Taskerrific Blog

The beta is done, but Taskerrific isn't yet

Fri, 07 May 2010 22:23:23 -0400

Unfortunately, issues of cash flow have lead to me shutting down Taskerrific, at least temporarily. We were able to get a good run thanks to Applied Innovations, but never got to any income generation phase, and my personal pockets can’t support keeping the service running, either. So, the private beta is over.

That’s not to say Taskerrific itself is done for, however. I’m not going to say much right now, but you might see us again around the end of the year, especially if you have a Windows Phone. Even if you don’t, I’m hoping to get things into shape and start fresh by December. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.

In the meantime, any users who want to get back their data from the beta, please contact me at chris at taskerrific.com with your username and the primary e-mail address of your account. While there’s no promise to how usable the result will be (expect a JSON dump) I can at least promise you that you can recover your data. I’m only holding onto it for 30 days, however, so you have to Monday June 7 to let me know if you want it back. After that, it goes to /dev/null.

Upcoming stuff for Taskerrific, part II

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:30:50 -0500

Before getting into the meat of the post itself, let me first apologize for leaving everyone hanging for the last couple months. Being a lone developer means that when things go south personally, your projects go along for the ride, too. However, I’m back, and getting back in stride with Taskerrific. With any luck there’ll be some updates and fixes next week.

First, let me state that Taskerrific won’t be going away any earlier than April. This isn’t due to any last-minute fundraising saving the day, but rather me predicting a doomsday earlier than it’ll actually happen. However, without some income for the service by then, Taskerrific may go down temporarily or permanently, depending on how the hosting situation plays out. While Applied Innovations has been a great host, there is no such thing as free IIS/ASP.NET hosting; at some point bills have to be payed. I’d love to stay with them, but if I can’t give them money for their services, alternate arrangements will have to be made if Taskerrific is to survive.

Which brings me onto the next point: advertising. It’s not something I understand all that well, but I understand enough to know that using Google AdSense won’t bring in enough to keep the site running. Over the next while I’m going to be spending time trying to pull in an ad network that might actually be profitable, and able to work with my needs. This might include short, tag-line ads in the footers of e-mails sent out by Taskerrific, and not just the ad column on the site. I won’t get any more intrusive than that, though; I hate annoying, epilepsy-inducing Flash ads as much as the next person.

That’s pretty much it for now. If you think you can help me out (by donating to keep things running, get me in touch with people I should be talking to, or perhaps getting me ads), please give me a shout at Chris at taskerrific.com!

Upcoming stuff for Taskerrific

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:39:25 -0500

As you’ve doubtlessly realized by now, there wasn’t an update this past weekend to Taskerrific. It doesn’t look like there’s going to be one this weekend, either. In lieu of awesome new features, though, let me tell you about those in the works. These are just the big-ticket items, by the way… For more on what’s in store for Taskerrific, check our UserVoice forum, or my personal Taskerrific project on the service itself.

Currently, I’m working on big changes to how tasks are assigned. This is work that breaks quite a few other things, annoyingly enough, which is why there’s not been any updates for a while. But when it’s said and done, you’ll be able to change assigned tasks without it weirding out the person who assigned it to you originally. Right now, it looks like the work on that should be done in about a week’s time.

Once that’s taken care of, the next big thing on the radar is team support. Teams make it easier for a group of users to keep organized and work together on projects. Two types of teams will be available: public teams, which anyone can join, and private teams, which will be a premium feature for groups who are interested in using Taskerrific in the workplace.

The other big-ticket item is providing an API for Taskerrific, with the intention of making it easy to put Taskerrific to use in other web applications, personal information managers, and mobile phones. (In fact, I’m already planning a sexy little Windows Mobile app for the service.) One of the goals for Taskerrific is to be usable anywhere you can connect to the internet, whether traditionally or via mobile. After all, what good is a task list you can’t carry with you?

