Since becoming a finalist, I’ve done some serious thinking that I’d like to share. I’m currently visiting friends up at State College (Go Penn State!)
Thankfully, there’s wireless at my friend’s place, and I did some work last night before bed.
I’ve actually gone through and read every single idea. I then arranged them in the order that I thought I’d want and made a list (no, I didn’t have mine in the list.)
I’ve worked with macintoshes since the Lisa, and when I’m teaching (I’m a film/video instructor, check out my bio if you like, I struggle to communicate the intentions of the author(s) of software. Well designed software should “just make sense.” Look at iWeb - you have to do zero designing of html to get your s**t on the web. In fact, that’s the goal with all the iLife Apps.
I made a quick list of hurdles I see with software:
- Ease of use.
- Feasibility (how hard it will be to engineer - many people miss this)
- Marketability (will they buy it?)
- How easy it is to communicate your idea to others
For example, I looked over at Atmosphere.
It has the hallmarks of an Application I’d like.
It sound like it’d be easy to use. Just give it a zip code and boom, your desktop is snowing
It should be fairly easy to implement, thanks to core image. Getting moving visuals into your background would be hard before this
It’s really cool idea, very “gee whiz.”
You get it right away from reading about it. (boy I hope I did.)
So, each hurdle is overcome. Not every application idea among the finalists runs this way. I’ll leave you to figure that out yourself.
Now, how does iGTD do?.
- Well designed, it should be easy to use.
- Realistically, it’s a database, but you could also say it’s a workflow. It is not a to do list.
- It’s a bit harder to market. It’s core group would be the GTD people (although some fantastic inter-marketability opportunities exist with the Publisher and the Author.
- Uh oh. if you don’t know about GTD, you don’t get it.
And that last one worries me.
How do I educate you on GTD and yet, pimp my app. I figure half of my posts will be about GTD…and half will be about iGTD
So, if, dear reader, you’ve managed to make it this far, here are some really useful links that will help you be more productive and have a happier life (what other blog post can say that?)
http://www.lifehacker.com/
http://www.43folders.com/
http://www.mindhacks.com/
http://www.lifehack.org/
