iPrioritize Blog

New Version Finally Released!

2007-11-01T11:33:00.001-04:00

I know it's been a while, but we have finally released a new version of iPrioritize. Thank you to those loyal users who constantly email us with suggestions, and to those in the blogsphere who have reviewed the product - you've inspired us to begin taking iPrioritize to the next level.

There are 3 major changes you'll notice:

Business accounts are gone - every account now has full access to all of the features, including list sharing.
Aesthetic upgrade bringing the site into the 21st century, and solving our font problems and widening the tasks so they can fit more on one line.
Removal of all forms of advertising

Version 2.0 Coming Soon - Free for Everyone!

2007-10-31T08:53:00.000-04:00

In the coming days we'll be rolling out version 2.0 of iPrioritize. In addition to a major aesthetic upgrade, we will be making the features of the existing Business Account FREE for everyone. Existing subscriptions for Business Accounts will be cancelled (recent payments will be refunded), and everyone's free account will be upgraded! Stay tuned for more details.

List sorting problem

2007-04-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

We're aware that there is a problem re-ordering lists and will be working on a fix ASAP. This likely has something to do with our new server...I'll keep you posted.

//UPDATE
Problem solved, there was a faulty database connection. You will probably need to delete your temporary internet files for it to work properly - it's relying on an external file and your browser saves those usually to speed up your browsing experience.

Scheduled Downtime - 4/21/07

2007-04-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

We're moving iPrioritize to a much faster (and hopefully much more reliable) server on Saturday April 21, 2007. There will be some downtime between 8 AM EST and 12 PM EST, although it should only be a little while. You'll probably want to avoid making any changes to your list during this period because there's a chance that it will be lost during the database migration.

I appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience.

//Update 4-21-07 11:17 AM EST
Everything went well and we're up and running on the new server. I also apologize for the unexpected down time the past few days for the mobile site - it is working fine now.

Hovering paperclip now displays notes

2007-02-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

I've made it so that if you hover over a paper clip it displays the corresponding notes without you having to click the paper clip or the edit button.

This isn't a huge feature by any means, but one that's kind of cool and I think very practical. There are a few minor problems with it - I had to remove the line breaks (so your notes are displayed without line breaks), and if you have a reaaaaaalllllllllllllllly long word, it can hang over the outside of the box. Other than that I think this is a nice little time saver when viewing your notes.

Using Outlook if you have several accounts

2007-01-26T14:06:00.000-05:00

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When I logged into Outlook this morning and clicked on my iPrioritize folder I was taken to the permission failed page. I thought to myself, "that's impossible, I tested the new Outlook cookie settings in every scenario I could think of." Of course I was wrong. If you use several accounts in your primary browser and already have Outlook configured for one account, it is possible that the "most recent list cookie" is set to a to do list in the other account, and when Outlook redirects you to your most recent list, iPrioritize realizes that it's for a different account and denies you access.

There are two solutions to this problem:

Delete all of the cookies in your browser and re-configure iPrioritize in Outlook.
Open your browser, log-in to the account you have configured for Outlook, and click on a list. This will set the "most recent list cookie" to this list, making the account available in Outlook.

The good news is that from what I can tell I was the only person to encounter this problem (I have all sorts of auto emails that get sent to me when someone encounters an error and every once in a while they actually come in handy).

iPrioritize and Outlook update

2007-01-21T14:33:00.000-05:00

For those of you who use iPrioritize in Microsoft Outlook, you can now close Outlook and resume your iPrioritize session without having to log in again. Presumably you'll never have to log into iPrioritize - your most recently viewed list will always be there waiting for you when Outlook opens. Enjoy!

iPrioritize now part of Pure Adapt!

2007-01-05T16:38:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the lack of posts - the last few months have been busier than expected for me. My increasing roles as a consultant temporarily led to me placing iPrioritize on the back-burner. A few weeks ago, I co-founded Pure Adapt, Inc with two local web developers here in Albany, NY and merged all of our sites and clients under the new company, including iPrioritize.

What does this mean for the future of iPrioritize? It means that we now have a three man operation as opposed to me primarily going at it alone, which will yield a better product for our users. I still plan to implement many of the upgrades suggested by our great users, and I plan to do it soon (although exactly when is still up in the air).