I plan to take Taskerrific out of private beta once team support is in place. While the API is important, it’s not exactly do-or-die for the feature set the way teams are intended to be, so I can work on it while everyone jumps on board.

Next blog post, I’ll talk about non-technical issues that are coming up for Taskerrific. (On that note, by the way, please donate!)

Forgot your password? There's a page for that...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:06:50 -0500

It took a while, but the ability to reset forgotten passwords has finally been added to Taskerrific. It’s a bit embarrassing that the ability to do so wasn’t added earlier, really. So, if you’re in this position, worry no longer — just hop over to the password reset page to have an entirely new, random password e-mailed to you.

This update to Taskerrific also include a new front page to the site. If you keep yourself logged in like I do, you might want to log out for a moment and take a look; it’s no longer the plain, empty thing it was before. Instead, a bigger, more readable description of Taskerrific’s purpose is front and centre, followed by the latest actions by users.

The other thing to report today is that although Taskerrific still doesn’t have any formal documentation, there’s now a sample project with helpful descriptions about how to do certain things on Taskerrific. I’m also looking at adding some default tasks for new users, giving them an idea of how to get started. I’d love to hear what you think of that idea!

Time zones and dashboard update

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:20:02 -0500

Not much added to Taskerrific with this week’s update, unfortunately. There was much more planned, but unfortunately incidents in real life put a severe damper on things. Hopefully, things can get back to normal with next week.

So on to the actual changes. First, the dashboard options (showing tasks without due dates on the Today’s Tasks page, showing completed tasks on project dashboards) are now actually remembered! No longer will you have to keep clicking those checkboxes.

Second, completed tasks now fade away on the dashboard. The exceptions are on your Completed Tasks page, and on project dashboards when you have the option to show completed tasks turned on.

Third, Today’s Tasks now uses the calendar day, based on your time zone. Of course, you’ll have to set that first; just visit the Settings page in order to choose your time zone. By default, the time zone is US/Canada Eastern Time (GMT -0500), so if you live in a different one, you might want to set it.

The last big change isn’t related to the dashboard. Instead, you can now edit tasks from their individual task pages. There’s a few other fixes here and there through Taskerrific, as well, like usual.

Anyway, here’s hoping more can get accomplished with next week’s update.

Assign tasks and create projects with even more ease

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:59:18 -0500

A few new features have been posted to Taskerrific today! With this update, it’s even easier to start a new project, assign a task, or find out which tasks of yours are overdue.

If you remember, back in late September I asked if you’d like Taskerrific to create a new project whenever you used a !project tag that was unrecognized. Well, today’s update finally added this feature in. Now, all it takes to create a project is creating a task for it!

The next addition is the ability to assign tasks without needing to drop into the advanced options region on the dashboard. Simply start the task summary with a @username (optionally with a !project tag in front) and Taskerrific will assign it to that user! Of course, that person has to be following you as normal, but if he or she is doing so, you’ve just given them something to do.

Following this, I’ve made it easier for you to spot if you have any overdue tasks. Any tasks all in red? They’re overdue, better get to work on them quick! If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a million lines of angry red tasks on your list. ;)

A few other things have been tossed in the pot with this update, too: There’s now a website field on your profile, a more visible link to Gravatar for changing your profile picture, and a bunch of minor style fixes (including a not-so-minor one for Safari and Chrome users). Go and enjoy!

What's everyone doing? Get details on user lists and people search

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:31:00 -0400

Along with the previously blogged TOS/PP introduction, there’s a few new features that I’ve rolled out today on Taskerrific.

If you use Twitter, do you look through the lists of other users? Or look for new and interesting people through People Search? Certainly, you must have noticed that Twitter doesn’t give you a simple little list of user pictures and names. Well, now Taskerrific brings you detail on a similar level for its People Search and user list pages.

When you look at the list of your followers, followees, or people search results, you’ll notice that the list includes the most recent action of those users. Not only that, but you can follow and unfollow people with one click from those pages. I’d like to think that this helps discovery of other users you may be interested in.

