The beta is done, but Taskerrific isn’t yet

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

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

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…

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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.