Thank you all for your continued support and patience. Best of luck to all of you in the New Year, and I hope that iPrioritize will continue to help make you more productive as you tackle new and exciting challenges this year.

Font update

2006-11-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

Based on all of the feedback from my previous font-related post (and my gut feeling), I've decided to specify Arial Narrow as the backup font (and the font that most Windows users will see). I think that of all the fonts that everyone has, Arial Narrow looks closest to Myriad Web Pro (the preferred font) and therefore is the most aesthetically pleasing for the site. My guess is that most people won't notice, but hopefully anyone that does will like the change.

Thanks everyone for all of the great feedback!

Some recent press mentions

2006-10-15T13:37:00.000-04:00

If you haven't checked out the press archive lately, there's been a steady flow of coverage of iPrioritize. Among my favorites:

Review on How to Advertise - "I’m particularly pleased with iPrioritize because of its simplistic approach to an equally simple task. I like that Adam has developed an application made to do one thing really well rather than trying to release another multifunction task manager/calendar/scheduling program that’s overly complicated and too cumbersome to use. We have too many of those already."

Article in The BG News (Bowling Green's student newspaper) - "New help has arrived to aid college students and businesses to manage their busy schedules instead of the old fashioned technique of making handwritten to do lists. Now with the assistance of iPrioritize.com which launched in June 2006, people can access their to-do lists virtually anywhere they are. People can now log on from their mobile phone and can e-mail lists, print lists, and share lists with others, Adam McFarland, the creator of iPrioritize.com, said."

Review on BestBizCom - "Some of the features are unlimited lists, unlimited tasks for each list, web page to share you lists with others, use Microsoft Outlook 2003, recover any accidentally deleted lists or tasks and even allow unlimited business users to view and edit lists. It’s free to sign up. For small businesses there is a $10 month/or $100 a year for this service and that’s a steal."

Thanks to everyone who has helped grow iPrioritize!

My font dilemma

2006-10-06T14:38:00.000-04:00

OK, I need your help on this one. When I was designing the iPrioritize logo (long before the site design was started), I chose the font Myriad Web Pro because I thought it looked best. So when I started working on the site, I again chose Myriad Web Pro for the site. From what I researched, it's an Adobe font (meaning you have to pay for it) that became popular when Apple started using it in their marketing and packaging in 2002.

So I think Myriad Web Pro is the PERFECT font for iPrioritize. Much like Apple and their products, I want the iPrioritize brand to convey simplicity and style. The problem is, however, that Myriad Web Pro does not come installed by default on Windows (it does come installed on Mac's). Here's a picture of what iPrioritize looks like with Myriad Web Pro.

As any site designer knows, you have the option to specify a backup font in case users don't have your primary font (which will obviously happen quite often with iPrioritize). The problem is that I can't find a font that everyone has that I feel makes iPrioritize consistently look close to as good as it does with Myriad.

My solution was NOT to specify a backup font. For most people, that means that they see the site in Times New Roman (a pretty ugly font in my opinion) BUT they have the option of changing it to whatever font they like in the settings for their browser. So if they like Arial or Verdana, it's just a matter of changing their preferences in their browser.

Now I ask you, would it be better for me to pick the second best font (in my opinion), which would probably be Arial Narrow, or should I continue to let most people see the site in Times New Roman (which is less than desired) knowing that they can change it if they want?

One minor fix and a few random things

2006-09-22T14:30:00.000-04:00

Nothing major, but a few little things:

The "refer your friends page" from last post wasn't working properly (any email address in the first field wasn't receiving the invitation). That's been fixed

The user that pointed the above error out to me had just signed up for a business account and was inviting all of their employees to sign up for an account. To be honest, I actually hadn't considered that as a potential use for the "refer a friend" feature, but what a great idea! It does make it easier for a manager to invite all of their employees!

The whole time I was thinking it would just be cool for people to be able to tell their friends without having to send them all an email...and that maybe it would encourage people to spread the word a bit more because we do all of the work for you. In reality, that's probably a much better use for it :)

I've been continuously trying my best to keep the Press Section up to date, and this week I found a few interesting things to add, mainly that iPrioritize was named Cool Site of the Day by Coolpick.com.

