
Show HN: Moo.do – Simple, Powerful Organizational Tool - gwatters
http://moo.do/?hn
======
AdamGibbins
This looks amazing, but unfortunately is missing some core features I need for
my workflow.

\- Import via an open API - I have many inputs, including Email, Kanban
boards, bug trackers etc - I want to write my own integrations.

\- Defer dates - I have a lot of stuff, I do not want visibility of stuff
until I can actually action it.

\- Reviews - this is critical to handling large quantities of todo items,
regular reviews is a must, I want to be able to tag items/headers with a
review schedule.

\- Recurrence - I do things once a week, I need to be able to schedule this.
Alternatively integration with Google Calendar so it can trigger recurring
items.

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stmchn
I just started using this and I'm already a complete convert! I've been using
google keep, any.do, and google calendar to keep track of slightly different
things since no one app fit all my needs. But moo.do actually seems flexible
enough to handle everything I use those 3 apps for!

I've only been using it for a couple hours but I've already transferred
everything I have from my other apps to it and I'm already fluent in using all
the shortcuts. I also really like the flexibility you get from being able to
add any number of panes emacs-style. I'm able to have a normal pane open
focused on work stuff, a timeline pane open filtered for @today, and another
normal pane open to capture random thoughts and to-dos I want to jot down.
It's already made me insanely productive.

One nitpick I have is that I wish that searching on certain dates would also
pick up equivalent references to that date. For example, I've entered some
tasks as @wednesday but other tasks as @october1. It would be awesome if I
were able to search on @wednesday and also pick up the tasks tagged @october1.
Also having recurring tasks would be awesome too.

~~~
gwatters
Glad you're enjoying it! Great idea about the date searching, we've added it
to our list of work.

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kingnight
I know this is a pretty open/flexble tool — but from looking at the examples
and trying out the web/app I have a few questions:

\- What is the intended delineation between a document and a top-level header?

\- How are notifications in the app (ios) incorporated. Do they notify based
on "@date time" of item?

\- How might this be used as a notepad. It seems like a big aspect of it is
the crossing-off of items?

\- Does @tomorrow turn into @today in the document when a day has passed. Same
w/ @today to @yesterday etc?

Otherwise, this app has really captured my interest.

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the interface though — coming from a simple list /
to-do app where there aren't hierarchal levels displayed inline... I think the
search/filter will definitely help with this but I may have to get used to it.

Edit: one more thought — i would like to be able to use the +person tagging
but do not want to use Google Contacts (or device contacts for that matter,
which isnt possible). I know I can use #name but would prefer the look of the
+person as designed. (along the same lines, I wouldn't minde decoupling the
app from Google at some point...)

~~~
gwatters
Thanks for taking the time to learn more about Moo.do!

> What is the intended delineation between a document and a top-level header?

Sharing and collaboration works at a document level. I have a separate
document if I need to collaborate with someone on a unique topic and have
multiple top-level headers in a single document for broad organization within
a single topic.

> How are notifications in the app (ios) incorporated. Do they notify based on
> "@date time" of item?

Each item that specifies a time of day using ‘@date time’ will get a
notification 30 minutes before it is due. Items that do not have an exact time
mentioned (like 3:00pm) will not cause a notification. [This is not currently
working on iOS 8 and we have an update waiting for review.]

> How might this be used as a notepad. It seems like a big aspect of it is the
> crossing-off of items?

We’ve tried to keep the app as close to just editing text as possible. You can
type like you would in Notepad or a Word/Google document with no problems. All
of our features are there if you would like to use them but will stay out of
your way if you don’t.

> Does @tomorrow turn into @today in the document when a day has passed. Same
> w/ @today to @yesterday etc?

Yes - we rollover dates that change meaning as the current day change. If you
want to ‘pin’ an item to stay visible to you, you could set a priority on the
item or mark it as @now or @soon.