Not only that, but users are now sorted by latest action. That includes the picture lists in the sidebar; at a glance you can see who among your followers and followees have been active recently.

Another change with this update is that you can now see the contacts of other users more easily on their profiles, as well as their current projects. When you visit a profile (say, for example, mine), the sidebar will show you this stuff. To simplify things, the list of your contacts won’t appear any longer, so you don’t have to worry about figuring which is which (which I’ll admit I’ve been confused about a couple times).

The only confusing thing now is the dashboard links; if you’re logged in, the Active, Today’s, and Completed Tasks links still show up. I decided to leave those in so you could quickly jump back to the dashboard, but I’d like to get some feedback about this. As it is, the Home link in the tab bar at the top of the page works well enough to bring you back to the main dashboard. Do you think they should be removed?

The last big change you’ll notice is all about size. You’ve probably found the text box for task descriptions, project descriptions, and note bodies to be a little too constraining. Well, I’ve upped the size of those boxes, so now you should get about 6 lines of text visible at any time. If you think it could still be a bit bigger, let me know — and if you have any jQuery tips for doing it without things going wacky, I want to hear from you, yesterday.

There’s the usual assortment of minor adjustments and fixes thrown in the mix, too. All in all, I think you’ll like the enhancements made in this update. Next time, we’ll get some real help docs thrown in!

New terms of service and privacy policy on Taskerrific

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:16:00 -0400

Taskerrific finally has a formalized, written terms of service document, and a documented privacy policy. If you’re a Taskerrific user, I suggest that you read them. However, I’ll give you a TL;DR here, if you’d prefer that.

The Terms of Service pretty much state:

Be responsible; don’t give out your password, don’t post anything that causes others grief, don’t post anything illegal or adult (including links to such content).
Don’t spam.
Don’t troll, don’t try cracking the site, and don’t try cracking others to make it look I was involved.
If I have to shut down Taskerrific for whatever reason, I can. Alternatively, if you cause trouble, I can delete your account, warning optional.
If you’re using someone else’s trademark as your username, and they want it, I can steal it from you.
There’s no warranty, and I disclaim all liability if something goes wrong.

In short, your standard, run of the mill TOS. It looks scarier than it is.

As for the Privacy Policy,

Any data you put on the service is collected for the purposes of making the service (more) useful to you. I won’t sell you to the knackers.
Emails, etc. between you and me will be kept.
Taskerrific uses delicious, delicious cookies. Mmm good.
If the feds want to know what you’ve put on Taskerrific, and they have a warrant or subpoena, they get your data. Otherwise, it’s my call, but don’t expect me to cooperate any more than I’m forced to.
If someone cracks the server and ganks the database, I have to tell you about it.
Just because there’s links to other sites on Taskerrific doesn’t mean I endorse them. Just a bit of arse-covering there.

Again, nothing out of the ordinary.

If you have any concerns about the terms of service and/or privacy policy, feel free to drop me a line at <chris at taskerrific.com> and I’ll do my best to deal with them. I’m not a lawyer, but who knows, I might be helpful anyway (or more so).

Making your projects a little more visible for all...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:08:56 -0400

The last two weeks have seen me focus more on the business aspects of Taskerrific than the software side of things. However, I’ve been able to squeeze out a few changes and new features today, ready for you to use.

First off, if you want to hide tasks without due dates the “Today’s Tasks” dashboard panel, there’s now a toggle for doing just that. Like the option to hide completed tasks on projects dashboards, it isn’t memorized for you yet, but that is on the way.

The other feature in this update is being able to get a list of projects with their details on your user profile. Like with your tasks and notes on your profile page, you can quickly change things about your projects. Or, you can quickly get to the project dashboards or project pages.