New feature suggestions keep pouring in from users and I'm beginning to think about when I'm going to start working on version 2.0. We're still going to stick to the procedure I outlined a while back, but it's beginning to look like certain features are much more desired (like due dates and email reminders) so I'd expect those to be the next things added. It changes every day, but I'll probably start programming some time in December and hopefully by early 2007 we'll a new and improved product.

That's all, have a good weekend everyone.

Invite your friends to try iPrioritize

2006-09-18T18:09:00.000-04:00

Today I added a "refer your friends" page where you can type in your friends email addresses and we'll take care of sending them an email invitation to iPrioritize. You can find the link to the page on your 'my account' page when you log in.

Hopefully this will inspire all of you out there who want to tell people about iPrioritize, but are too lazy to type up an email and hit send :)

iPrioritize Free for Non-profit Organizations

2006-09-08T19:34:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to get to this for a while, but today I made it official - iPrioritize is (and hopefully always will be) 100% free for all non-profit organizations. I just posted a press release in our press section and will distribute it to the media over the coming days. If you know an organization that would be interested, you can have them contact me directly at adam.mcfarland@iprioritize.com or 518-632-4299.

Most non-profits are heavily under funded and I personally don't think that they should have to pay for the things that for-profit businesses should. If every business - whether it be a software company, office furniture company, or a law firm - offered their products and services for free (or close to free) than non-profits could spend more time making the world a better place and less time worrying about increasing expenses.

Share your lists with others so they can track your progress

2006-08-26T18:15:00.000-04:00

Now you can share your iPrioritize list with others so they can track your progress! In the upper right corner of every list you will now see a Share option below Mobile. By clicking on it, you will generate two URL's (one for your list with notes, one without) that you can give to anyone you want to track your list.

This is useful if you are working on a project with someone who doesn't have a business account and you want them to be able to track your progress, but not necessarily edit your list. You can give them the URL and they can bookmark it and check back regularly.

This can also be accomplished using RSS (by subscribing to the feed). The primary reason for the share feature is to accommodate those who aren't yet comfortable with RSS. Anyone familiar with browsing the web can now track your list.

It should be noted that these pages are not public and will not be indexed by Google or any search engine. The only way that people will find them is if you give them the URL.

iPrioritize in Microsoft Outlook 2003

2006-08-21T12:30:00.000-04:00

If you're a Microsoft Outlook user and an iPrioritize user, it's no longer necessary to keep a browser window open all day long in addition to having Outlook open. Without installing any additional software, you can now fully utilize your iPrioritize account from within Microsoft Outlook.

Follow these three steps and you'll be using your iPrioritize account in Outlook within minutes:

In Outlook, create a new mail folder (File -> New -> Folder, or right click on an existing folder and select New Folder). Make sure that the folder is for Mail and Post Items and name it iPrioritize Lists or whatever you want.

Right click on the new folder and select Properties. In the Homepage tab, enter http://www.iprioritize.com/outlook.php as the address and check the Show home page by default for this folder tab and click OK.

Select your iPrioritize Lists folder and log in to your iPrioritize account.

That's it! You will only have to log in once per session of Outlook. So if you open Outlook in the morning when you arrive and close it when you leave, you will only have to enter your email and password once a day (not true anymore!).

There are a few small caveats however.

It works well if you have Internet Explorer 6 or Mozilla Firefox as your default browser. I haven't yet been able to test it with alternative browsers, although it should work if iPrioritize works in the browser.

Each time you move away from your folder (say to view your email) and come back, you will be taken back to the last list you worked on. So if you were on the My Account page when you left you will still be taken back to your most recently edited list as opposed to the My Account page.

To log out, you must close Outlook (the log out button within iPrioritize will appear to work, but the next time you click on the folder you will be brought back to the last list you were working on).

Those last two are caused by the fact that Outlook actually logs you out every time you switch away. So to prevent you from having to log back in every time, iPrioritize creates a temporary cookie that logs you back in and directs you to your most recently visited list. The only way to delete said cookie (that I'm aware of) is to log out of Outlook.

I think that this is a great feature that many of our users will be able to take advantage of. Feel free to drop me an email at adam.mcfarland@iprioritize.com if you have any feedback. Enjoy!