We have plans to add additional sources of contacts (and other services) to
the app. Having first and third party plugins for adding content and viewing
data in different ways is a big part of our goal.

~~~
kingnight
Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. That all makes sense and is what I would
have hoped to be the case.

I see below too that you've spent a lot of time on this — it definitely shows.
I am already finding the keyboard shortcuts and text manipulation to exceed my
expectations a web-app that's based on a giant free-form textbox.

A couple comments on the iOS app. I am running iOS 8 so maybe these are known
issues awaiting an Apple approval... Both the keyboard and horizontal position
in the stack seem to get stuck often.

An example to cause this would be to tap into an existing item while the
keyboard is up to reposition the cursor ... if I pan right/left it'll start to
pan the view left/right along with it which will persist once I'm done.
Swiping left/right after this will keep this offset. The keyboard too also
sticks to a certain degree in these position changes.

~~~
gwatters
We appreciate the bug report, we will look into this for our next app release.

Let us know if we're missing any keyboard shortcuts that would be useful to
you! My favorite one that got added recently (and as a result is currently
undocumented) is using alt+shift+up/down arrows to move items around.

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whitten
What kind of import and export capabilities does it have? It is important that
I don't lose my data due to vendor lock-in.

~~~
gwatters
We strongly believe that you should remain in control of your data. We
currently support HTML, JSON and plain text exports with plans to support
OPML. If there's another format you're interested in let us know.

We also support direct imports from Wunderlist, Google Tasks, Workflowy,
Trello and Todoist. When you first run the app options to import your data
will be there.

You can also access your data directly using the Google Realtime API. Your
data is stored on your own Google Drive - you're not going to lose access to
it.

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nnain
This is a pretty well thought out note-taking/organisation app. Evernote and
Keep weren't really cutting it for me, so I have been looking for one for a
while. Even considered building one myself (which I still might eventually),
so I have checked out quite a few. Congrats to the team who put this together.
One slight grudge, which hopefully they would have considered fixing already
-- the Android installer is quite big.

~~~
gwatters
Glad you like it nnain! We also spent a lot of time looking at different
organization options prior to starting Moo.do and weren't happy with what they
provided (usually at a cost!). If there's a killer feature that would make
Moo.do a better experience for you we'd love to hear about it.

The size of the android install is a little on the large size, but we're using
[https://crosswalk-project.org/](https://crosswalk-project.org/) instead of
the native webview to get better feature support and performance on older
devices.

~~~
Zakuzaa
How much time did it take you (and team) to build moo.do? Also, what's in the
feature pipeline?

~~~
gwatters
Our first commit to our active repository was 7/16/12, so it's been a while
coming. Our team of two has put Moo.do through a bunch of iterations and some
massive changes since then.

We're currently focused on enhancing our agenda/calendar experience and
integrating additional services and data sources into Moo.do. Is there a
feature that you would be particularly excited to see?

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dnlrn
Hey this is awesome! I love it. I have one serious bug tho. I'm a german user
with a german keyboard and I'm not able to add a ":" (for example to add a
time). I have to copy and paste it manually. When I try to enter a ":", a ">"
appears instead. I am using Chromium 37 under Arch Linux (everything german).

~~~
gwatters
Glad you're enjoying Moo.do!

Thanks for the bug report - we are actively looking at a couple of
internationalization issues. If you run into more please send an email to
contact@moo.do and we will make sure it is handled.

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maxmcd
I'm always pretty skeptical of any new "organizational tool" but this really
fits with my workflow. Currently porting over most of my todo lists/tasks.

Would be nice to get access to a full API. If I could automatically add github
issues here, or feed things in from trello/email I would never have to use
anything else.

~~~
jmeistrich
We’re planning to integrate many more services into Moo.do. Having first and
third party plugins for adding content and viewing data in different ways is a
big part of our goal. We’re looking into the best way to achieve that and what
a full API would look like.

------
nicpottier
Looks a bit like org-mode for the web, which is pretty cool. Any inspiration
there?

Slick intro video as well, congrats on the launch!

~~~
jmeistrich
Yeah, we were inspired by text-based solutions because they're so much easier
to work with than a big complicated UI. But they generally don't scale very
well. So we're trying to make something that's as easy as text but also super
powerful.

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adamfeldman
I've been looking for something more powerful than Workflowy that is also
based on outlining, and this fits the bill. The biggest issue for me was that
Workflowy didn't have the support for due-dates and filtering tasks that I
prefer for my workflow. Very excited to get to know Moo.do.

~~~
maxkir
Have you seen [https://checkvist.com](https://checkvist.com)?