As a fix, you can actually read what’s in your bio when editing it on your account settings page. I realized that the small size of the text area might cause problems for people. However, it’s not a tiny box any longer but a nice big one. Don’t hesitate to tell your life story. ;)

There’s a few other small fixes and changes about the site, and I’ll leave those up to you to find. Have fun!

See what you've already done, set time more easily, and describe your tasks with style

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:33:58 -0400

Image via Wikipedia

A big set of changes have just been pushed live onto Taskerrific! Let’s take a look.

The first change you’ll notice is the dashboard. Not content with just giving you a list of open tasks and projects, I’ve added two new dashboard pages, giving you tasks due in the next 24 hours, and tasks you’ve already completed. No more needle in a haystack searches for old tasks!

Continuing on with the dashboard, project dashboard pages now let you hide completed projects. By default, completed project tasks continue to be shown below your active ones, but one click of the “Show completed tasks” checkbox will make them vanish. I plan to spin out a remembered preference for this option, but for now, you’ll always get your completed project tasks.

Speaking of projects, you might notice that little cosmetic change where projects in the sidebar are now sorted alphabetically. That should make it easier for you to find the project you’re looking for, if you have several. As well, you can now add descriptions to your projects! While there’s nowhere to see them (outside the project edit dialog), when public project pages are ready, they’ll have a lot more use.

Another major change with this update is a new, working time picker. When you set (or change) the due date for a task now, a slider-based picker will appear, letting you choose the time the task is due without needing to type it in manually. Of course, you still can type it in if you’d like. To set the time, you’ll need to click the “Done” button on the time picker, as clicking outside makes the picker disappear without changing anything.

The final big change in this update is support for Markdown formatting for task descriptions, notes, and your profile. By using Markdown’s syntax, you can use links, images, and text formatting in Taskerrific!

I hope you find this update makes Taskerrific even more useful for you. As usual, if there’s any problems, let me know via UserVoice or Twitter.

Describe yourself, and stick post-its on your task list!

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:36:22 -0400

Another weekend has ended, and with it, a fresh update has been put out on the wire. There are three main changes with this push, along with a whole load of fixes which will make life a little easier for those using older web browsers.

The first change, you probably won’t notice, because there’s no visual signs of it. But you can now log in to your account with any e-mail addresses you’ve linked to your account and verified. I questioned the utility of this for a while, until I realized how useful that’s been to be in the past, on other sites.

The next change, you’ll certainly notice, though! From now on whenever you’re looking at your tasks, you’ll notice this cute little icon: . The “add note” icon lets you scribble down a message without having to edit the task itself. You’ll also notice another icon, for tasks with notes: . For now, the “view notes” icon will bring you to a task page, but I have plans to automagically pull up a list of notes that you can look at, without leaving the dashboard.

At this time, you can only add notes to your own tasks. When any problems are ironed out, I’ll be adding the ability to add notes to any tasks or projects, as well as the ability to write unattached notes.

The final big change you’ll only notice when you visit your (or someone else’s) profile page. I’ve added user bios, so take the time to write about yourself. They’re not currently hooked up to people search, but that’s coming.

As usual, if you have any comments, suggestions, or bug reports, let me know about them. Have fun!

Is this something you'd like in Taskerrific?

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:52:00 -0400

As you know, Taskerrific lets you quickly tag tasks as part of a project, by use of project !tags like so. However, what you might not realize is that you can still use “!tag” in a task, when there’s no matching project. This leads to bad links in your dashboard.

So, I’d like to put the question to you: Should Taskerrific automatically create new projects for you when you use an unrecognized project tag? Or should the tag be removed, instead?

This poll is open until Friday October 2nd. If you’d like to explain your vote, feel free to leave a comment!

[FIXED, again] We're experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by!

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:22:00 -0400

Sorry folks, but unfortunately the server upon which Taskerrific rests is currently having some issues. I don’t know what’s causing it (I don’t own it and I can’t seem to get access to logs) so right now all I can do is sit and wait for the host, Applied Innovations, to get back to me and let me know where the problem lies.

