

Show HN: TouchBase (re-imagining the iPhone calendar) - webwright
http://www.touchbasecal.com/

======
achompas
Cool app. Am I the only one that's overwhelmed by the home page, though?

The "get TouchBase" button is clear enough, but after a minute my eyes have
been redirected everywhere and I still don't know if TouchBase has a decent
day/week/month view.

EDIT. Okay, here we go: "You might want to keep your iPhone calendar around if
you really like/use the month view a lot, as TouchBase doesn't offer that."

~~~
webwright
Yaw, I think you're right-- the home page is pretty dense. Any ideas on a
big/simple headline that conveys the value prop better? We struggled with
that.

FWIW, I've largely stopped using the normal calendar app in favor of this one.
If we see a lot of demand for a month/week view, we might well add it in.

Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
dmix
Theres just too much stuff going on, on the homepage.

It makes any comprehension difficult. Two recommendations:

1) add more white space

2) try to communicate the value proposition in as little words as possible.
This book is a good starting point on how to do that:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400064287/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_0dBNob...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400064287/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_0dBNob10HMXJK)

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webwright
Hey all-- We built this at <http://www.startupworkaway.com> (15 geeks in a
beachhouse!). It's our first foray into the mobile market but we're pretty
excited by the beta feedback/love we've gotten. Would appreciate your
thoughts!

(edited to fix link, thx)

~~~
gourneau
I thought this looked familiar :) Looks wonderful dude! Can you make Siri play
nice with this?

~~~
webwright
Heh-- What do you think the odds are that Apple will let 3rd party devs play
with Siri? Fingers crossed!

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hboon
I like the icon, but the first time I launched it, it crashed after the
"Crunching Calendar..." screen. I check the logs and it says:

"Application Specific Information: com.tomoapps.touchbase failed to launch in
time".

Spin a thread or dispatch in
-application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:launchOptions: as soon as you can.
Don't do heavy work there.

The app started successfully after that. First impression feedback:

The Edit/Done animation looks a little strange, maybe too fast or maybe
because you are shrinking the height of the hidden view during the animation

Good luck with the launch!

~~~
webwright
Durnit-- hopefully that's rare. We did a private beta with 60ish diverse folks
and didn't run into that bug. (aside: we used TestFlight for this and it was
amazing for over-the-air beta testing).

If you're willing, would love help in tracking down what's happening.
webwright@gmail.com ... Thanks for the info, regardless!

~~~
hboon
Sent. (in case it went to junk).

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rayiner
Seems like a reasonable place to ask, so I'll do it here: anybody here found a
really good integrated calendar/todo app?

All the ones I've found are very coarse-grained. Really meant for someone with
a couple of appointments a day at specific times. I need to do that, but I
also need something to manage tasks and assignments. I.e. I'm in a meeting and
I get 3 tasks X, Y, and Z. X needs to be done monday at 3 pm, Y needs to be
done this week, and Z needs to be done at some point. I want something where I
can quickly and easily add all three tasks, then come back later and decide
I'm going to work on Y on Wednesday and tentatively decide to work on Z on
Friday.

For me allocating a big list of tasks to limited time, and being able to
fluidly move them around as circumstances change is just as important as
remembering that I have a lunch appointment 3 pm on Friday.

<https://www.producteev.com/> does this decently well. I love that it has a
box that just lets you type in "lunch meeting noon monday" instead of having
to click around on a date picker. When you're getting an assignment while
talking to someone it's crucial not to have to click around. iCal is
infuriating in how many clicks it takes to add a task and schedule it. I also
love that you can leave a task unassigned then drag & drop it when you decide
to allocate it to a certain day. But it's a web app and it's not snappy
enough. The UI can slow down at random moments which sucks when you're trying
to jot down an appointment while talking to someone.

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stingraycharles
I wanted to buy the app, but I'm not allowed to since it's US-only.

~~~
webwright
Sorry about that-- there are a few things we do with language (parsing for the
word "at" for example, to guess location). We also wanted to launch gently.
Can you tell me what country you're in?

If you email me (webwright @ gmail), I can get you a free beta invite for your
trouble.

~~~
reemrevnivek
There are a lot more places than just the US that use "at" to refer to a
location. Why not just release to anyone who wants to use the English-only
app?

