And no offense taken :) I think it's important to keep in mind that startups grow and mature. Right now we're two people (only one programmer) who've been working for a few months. We've learned a lot and (in)validated more than a few crucial hypotheses, but things are far from over and our aspirations are huge.
As PG once said to us, "Microsoft started with a BASIC interpreter for the Altair."
I think we should credit the two of you for convincing PG. After all, having a solid group of people is more useful than having a solid product. This is a great start and with you two at the helm, we can expect a lot more. Looking forward to it!
Somebody put this on a T-shirt, please. I will buy Several copies. (Relatedly, product is almost always the tip. If you think Zygna is defined by Farmville or Google is defined by that one big web page they have, you're crazy.)
I don't, but comparing Zynga to this is apples and oranges. That being said, I think Zynga is overvalued right now.
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.
I wondered the same, yet you have xobni, rapportive and this fresh new task-force.
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 the point you just made was a person, I think I'd walk alongside him for 3/4 of a mile, and then stop right there. Do some people have trouble staying organized? Of course. Are they hopeless lost causes whom technology can't help? That's going too far.
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.
This looks like a great idea, but wake me when there's an Outlook extension. Most people who would want to use this are using Outlook (or possibly Lotus Notes).
Last I remember, it's perfectly integrated into Outlook. The main problem I found with using it was that people don't like to get tasks assigned to them via impersonal emails. I suspect TaskForce will have that problem too...
A nice concept, and the collaboration aspect is great. But this won't get me away from the task management desktop apps I am used to.
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.
Sorry but I already do this using Google Priority,Tags(TODO, TO READ) and Filters. works great !
But cheers for the effort of doing something more integrated and better looking, keep it going :D
Hum... installed but it doesn't work, did all things and still nothing.
I did, but it says "Currently this single sign-in feature is disabled for the domain xxx Return to taskforceapp.com. For information on how a domain administrator can enable this feature, see these instructions."
I clicked on the link to return and it says can't login. And the directions don't make much sense.
Strange, are you using the paid version of Google Apps? And are you the admin for the domain? Shoot me an email at courtland@taskforceapp.com, I'll give you a hand.
It sounds like whomever controls your your Google Apps Mail account has disabled 3rd party apps - once that is enabled you will be able to dl Taskforce. If you like I'm happy to explain the benefits to them, you can email me on nic@taskforceapp - thx!
Seems they may be having some issues at the moment. Getting a lot of nginx 500 errors & can't get anything to show up in gmail after installing the extension. I'll try again later.
I'm going to give this a whirl, but I don't see any integration with the tasks GMail already has, built-in, so I can't get them to my phone. If you can sync tasks with GMail, then the android app I bought will take care of that sync step, right?
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.
I'd imagine if Google made a generous talent acquisition offer to someone like this team to work on gmail productivity tools at Google it would be hard to refuse, like divvyshot and facebook photos.
a few comments after using it for a couple of days (not on my primary account):
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)
I guess I'm missing something, but nothing has changed in my gmail after installing the extension. I see no taskforce buttons. I even set my theme back to the default one hoping it would solve my "problem". Help?
>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.