It’s really hard to believe, but The Hit List has been released to the public after 2 years (!!!) of “development”. When I first wrote about it I really thought this is going to be a great application… last years update was depressing already, but there was still hope in the Google Group.

Now that Poition Factory finally announced The Hit List 1.0 (not really announced, the only developer just put it online) I really wonder

• if it will take another 2 years until an iPhone or even iPad application are released?
• what the upgrade policy will be? How fast will bugs be fixed?

Do people still believe in such a company, with such a bad track record? How could anyone pay for the sync service? I personally would rather invest into Appigio Todo, which has released many many updates and a Web interface – and they had some time to fix bugs and improve the application.

…just my 2 cents regarding this 2 year saga….

Update:

Not even to mention all the features that the competition has and that should be the standard in todays productivity apps:

• Importing and exporting tasks. At least from basic text files. My data belongs to me, not to your proprietary database format.
• Adding tasks via E-Mail. Most times this is the application in front of me, so why not mail a task to myself?
• Documented API’s and interfaces, so others can modify the data easily – think about Evernote or Dropbox, how well they integrate with tons of apps.

So yes, the user interface of THL is still charming, simple and because of the keyboard shortcuts very very powerful…. but again, the competition is way ahead….. about 2 years to be exact.

Recently a new startup in Germany released a task manager, called wunderlist. As I already did some reviews about GTD applications for the iPhone and because wunderlist is free I checked it out on day one. Not so impressive in my opinion. Good application, but requires some work to be really useful.

Today the iPad application called wunderlist HD has been released, again with great buzz around it. Downloaded it. Again not so impressive. Decided to write about it.

Don’t get me wrong, wunderlist and wunderlist HD look beautiful. They are developed using the Appcelerator platform which makes development for multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android….) relatively easy. Wunderlist offers cloud syncing. And it is actually a real, released product.

But in the end I think there are other alternatives (ToDo, 2Do, Toodledo to name a few) that are around way longer, offer more features and work faster (wunderlist sometimes reacts slowly). Also faster in terms of task entry and efficiency for me, the user. Furthermore others have proven over years to work and sync reliable and they improved their features over time…

So I really wonder what’s so wunderbar about wunderlist? To me it solves an already solved problem with more buzz, that’s it…

Mainly because of  M&Ms… Managers & Meetings are the real problem to productivity. Check out the whole TED video if you are interested why work does not happen at work:

So where do you work?

(via ted.com)

Papa, wir müssen noch ins Kaffeehaus gehen. Dann ist das mit dem Lutscher endlich abgehakelt.

Früh übt sich…

Long long time ago I wrote about The Hit List – that it is going to be the best GTD software on earth.

A little after that I wrote about how to not write software and especially about how to not communicate with users.

Finally it is time to say that The Hit List is not going to be a hit…. let me quote some statistics from CAS:

Last tweet: December, 2009
Last forum post: December, 2009
Last blog post: September, 2009
Last significant (non-fix) upgrade to THL: May, 2009

To me this looks like THL is finally dead…. too bad, would have had a great future!

RIP, The Hit List!

What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?

Go, do that.

If just everyone @work would follow these 5 steps….:

1. Go, make something happen.
2. Do work you’re proud of.
3. Treat people with respect.
4. Make big promises and keep them.
5. Ship it out the door.
When in doubt, see #1.

Source

(from JoyOfTech)

A while ago I wrote about The Hit List – a clean, powerful GTD application for the Mac. Over a year passed since that posting so I’d love to give an updated about The Hit List and the development of that particular application.

THL is still beta

The Hit List lets you plan, forget, then act when the time is right. (source)

THL for the iPhone is vaporware

The competition….

My recommendation

As a GTD advocate I already tested Things vs. Todo and also compared it to Remember The Milk. Now a new (star?) application is under development by the PotionFactory – named “The Hit List“.

What makes the new application (which is in beta mode right now) a real hit is its focus on the keyboard – adding tasks, moving them around, starting timers, editing, tagging, all can be done with a few simple keystrokes. Simple – just f, x, space, enter. No Cmd+Command+Shift+# kind of “short”cuts. This makes handling tasks the GTD way a lot faster than using the mouse to manage hundreds of tasks in various projects.
Also the developer really listens to the Google Group to get early feedback of the users – a really agile way of developing such an application!

What would be reasons for me to switch over from Todo/Toodledo? Well, while Toodledo is a Web application and therefore platform independent it is not as efficient to use as the optimized THL application (I’m Mac only now, so who cares about other platforms?). On the other side I fear that THL only does Wireless syncing and cannot sync via a server (MobileMe?) which would be a show stopper – I want to sync any time, independend of the network and not be restricted by a running computer or network issues*. Also the iPhone part of THL was not released yet, it has to be at least as efficient and fast as Todo (which does a pretty good job on the iPhone!).

But hey, The Hit List is in beta mode right now and PotionFactory is working hard on finishing the implementation, lets see how the final product looks like…. if syncing works, the iPhone app is useable and the whole package is not too pricy I’ll consider switching over…

(Image source)

*) I wonder why various apps (1Password, Things, …) do not just sync their data on any https protected WebDAV location, like the iDisk or others. This would work between any PC, Mac and iPhone, not require any additional server component, be secure and free the user from having a desktop application running on the same network. Firewalls would not be a problem as well…