, the conversation was about them seeking 3rd party vendors to fill in the gaps in their offerings.

True that Outlook has excellent task management functionality, but not when you want to interact with non-outlook users, or even simply across corporate networks.

I'm curious why this is using a Kickstarter project. Maybe I'm jaded as a developer, but with only a $4k ask I would say build it, sell it, and ship it. I'm not going to trust that you can build a good mobile app until I can use it myself.

To clarify, our target is 30k not 4k. However our goal with Kickstarter is primarily to build a community of positive, supportive users that are interested in helping us shape the product.

I would say it's for the marketing and a way to see what's the market acceptance.

It's a trend I've been noticing

Another comment has already mentioned Taskforce; Mail Pilot (http://www.mailpilot.co/), which was another Kickstarter project, also does something similar.

I really want something that does this, but as a native desktop app and a mobile app, and syncs to a web app so I can access it from elsewhere. And a pony.

MailPilot is also about to open up a beta today in about 4 hours, so not sure it's worth investing in another kickstarter to make a similar project. I want to play around with MailPilot to see if I like the metaphor of my inbox as a task list.

Andrew here from Taskbox. Thank you all for your interest. Hacker News is currently driving 27% of the traffic we are receiving on Kickstarter and we've already started to see some pledges. This is great.

Because another todo app is just what the world needs.

I have a system whereby I email tasks to myself and setup a filter to automatically dump those tasks into a special folder. I do the same as a "Read It Later". I know its not the same level of complexity as this product but I always liked email for its simplicity and my approach is simple and works for me. I'd be interested in hearing what other techniques people employ using email.

I like the idea of merging tasks with emails - but if I can make one suggestion: I don't think I'd ever hit an auto-reply button that said "I'll get it done. It's now in my Taskbox." Unless replies are customizable, this sort of self-serving superfluous information would turn me off to the product.

I currently have the app, and this was the first thing I changed :)

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, replies are customizable.

This has been tried over and over.

I'm a big fan of creating task lists, however, I don't think anyone's going to solve this problem by making the user do the work, no matter how nice the design.

There was once an Australian company called Liaise, which went a long way toward automating the task creation process by automatically identifying action requests within email. To me, this is what I imagine the future of this activity will look like. Here's an old Liaise demo video, which may help illustrate the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyrWD7hTnFc

It's a good idea to play with. I've been using Streak, which merges CRM with gmail inbox. Google's own task integration (as with Apple's, Yahoo, et al) have been poor.

But I agree with previous commenters that a speculative mobile app is unsuitable for kickstarter. I wouldn't be surprised if the new rules issued to prevent speculative hardware projects were eventually expanded to include things like mobile apps, but in any case it's a marketplace -- others with the capability to fund are free to disagree, and if enough do it will get funded. What's to complain about?

Just a quick note: I'm not affiliated with the app or its creators in any way, but I have been a beta tester for it, and it's working pretty well (the app is bootstrapped so far). The Kickstarter is to add integration with other email providers (Exchange, etc.) and to create a web app that integrates with it.

That is correct. The iOS app will go live in October and folks are welcome to wait for that if they'd like. We're hoping to raise funds for expansion of engineering into web and android platforms via Kickstarter.

Andrew and his team worked out of our office space for a few weeks while they built their product.

Andrew's is a stand-up guy and he's recruited a solid team of software developers to take on this project.

In fact, 80% of users move email messages out of their inbox and into folders while at their desk

I'd like to know where they got that number: it's nothing like the numbers that I've heard elsewhere, although it might be closer if they're including any action that moves email out of the inbox (like gmail 'archive').

YC company Taskforce (http://www.taskforceapp.com/) does something very similar, although not having used it, I can't speak to whether they're focused on mobile as Taskbox appears to be.

Solid team behind this app. I've also met the CEO and he really knows his stuff and is a great guy. Even though the app isn't available quite yet, trust me, it will be great.

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