Hopefully the problem will be solved shortly. My apologies for any inconvenience, and if you’d like to chew anyone out about it, tweet at @coldacid and/or @taskerrific with your complaints.

UPDATE 2009-09-24 19:23 EDT: And we’re back up and running as if nothing had happened. Awesome quick response from Applied Innovations, certainly much faster than my own! :D

UPDATE 2009-09-25 07:53 EDT: Down again and wondering what’s going on. Still waiting for a response from the host regarding this bit of downtime; hopefully the original cause can be found soon, and fixed!

UPDATE 2009-09-25 10:52 EDT: We’re back up again, but the problem still has yet to be determined. I know what’s happening, but I don’t know what’s causing it to happen. :(

UPDATE 2009-09-26 01:21 EDT: Seems I’ve figured out the problem, and solved it. With any luck, we won’t have to deal with it again.

New updates: Notifications, people search, and project deletion

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:08:00 -0400

Aside a few bug fixes and style tweaks, I pushed out a few new features to Taskerrific today.

First up is the ability to turn email notifications on or off. If you don’t want to get an email every time someone starts following you, you can now tell Taskerrific to stop sending them to you! As well, I’ve added email notices for when you get a task assigned to you. Like follower notices, you can turn these on or off as well.

Second, people search (which has existed for as long as regular search) is no longer hidden. You can find other users much more easily now. Like regular search there’s still work to be done, but as it is, it works well enough to use.

Third, you can now delete unwanted projects! Deleting a project won’t delete its tasks (yet), but the option to do so will eventually show up.

Now, for some of the fixes and style changes. First off, you won’t find an “edit profile” link on your user page any longer. Instead, the Settings link on the tab menu at the top brings you to the same location. From there you can access the various account settings pages through another tab menu, the idea for which was shamelessly cribbed from Twitter. (We love you guys!)

Also, you’ll now note that after editing a task, rather than losing all its tag links and taking a while to update the due date, these things remain. So you’ll never have to bother with refreshing the dashboard after editing tasks, ever again!

And last but not least, posting a task from a project dashboard now causes the project tag to reappear in the summary box. No more cut & paste or typing it in again from scratch.

I still need to replace the time picker, as well as write out some real docs, but that will show up soon, along with notes you can attach to tasks and projects.

Have fun!

Search and follower notifications come to Taskerrific

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:44:00 -0400

Tonight has seen the introduction of two new features to Taskerrific: search and follower notifications. As well, a few bug fixes have been pushed up to the site.

Search was a feature I was hoping to push out in a nascent form at launch. That didn’t happen, but a simple search now exists, which checks if the search query matches the summary or description of a task. There’s as yet no support for any search operators, but don’t worry, they’ll show up.

The other new feature is e-mail notifications of when someone begins to follow you. Taskerrific will now send you a short e-mail letting you know who’s following you, and giving you a quick link to return the favour.

On top of these features, you’re now able to see who other users are following. Just visit someone’s profile to be able to see who is friends with whom. You can make some new friends, too!

I was also able to get out a fix for profiles not working for logged-out users, as well as the annoying issue where the site’s design required JavaScript to work properly. While the site still needs JavaScript in order to work, at least there’s no longer that annoying footer flash when pages load!

Come Thursday night or Friday morning, I’ll hopefully have a new date and time picker working, as well as some light documentation on how to use Taskerrific. In the meantime, follow @taskerrific on Twitter for handy tips and updates on what’s coming!

It's here... Taskerrific enters private beta!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:12:18 -0400

After much munging about in code, dealing with wonky server issues, and generally pulling out handfuls of what little hair I have left, Taskerrific has finally gone into the private beta. It’s pretty unpolished, but the core is there, and with each week I’ll be adding more and more to the system.

It’s taken a lot of work to get to this point. Taskerrific’s a one-man company, and the site itself has been under development for the past four months. I wish it looked better and launched with more features, but given the circumstances, I think that I’ve done a pretty good job.