Yet another reason to use iPrioritize

2006-08-21T11:54:00.000-04:00

If you don't believe us, you should believe the experts. In the September 2006 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, the following study (courtesy of Swingline) appeared:

Would you look at that. The number one time-waster at the workplace is shifting priorities. Number three is a lack of direction/objectives. I think iPrioritize can help with those!

Sessions no longer expire after 30 minutes; testimonials page live

2006-08-08T17:30:00.000-04:00

After a considerable number of complaints from frequent users, I've changed the application so that you no longer are automatically logged out after 30 minutes of inactivity. It is somewhat standard for a session cookie to expire after said 30 minutes, and I know of other applications that do the same thing so I didn't think much about it when developing iPrioritize.

However, I failed to realize just how many users would keep iPrioritize open all day long. They leave their desk for a little while, come back and begin entering tasks, only to be kicked out. Now every page automatically refreshes every 20 minutes when logged in to prevent you from ever reaching 30 minutes of inactivity.

Also, after a really cool email from Donyell Nelson, I decided to start a testimonials page. Check out Donyell's great iPrioritize story and a few more on our new testimonials page.

Oh, and if you've got something good to say, email me a testimonial at adam.mcfarland@iprioritize.com and I'll post it and include a link back to your site :)

i-Guy on MySpace

2006-08-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

In an effort to get more students and young professionals using iPrioritize, we launched a MySpace page for the i-Guy this week.

To keep the page fresh, there will be a weekly video from YouTube and an "Ask the i-Guy" blog where you can ask the i-Guy questions about anything. The YouTube video for the first week is a hilarious Will Ferrell parody of the Mac switch commercials where he compares a Mac to a yogurt parfait.

Check it out and send i-Guy a friend invitation if you've got a MySpace account!

Mobile mark items complete

2006-08-03T21:05:00.000-04:00

In an effort to continuously expand the functionality of mobile.iprioritize.com, you can now mark items complete. Before when you would click on an item in your list you would see whether it was complete or not, but not have the option to change it. Now you will see something similar to the image below (depending on your phone):

So now, in addition to viewing your lists on your mobile phone, you can add items and mark them complete. You still can't edit task title's or notes (probably coming soon) or re-order your lists (probably not coming until I figure out a way to do this that satisfies me).

While I'm on the topic, I personally think there are several great uses for Mobile iPrioritize (and I'm not sure if everyone realizes how cool it can be):

For the business person who's always on the go, it's a great way to take a look at and edit your to-do list while you're away from the office.

Grocery & shopping lists - make your list at home on the computer and check it from the store.

Make lists for other people. Lets say your on your way to work and your wife doesn't have the grocery list ready for what to pick up after work. During the day she can make the list on the computer whenever she gets a chance and all you do is log in from your phone at the end of the day and pick up what she put on the list.

Communicating with workers. I know of one apartment complex that is planning on testing it out for their maintenance workers (they came up with the idea, not me, but I think it's awesome). No need for them to call in, just check their list on their phone that their manager is constantly updating from the office.

I'm sure there are more, but it's late and I'm tired so that'll do for now.

A little speed added among other things

2006-08-02T20:46:00.000-04:00

I've received quite a few suggestions to speed up the application because people like to work "fast". They liked the overall setup but didn't like having to wait a few seconds to wait for the drop down to enter or edit a task. Being a "fast" worker myself, I completely understand the need to want to work as fast as possible, especially once you are familiar with software. Nothing sucks more than having to wait for something to load/process.

Within the next year, I hope to make the application 100% AJAX (i.e. no page loads at all), but for the meantime I sped up the drop downs considerably. I also added toggle functionality to any buttons that cause a drop down (one of my best friends had been in my ear about this). I think a lot of first time users just assume that buttons like the "edit" button toggle - it just seems intuitive that they would - so now they do.

I also completed a few other minor upgrades like cleaning up some little differences between browsers (it's amazing, 60% of our users use Firefox) and also improved a few security things on the back end to make sure your data is as safe as possible. Oh, and the homepage now loads with the cursor in the "email" field so you don't need to click there.

That's all for now.

Site Downtime - We're Sorry!

2006-07-28T19:43:00.000-04:00

From around 4:45 PM EST tonight until 7:00 PM EST the iPrioritize site was down. Our hosting company had a major power outage and did the best they could to recover the site as soon as possible. I am planning on spending a significant amount of time next week working with them to ensure that this never happens again.

