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Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

timeslot.me

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Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#11

Post by kloncks »

A few things:

1. What technology is behind this? Ruby?

2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap.

3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than most people realize.

4. Mixing To-Dos in there with the Calendar would be killer. Especially if you let me bring over my To-Do list from popular To-Do list websites and then make your own version.

5. I love the fact that it's so simple and nice. Please keep it that way.

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#12

Post by masnick »

This is a really interesting idea. A few thoughts:

I personally think the click+drag interface in Google Calendar or iCal is more efficient for setting the length of events. The select box with all the time intervals from 15 min to 24 hr in 15 min increments seems hard to use. I personally would even prefer typing "15 min" or "1 hr" to trying to scroll through all that.

It would also be great if this pulled automatically from Google Calendar (or any iCalendar) to fill events. I would probably use this to schedule my day if I didn't have to manually put in my recurring events, meetings scheduled with Tungle, etc. that are already in gcal.

Nice work -- thanks for sharing!

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#13

Post by chetan51 »

kloncks wrote: post #11

A few things: 1. What technology is behind this? Ruby? 2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap. 3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than…

It's using Django on the server and Backbone.js on the client. It was quite a pleasure to code with these frameworks, actually.

As for your suggestions, I totally agree with all of them. They are all features I would love as well, and I have some ideas on how to make it so it's easy to plan on every level of granularity, from day to week to month to year, and to make them all play well with each other.

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#14

Post by kloncks »

chetan51 wrote: post #7
dshipper wrote: post #6

This is really cool. I would send this over to Sebastian Marshall at sebastianmarshall.com. His blog has a good amount of readers and I think he would love to cover something like this.

Thanks! I was wondering how to spread the word about this. I think Lifehacker would be interested too. I'll be sure to contact Sebastian Marshall.

Sebastian is great.

But I'd also just start contacting literally every news blog you can think of. TechCrunch, TheNextWeb, GigaOm, CenterNetworks, ReadWriteWeb, everyone.

What can you lose ;) ? And just getting one of those will get you a lot of hits.

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#15

Post by masnick »

kloncks wrote: post #11

A few things: 1. What technology is behind this? Ruby? 2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap. 3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than…

I would actually prefer not to have todos mixed in. IMHO, todos just clutter up a calendar (I've tried them in every single calendar app I've ever used that supports them, and stopped using them).

The problem I think is that calendars never seem to do todos as well as dedicated apps (or a plain text file for that matter, which is what I use now). To me this feature often seem tacked on.

Just my two cents. I'm sure others will disagree...

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#16

Post by kloncks »

chetan51 wrote: post #13
kloncks wrote: post #11

A few things: 1. What technology is behind this? Ruby? 2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap. 3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than…

It's using Django on the server and Backbone.js on the client. It was quite a pleasure to code with these frameworks, actually. As for your suggestions, I totally agree with all of them. They are all features I would love as well, and I have some ideas on how to make it so it's easy to plan on every level of granularity, from day to week to month to year, and to make them all play well with each other.

Best of luck to you then; truly great start it seems!

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#17

Post by chetan51 »

masnick wrote: post #12

This is a really interesting idea. A few thoughts: I personally think the click+drag interface in Google Calendar or iCal is more efficient for setting the length of events. The select box with all the time intervals from 15 min to 24 hr in 15 min increments seems hard to use. I personally would even prefer typing "15 min" or "1 hr" to trying to scroll through all that. It would also be great if this pulled automatic…

Drag to extend / shorten duration of events is on my todo list; it would definitely improve the interface.

It seems like Google Calendar syncing is something everyone is looking for. I'll be sure to focus on that. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#18

Post by chetan51 »

masnick wrote: post #15
kloncks wrote: post #11

A few things: 1. What technology is behind this? Ruby? 2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap. 3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than…

I would actually prefer not to have todos mixed in. IMHO, todos just clutter up a calendar (I've tried them in every single calendar app I've ever used that supports them, and stopped using them). The problem I think is that calendars never seem to do todos as well as dedicated apps (or a plain text file for that matter, which is what I use now). To me this feature often seem tacked on. Just my two cents. I'm sure ot…

I was thinking of making todos part of a panel on the right that also includes canned events, stuff to be working on today based on due dates later in the week, and other such lists of items that you can easily pull into today's agenda. This side panel would be able to slide open and closed, so it won't clutter up the interface.

What do you think?

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#19

Post by dools »

My experience:

1) submitted my signup details, the page never returned a response and just hung there, but I did receive an email and was able to login

2) There's no difference between "add item" and "insert after" on the last item - but there is no way to add an item to the start of the list. I have to insert after the first item then re-order

3) I could never use this on a daily basis but I could really use it for week-to-week planning, especially if it had an API

4) As such I would prefer gcal style dragging/gantt style blocks

5) If you could create a simple "time block allocation" tool I'd pay to use it.

The use case for me would be to plug my task system (for which I actually use my own CMS where I create pages for each "sprint"). I currently use Google Calendar but the API is kind of hellish and I've never gotten around to using it.

The fact is that daily planning revolves around a few things for me: things that arrive in my inbox, things i'm supposed to be working on (time blocked off in google calendar) sales/follow up tasks (I use highrise, this comes under "things that arrive in my inbox") and appointments (for which I use google calendar).

I then timesheet everything via an IRC chat room (as do my colleagues).

All that's missing is an elegant interface for blocking off time for tasks, being able to rearrange them and then export all the information via an API so that I can see directly how scheduling is affecting my cashflow without having to update a bunch of spreadsheet data.

Re: Show HN: Timeslot makes planning your day a breeze

#20

Post by bluespace »

kloncks wrote: post #11

A few things: 1. What technology is behind this? Ruby? 2. Mobile is VERY important. So important, in fact, that if I were you, I'd make a mobile version of the website right now to work across Android/iPhone/webOS/Windows/etc and start working on an actual native app asap. 3. Syncing. I'd love to be able to Sync this with iCal and Google Calendar. Of course, this is a huge thing; syncing is a lot more difficult than…

I completely agree with the syncing comment. I think supporting CalDav would be the right(hard) step. I would also like the ability to export a text file of all the data.
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