During the beta, I’ll be handing out invites, both in blocks on certain websites, as well as approving those who ask for them via the invite system. So register for a code now, because even if you don’t get in right away, it probably won’t be much of a wait before you do get in. A big thanks to Prefinery, by the way, for providing that invite system!

And an even bigger thanks to Applied Innovations, our wonderful and helpful web host. Despite the troubles I had pushing out Taskerrific onto the server (as well as trying to get it to run after it was uploaded), the support staff were able to help me fix my problems and get everything rolling with a minimum of fuss. If you’re looking for Windows hosting, I suggest that you give them a try.

So sign up, give it a try, and let me know what you think! Suggestions and comments can be made on UserVoice. Have fun!

We launch on Friday!

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:47:21 -0400

It’s an odd day to launch something other than a blockbuster movie, but Taskerrific’s private beta opens up at the end of the week, Friday August 28. I am currently working on the final features needed in order to launch, as well as fixing any bugs I run across. But some time between 9am and 3pm EDT (that’s 6am-noon for all you west coast folk), things should be coming live.

I’ll suggest again that it’s a good time to sign up for your invite. The codes will get mailed out on Friday but you should sign up now because it’ll be first come first serve if enough people do go for their codes. I’ll be tossing out a few special codes on certain sites as well, so keep your eyes open if you don’t sign up right away.

See you Friday!

I'm not dead! Get your invites!

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:58:49 -0400

I’m not dead! In fact, quite unlike the old man in that particular Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene, while things aren’t perfect they certainly aren’t dire. There’s been a few development delays lately, which I regretfully admit to. But aside from that, the private beta will open up by the end of this month, barring any unforeseen consequences.

In the meantime, if you’d like to get in on the beta, all it takes is clicking the “get an invite code” link in the sidebar, and filling out the resulting form! Once the beta is up, you’ll recieve a notice and invite code giving you access.

I’d like to give a shout-out to Prefinery, whose beta management software is powering the Taskerrific invite process. Prefinery made it quite easy to integrate invitation management into Taskerrific, and if you’re interested in using an invite system for your web (or desktop!) applications, I suggest you check them out!

Taskerrific Support, powered by UserVoice

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:53:49 -0400

I might be getting ahead of myself, but Taskerrific now has a support site for suggestions, bug reports, and other assorted feedback. Never mind that the site’s not even in private beta, yet!

After weighing the options (UserVoice and Get Satisfaction, pretty much) I chose UserVoice to handle support posts due to the simplicity offered, and because they let you know what they offer, up front and earnestly. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Get Satisfaction, but it doesn’t have to.

In other Taskerrific news, it looks like things are still pretty much on track for a private beta launch between August 4 and 10. I hope to get an invite sign-up form on the site by the end of this weekend!

New Look Under Development!

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:41:06 -0400

I’ve been working out a new style and layout for Taskerrific and the blog. As a service which will be packing in a lot of data on every page, it’s important that Taskerrific have a page design which makes it easy for users to see, recognize, and act on that data, and a one-column design just doesn’t cut it.

On that note, I’d like to present the new, upcoming Taskerrific layout! It’s still somewhat early on in the design, so the colour scheme is still off. None of the links (‘cept to the blog) work, either. But this is the layout.

It’s a flexible layout, able to work with any monitor resolution (so long as it’s at least 1024 pixels wide). Because of problems I was having making sure the columns were properly sized, it requires Javascript to work properly (but so long as you’re using a reasonably recent browser, you’ll be good). Unfortunately the layout doesn’t look so good with Internet Explorer 6, but if you’re still using that, it’s long past time to upgrade, anyway.

If you have any suggestions for improving the layout, please let me know! Just send a tweet to @taskerrific with your suggestion.

Oh, and before I forget… I’m planning to go into private beta as early as the beginning of July. Details on that to follow!