~~~
webwright
We did release it in all of the english speaking countries that we could pick
out of the list. The app actually has canned messages as part of the
functionality, so I think it'd be pretty rough to use in any country where
you'd likely meet with non-english-speaking folks. So question 1) Is there an
english speaking country we missed? 2) Are there enough ex-pats-who-meet-with-
mostly-english-speakers that you think it'd make sense to launch without
native language support?

~~~
stereo
Luxembourg is tiny, multilingual and anglophone enough to make a great beta
country. Oh, and I live there.

My calendar uses more than one language, how will you decide how to parse it?

Some of my contacts would find it weird if I message them in english, others
wouldn't even notice, a few wouldn't even understand the message.

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modoc
Looks awesome, but after purchasing it, all it does is crash:( It says
Crunching Calendar, and then dies, ever time. I've tried rebooting the phone,
resyncing the app, etc...

~~~
webwright
Could you drop me a note if you have a few minutes to help troubleshoot? This
didn't crop up in our beta and we'd love to track it down. webwright@gmail.com
- thanks, regardless!

~~~
dtf
Me too. Asks me "Who are you? We need a contact for you.". I fill in the
contact form, press done and it crashes. Start it up again and it's the same
story.

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alexobenauer
This looks fantastic, and I can't wait to use it.

I can't seem to get it to work because it can't detect my contact, and it
won't let me select my existing record. It only lets me create a new one. But
when I do that, it crashes once I click done. I went in and added every email
to my contact through 'contacts,' but it still won't recognize it.

Any thoughts? I hope this is something you can work out - because this app
looks _fantastic_.

~~~
webwright
Hrm-- can you drop me a note? webwright@gmail - we did a pretty large beta
test and thought this was solid-- would love to get to the bottom of it. There
SHOULD be an "add to existing contact" option on that screen. Thanks and
apologies for the rough bits.

------
meta
I installed it but it never seems to know who I am. I have entered contact
information 3 times now but it keeps saying "Who are you?".

It also Crunches my calendar for about 30seconds every time I launch it. If
that is the expected behaviour I will not be using it long term.

Other than that - I want to play with it, it looks really nice.

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cpr
"If you're event doesn't have a location" - typo for "your".

Looks good. Perhaps a bit weak in the face of Siri's launch?

~~~
webwright
Fixed the typo-- thanks!

Siri is interesting-- and may (someday) kill us, but I think it remains to be
seen how practical it is for communicating/mapping around your calendar. I get
plenty of stalls and "I don't understand you" on the Siri front-- especially
with people or cafe names.

Of course, even if Siri PERFECT, there's still a huge swath of people with
older iPhones, a hatred for voice controls, accents, etc.

While we're committed to the app, it's definitely in the "revenue generating
project" category (versus the "I hope I'm doing this 10 years from now"
category! :-) ).

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sushi
Minor UX feedback: The image for CTA buttons you are using look weird on
hover. See this <http://www.touchbasecal.com/images/btn_cta1.png> The top
image which appears on hover doesn't have the correct n and p letter in "Our
normal price is $3.99".

~~~
webwright
Yikes-- good catch. There was an 11th hour edit on that button (from me).
Fixed and thank you!

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apinstein
Very nice. Back in the day my company made a similar product for the Palm OS
called "Today". Good luck with it!

One feature request: can you also use the "nickname" field when looking for
matches? I call my wife "J" so I added that as her nickname in "Address
Book.app" but TouchBase still can't manage to match it up.

~~~
montanalow
That's a great idea. I've just submitted a new version including nickname
matching to the app store for approval, so look for it within the next week or
two.

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bjtitus
I think this is a brilliant idea. Not sure if the feature set is large enough
for me to buy it quite yet. I'm probably not the target market for this app,
though.

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jamesjyu
I was lucky enough to be in the beta -- this is basically the missing calendar
app for iOS. Apple really should have included these features from the get go.

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badhairday
Fado Pub is a great place for lunch! I hate the default iPhone calendar
application. I'll be purchasing ASAP.

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gurgeous
I was in the beta. TouchBase is cool, very handy if you're running around from
meeting to meeting all day.

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neonkiwi
This looks fantastic, all the best with your launch! It makes me wish I had a
smart phone.

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jasonlgrimes
Great UI, simple design a must for tech folks on the go!

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ortatherox
This looks great!

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thomasilk
Only for USA WTF

~~~
webwright
Sorry, it's we do some title stuff that is language dependent (the app still
works in other languages, it just loses a small part of the magic). We are
currently limited to countries that speak english (not just the US, but still
limited, sadly). If you email me at webwright@gmail, I'll happily give you a
free beta account. We'll attack other languages soon.

~~~
rvivek
Does it support multiple timezones?

~~~
webwright
It should-- it actually uses the data from your native calendar and should
behave the same with regard to timezones.