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wingerlang
I would just kill for this to be a local and native application. This is
literally what I've been collecting myself to build. A note-taking app that
automatically generates a timeline/agenda. I might just use this, but I never
stick to web based interfaces like this.

~~~
gwatters
We have a Chrome app ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/moodo-
organize-you...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/moodo-organize-
your-way/iffimmolghilclfndeiebgppddmagofk)) available that acts as a native
app and includes notifications. If you're on OSX and don't use Chrome,
FluidApp is a great alternative. We completely support offline access to your
data from both the apps as well as your browser. Hope that's helpful - if you
have any questions send us an email at contact@moo.do.

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ssqmm
Very cool.. thanks for sharing. Long time user of Keep, will try to see how
this handles. Are geo-location tags also available within the notes you take?
Can they be connected with reminders when you are passing by certain location?
(similar to Google Now)

~~~
gwatters
They are not added yet, but location tagging is on our list of features that
we want to see in Moo.do.

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amwelles
Just wanted to say that the onboarding for this is fantastic. It made me
understand/explore way more than I normally would. I really wanted all those
things in the help list to be checked off!

I plan on giving this app a whirl for the next few days to see how it goes.

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ahstilde
I currently use Keep, but it's getting messy. Hopefully this will help!

I really like how your logo goes from the top of the page, centered, to the
bar at the top. I don't know too much about web design (I'm still learning),
but how did you accomplish this?

~~~
gwatters
We certainly hope it does! If you have any questions or issues porting your
data over let us know.

The header is set as position: fixed in css so it will stick to the top of the
page. We hook into the document.onscroll event and set a css transform on the
logo when the page is scrolled down. The css transition gives it a smooth
animation. We also transition the opacity on the “Organize your way” text to
hide it as it moves to the top of the page.

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ScaraX
Do you have any plans to support international dates (or an option to define
how dates are parsed, @MM.DD vs @DD.MM)?

@01.10 is parsed as January 10th but shold be October 1st which gets even
worse as @30.09 is recognized as September 30th

~~~
gwatters
We are working on supporting international dates and keyboards better. I don't
have an ETA for when this will be available, but it will be sooner rather than
later.

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nacs
Any plans to support login without Google Drive? I'd rather not store (or
authenticate) with Google.

Support for something like Amazon S3 or even SCP would be amazing.

~~~
gwatters
In the short term no. We rely on Google to provide free data storage and a
free data synchronization backend in order to provide a free app.

In the long term yes. We would like to allow the user to choose where and how
their data is stored. We want you to have complete control over any data that
you put into the app. We do however have a large number of features that we
feel are important to Moo.do to finish before we get to this point.

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stevedekorte
I like the minimalism of the UI compared to similar apps.

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iurisilvio
Looks incredible! I'll definitely use something like this.

I had problems with special chars. I write the task and some chars just
disappear.

I manage my tasks in a Sublime tab.

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talles
The logo animation going to the page header when scrolling down is amazing.
Kudos for who did it.

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lie07
This will replace workflowy and trello, time to test drive first. Looks great
though.

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earthmeLon
Ugh. Requires connection to a Google account.

Hopefully they will open registration.

~~~
gwatters
Thanks for taking the time to look at our app!

We do not send any personal information about your account apart from your
email address to our servers, everything else is only sent to your devices. We
use Google Drive and the Google Realtime API to synchronize your data.

It's not that we want access to your Google account as much as your account
stores your information you enter. As a result our servers handle (and have
access to) significantly less of your personal data than most other services.

If you have more privacy concerns or want to know more about how Moo.do uses
your Google account please send me an email at grant@moo.do or check out our
privacy policy [http://moo.do/privacy](http://moo.do/privacy).

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logicman
Looks neat. Don't think we'll switch from Brightpod.com

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sanemat
Cool! I like this.

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prodev42
does this work with the Pomodoro technique?

~~~
adamfeldman
Pomodoro is a method to help you focus on your work in timed bursts and not
make you feel guilty for taking breaks - [http://pomodorotechnique.com/get-
started/](http://pomodorotechnique.com/get-started/).

Perhaps you're thinking of GTD (Getting Things Done), a highly structured
productivity/organization system that can be carried out with anything from
paper folders to powerful apps? If so, Moo.do would work well since it
supports using @tags for contexts, among other parts of GTD.

