

Taskforce (YC W11) Helps You Organize Your Inbox and Become a Taskmaster - niccolop
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/taskforce-helps-you-organize-your-inbox-and-become-a-taskmaster/

======
zck
Their example of "Convert emails into tasks and clear your inbox" is amusing
(<http://www.taskforceapp.com/?v=original_ft>):

>from President Obama to me:

>How are you? Was wondering if you could give me a quick intro to Julian
Assange. Or even just his current address would be nice.

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nhangen
Forgive my ignorance, and no offense intended, but how is an email extension
considered a startup, and furthermore: a YC startup?

I realize that it's useful, and a great product, and I'm not implying
otherwise, but this model seems to stretch the startup concept very thin.

~~~
csallen
And no offense taken :) I think it's important to keep in mind that startups
grow and mature. Right now we're two people (only one programmer) who've been
working for a few months. We've learned a lot and (in)validated more than a
few crucial hypotheses, but things are _far_ from over and our aspirations are
huge.

As PG once said to us, "Microsoft started with a BASIC interpreter for the
Altair."

~~~
orky56
I think we should credit the two of you for convincing PG. After all, having a
solid group of people is more useful than having a solid product. This is a
great start and with you two at the helm, we can expect a lot more. Looking
forward to it!

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twakefield
Congrats guys. I've been using Taskforce for about a month now and really
liking it. The fact that it's right in gmail makes it really handy.

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krmmalik
Yet another miraculous tool to help you organise your cluttered inbox.

If you havent mastered the skill in organising your life so your inbox doesnt
take over your life, no tool is going to make that any better for you.

Its a delusion.

~~~
csallen
If the point you just made was a person, I think I'd walk alongside him for
3/4 of a mile, and then stop right there. Do some people have trouble staying
organized? Of course. Are they hopeless lost causes whom technology can't
help? That's going too far.

The productivity field is an interesting area where, if you want to build
something great, you need to do some real research on human behavior and
psychology. If you had the world's most delicious ice cream, I doubt you'd try
selling it in Siberia. Nor would you sell balloons at a funeral. Or cars
without gas in the tank. So what's troubling is, plenty of people make
seemingly-great productivity tools, and then promptly ignore obvious issues...
like the fact that people tend to lose motivation over time. There's a reason
we're building Taskforce in the inbox, and it's not because we're hopping on
the "email overload" bandwagon.

We think that with enough intelligently-directed effort, we can create
something that really does make people better at what they want to do.

~~~
krmmalik
Wait a minute. This is singularly the best piece of hostile customer
persuasion i've seen in my WHOLE life.

I stand corrected and humbled. Even im going to sign up to this thing.

Where do i sign?

~~~
csallen
<https://www.taskforceapp.com>

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biot
What's the revenue model? Ad supported, premium features later on, or
something else?

~~~
niccolop
certain premium features, which are already in the pipeline.

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d4nt
This looks like a great idea, but wake me when there's an Outlook extension.
Most people who would want to use this are using Outlook (or possibly Lotus
Notes).

~~~
peregrine
Outlook has this feature...

~~~
d4nt
True, but I'm not using it because it's not very slick. I also think the viral
nature of this extension could be huge.

~~~
swombat
Last I remember, it's perfectly integrated into Outlook. The main problem I
found with using it was that people don't like to get tasks assigned to them
via impersonal emails. I suspect TaskForce will have that problem too...

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alexophile
Looks excellent. One thing that would be way cool is Basecamp integration,
like syncing milestones/to-dos to your inbox.

~~~
niccolop
consider it in the pipeline :-)

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ericflo
Taskforce is really nice, I've been using it, and it definitely makes my life
better.

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davidmathers
Sounds vaguely similar to <http://www.activeinboxhq.com/>

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tony_landis
A nice concept, and the collaboration aspect is great. But this won't get me
away from the task management desktop apps I am used to.

The plugin has no concept of projects as far as I can tell, which could be by
simply tagging in gmail. As it is, I can simply drag the gmail url to my
current desktop application icon which creates a task.

Perhaps for someone whose only work related tasks come in through gmail, this
would be an improvement over just tagging an email.