I sincerely apologize to our users - it is absolutely unacceptable for a service like iPrioritize to go down for any amount of time. I happened to be USING iPrioritize at the time the outage began. I was entering my tasks for the weekend when the site crashed and it was extremely frustrating. The thought of our users having the same experience deeply bothers me.

Again, I apologize and I assure you that we are working our best to prevent this from happening in the future.

Completed items now in the order that you checked them off

2006-07-26T19:27:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to making your completed items show in the order that you checked them off. It's really a feature that should have been there when the application launched - it just makes intuitive sense to have the completed items shown in order of recency completed (from most recently completed at the top to oldest completed at the bottom). Completed items previously were displayed in alphabetical order.

One thing to note: your existing lists completed items won't be sorted that way (they will appear to be random), but anything you check in the future will show at the top of the list. If you really want to make your existing list look like that you could un-check and then re-check each item and that would take care of it.

Comments/questions?

Application upgrade procedure

2006-07-25T18:15:00.000-04:00

I've been getting asked a lot lately about when there will be feature upgrades and what they will be. I've said all along that will depend on what our users tell us. Although we have many loyal users, we are still only 6 weeks old and still have less than 1,000 users.

The users I have spoken to have all had great suggestions, but there has not been one thing that everyone suggested. It's more like 10 or 15 common suggestions, some contradictory. If there were any unanimous suggestions I would be working on them.

Now, am I going to let this stop us from ever upgrading the application? Of course not. In an attempt to make the process as democratic as possible, here's how I'm going to handle it:

I will continue to make note of everyone's suggestions. In the coming months I will meet with a board of advisors (all users) and we will discuss each option, how much work it will take, and whether or not it deserves to be voted upon.

Sometime in the fall (hopefully when we are around 3k or 4k users) I will email every registered user with a link to a survey. This will be your chance to vote. There will likely be several different polls - maybe one for aesthetic features, another for business account features, another for mobile features, etc.

I will spend a significant amount of time analyzing the data from the survey results (one of the rare chances that I get to directly apply my industrial engineering degree:)). There's no limit to how many features will be added, but it may get tough if two top features (say 38% approval and 34% approval) are contradictory and can't be done if the other is done. In that case, I'll do the best I can to make the decision that I think is best for the majority of users and the future of the business.

I'll start working on the programming. Features will probably roll out over the course of the following few months (end of 2006, beginning of 2007) depending on the complexity. I'll do my best to take care of the easiest stuff first so you don't have to wait to see some results.

I know that's not perfect, but it's the best system I could come up with. As always, feel free to let me know your ideas by emailing me at adam.mcfarland@iprioritize.com or by commenting on this blog.

The most important thing to me throughout the whole process will be to hold true to the core values of iPrioritize. That means we aren't going to try to be something we're not (most notably calendar software or project management software). We believe in doing one thing (to-do lists) and doing it as best we can. There is more than enough room for improvement as a to-do list.

So, in short, there are no major upgrades coming soon but there is a plan to implement upgrades democratically in the near future :)

*Note - upgrades are different from fixing problems. I will continue to fix any programming glitches you encounter. Along those lines: for you RSS subscribers out there, I recently fixed a bug that would cause a feed error when you used certain symbols (most notably an ampersand) in your notes. Hopefully that's the end of all RSS problems.

Update

2006-07-16T17:40:00.000-04:00

It's been a few weeks since I last posted anything so I figured I'd give you guys a quick update.

Accounts are still signing up at a rate that even I didn't expect (and believe me, I had high expectations) and thankfully there have been very few technical errors (hence very few blog posts). Most of the small tech problems that we did have were worked out in the first few days.

I apologize for the downtime early last week - hopefully that's not something that happens very often. We still have over 99.5% uptime for the short life of the site but hopefully that will improve to 99.9% in the coming months.

In the coming months I will begin to start working on an application upgrade so feel free to email suggestions to adam.mcfarland@iprioritize.com. There will be a poll for users to vote for features so I want to make sure that every feasible idea is on the ballot. I've received some great suggestions so far so keep them coming.

Oh, and I was on a recent episode of Bold Business Talk if anyone wants to hear me ramble about being a young entrepreneur.

I think that's all for now...