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Re: Lists

#91
post #89

I agree with you on several parts,And there have actually been some decent attempts which i regularly use [1],[2]. I find it fascinating how people use Github to maintain curated lists. But I find list-making as an art in itself.It requires the curator to be able assimilate information in bite sized packets which are informative enough. As a rule,I feel that the size of each list item should inversely proportional to…

> As a rule,I feel that the size of each list item should inversely proportional to the size of the list.

What are you talking about? That seems completely nonsensical. if I have a list with 100 items, i'm not going to restrict each list item to two words, or two paragraphs, if the verbosity is needed. That is completely detached and separate from the role of lists. If thats how you like to do your lists that's certainly your choice, but a rule? seems a bit much.

Re: Lists

#92
post #89

I agree with you on several parts,And there have actually been some decent attempts which i regularly use [1],[2]. I find it fascinating how people use Github to maintain curated lists. But I find list-making as an art in itself.It requires the curator to be able assimilate information in bite sized packets which are informative enough. As a rule,I feel that the size of each list item should inversely proportional to…

> As a rule,I feel that the size of each list item should inversely proportional to the size of the list. What are you talking about? That seems completely nonsensical. if I have a list with 100 items, i'm not going to restrict each list item to two words, or two paragraphs, if the verbosity is needed. That is completely detached and separate from the role of lists. If thats how you like to do your lists that's certa…

You can obviously append extra details separately,but if someone gave you a 100 page list which contains every possible detail of every item.Then would you read it? Would you use a dictionary which contained everything etymology to usage and derivations on the same section for each and every word?

EDIT : And yes that is definitely not a rule I would enforce on someone else,but it is a 'guideline' i enforce on myself while reading/making lists

Re: Lists

#93
post #18

Why on earth would anyone bother paying for a list app, when there are so many ways to do it for free? The best you could do is try to write something really excellent and get bought as a replacement for one of ${GIANTCO}'s existing list products. So best case for a team is probably an acquihire, and it'd require a fair investment for scaling at zero revenue to get even that.

basecamp is a list app, and they've been very successful in the space, and have remained small and independent for over 10 years. They were also bootstrapped, and managed to scale; but they did have revenue to support that.

Re: Lists

#94

A little more on subject, and I am totally failing to find a good todo list app. I am not sure what I really want but something like - can extract todos from my code - can be very very context aware (location, time, am I in code base or out on street or on a phone call?) To be fair that last one is the list problem - it's an Embodiment of intelligence - a list is a marker for a agent, that jogs my memory at one point…

You'll be hard pressed to find a todo list app that extracts your todos from your code. But, you could do that yourself with some scripting.

As for being very context aware - also something you could do yourself, to some extent. "on a phone call" would be tougher but not impossible. Still at that point it might make more sense to proactively reach for something you need.

I've done my own tinkering in this space, along different lines; it worked, but it didn't change anything for me. Sometimes dreams do come true! and they just don't work out.

Re: Lists

#95
post #48

I thought it was a silly post at first, then I remembered I had in gmail draft emails for lists of: to read books, to watch movies, to never forget quotes, to never forget girlfriend related facts ... etc

haha, oh man! I used to have drafts open in apple mail and do the same thing. But it just became a mess for me; i'd have 100 draft windows open, with various bits of useful/useless information. The drafts were autosaved, which was nice, but they just piled up for me, and all came rushing back if I restarted apple mail. That was one of my primary motives for building my own solution.

Re: Lists

#96
As someone entering this space, this is an interesting topic, and there are some good ideas and discussions to be had in this thread.

One thing I've noticed, is that some lists are better served via different mediums than others; this might be the difference of putting something into apple Notes versus apple Todos. Sometimes you just need a list for reference, and other times you need each to represent something actionable.

Other times, the lists are directly associated with a service provider: amazon wishlists or netflix watchlist (note both have 'list' in their name) and are both geared towards furthering your investment in their platform. They aren't a core aspect of their business plan, but they are helpful to users.

Lists have also been around for quite a while! a chapter could be said to be a list of pages (if you consider a list a collection and a collection a list); and the index is certainly a list of chapters.

Re: Lists

#97

A little more on subject, and I am totally failing to find a good todo list app. I am not sure what I really want but something like - can extract todos from my code - can be very very context aware (location, time, am I in code base or out on street or on a phone call?) To be fair that last one is the list problem - it's an Embodiment of intelligence - a list is a marker for a agent, that jogs my memory at one point…

I use Toodledo [1] for contexts. You can actually filter your task list by context, and I've created similar contexts myself to what you've described (i.e. "On Phone", "At Laptop", "Out Of House"). There's a separate field for Locations, and you can set reminders for when you're near a specific location if you want.

Times are easy, you can set a Due Date / Time and a Start Date / Time. I use that for Gardening ToDos that can only be done during daylight hours.

It won't extract todos from code, but there's a way you can email to-dos into Toodledo, so you could write a script. There's a full API as well, but I've not put in the time to get that to work.

The web version has Saved Searches, which are really custom views on your to-do database. You can create your own searches use boolean logic, substring searches as well as filtering by field.

Works on mobile & web, with some third party clients for both desktop and mobile. (I actually use Ultimate To Do List on Android instead of the official Toodledo client.)

[1] http://www.toodledo.com/

Re: Lists

#98
post #8

Odd: Pinterest seems to me like the breakout published list platform. No one said lists have to be words only: a Pinterest board is just a list with pictures.

Next time you go grocery shopping, use Pinterest for your list . We'll see how long you stick by this statement. :)

Re: Lists

#99
post #18

Why on earth would anyone bother paying for a list app, when there are so many ways to do it for free? The best you could do is try to write something really excellent and get bought as a replacement for one of ${GIANTCO}'s existing list products. So best case for a team is probably an acquihire, and it'd require a fair investment for scaling at zero revenue to get even that.

basecamp is a list app, and they've been very successful in the space, and have remained small and independent for over 10 years. They were also bootstrapped, and managed to scale; but they did have revenue to support that.

I think there's plenty of room for small, independent list apps in niche verticals. But the original article isn't looking for Basecamps. They're looking for a unicorn.

Re: Lists

#100
post #84
post #2

GitHub turned out to be a pretty decent place for collaborating on various lists. I mean, the list of awesome lists[0] is currently the 23rd most starred GitHub project. I'm using GitHub both as a collaborative tool for creating lists and as my own tool for creating lists (as an example, a list of books I have read / am reading / planning on reading [1]). [0] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome [1] https://github…

That's probably the worst possible UI for listmaking if you're not a programmer or otherwise a bit user.

s/bit/git/
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