Even if it were my case, I cannot see myself relying this app. I moved away
from Things to The Hit List because it had VIM-like keyboard controls, and am
used to being able to move around in gmail with the keyboard as well. As far
as I can tell, there are no keyboard controls for this plugin.

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cfontes
Sorry but I already do this using Google Priority,Tags(TODO, TO READ) and
Filters. works great ! But cheers for the effort of doing something more
integrated and better looking, keep it going :D

Hum... installed but it doesn't work, did all things and still nothing.

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epi0Bauqu
So does this work with Google apps for domains? I can't easily figure out how
to enable it.

~~~
niccolop
yes it does, you should be able to download it from our website.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I did, but it says "Currently this single sign-in feature is disabled for the
domain xxx Return to taskforceapp.com. For information on how a domain
administrator can enable this feature, see these instructions."

I clicked on the link to return and it says can't login. And the directions
don't make much sense.

~~~
csallen
Strange, are you using the paid version of Google Apps? And are you the admin
for the domain? Shoot me an email at courtland@taskforceapp.com, I'll give you
a hand.

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btucker
Seems they may be having some issues at the moment. Getting a lot of nginx 500
errors & can't get anything to show up in gmail after installing the
extension. I'll try again later.

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natep
I'm going to give this a whirl, but I don't see any integration with the tasks
GMail already has, built-in, so I can't get them to my phone. If you can sync
tasks with GMail, then the android app I bought will take care of that sync
step, right?

Also, if I do end up sticking with this, please don't sell this and shut down
the service, like etacts did (the last YC company to do a gmail add-on, IIRC),
although I never used that much.

~~~
robryan
I'd imagine if Google made a generous talent acquisition offer to someone like
this team to work on gmail productivity tools at Google it would be hard to
refuse, like divvyshot and facebook photos.

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Encosia
I'd probably pay to use this if it had Outlook integration.

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babyshake
Met Niccolo and Courtland at the Heyzap office around the time of startup
school and I've been hooked since.

Congrats on the launch!

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m0hit
a few comments after using it for a couple of days (not on my primary
account):

a. The privacy policy should be a little more clear about the data (if any)
being accessed from Gmail. Email is something around which people (or just me)
take privacy seriously. The privacy policy is well written (not canned
legalese), but does not cover issues around what kinds of data is collected.
Rapportive (<http://rapportive.com/privacy>), also a YC startup has a very
fresh approach to privacy policies.

b. at least for me, one of the best things about gmail are the keyboard
shortcuts. Sparrow (<http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/>) does a great job of
respecting gmail shortcuts.

c. Maybe they already have keyboard shortcuts, no way to know as there is no
help or manual or faqs. (Not sure they need one either)

~~~
niccolop
Thanks for this Mohit - we take privacy very seriously, and only collect the
necessary data to auto-complete collaborators emails within the widget.

Key board shortcuts are a great idea, that definitely increases accessibility
and speed.

We do have a user guide: <http://www.taskforceapp.com/guide> \- and we also
maintain a getsatisfaction page.

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CWIZO
I guess I'm missing something, but nothing has changed in my gmail after
installing the extension. I see no taskforce buttons. I even set my theme back
to the default one hoping it would solve my "problem". Help?

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dbalatero
I keep receiving this error when trying to use Taskforce "No response from
server, Reload?":

screenshot <http://cl.ly/1h3U3e0u2i012j1v081G>

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staunch
Is any of my data sent to Taskforce servers or leaked in any way?

~~~
csallen
Your tasks are sent over HTTPS and stored in our database. We don't need or
request access to your emails, however.

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dools
/me adds a task in his existing task management system to try Taskforce once
the "HN effect" dies down (500 internal server errors abound).

~~~
niccolop
Fixing it right now...

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ninjastar99
Seems to be loading very slow for me right now in Gmail. Maybe the Techcrunch
attention has it crawling?

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tomnewton
Someone needs to go down to their basement and reboot the mac mini that's
running this thing ;)

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kno
The Link on Techcrunch appear to be broken, I'm getting a 500 error.

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imajes
i'm still really keen to try this, but taskforce doesn't yet support
mailplane. Looking forward to getting that email when it does! :)

~~~
niccolop
we've actually been talking to mailplane, so it should be sooner rather than
later.

