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Show HN: Timely – Scheduling and Time Tracking, Simultaneously (timelyapp.com)
62 points by matmik on July 31, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 48 comments



I find it so weird that they look like a calendar, but they only keep track of durations. They explicitly reject start and stop times.

For me, that makes scheduling hard, and reconciling my time & efficiency at the end of the month near impossible. I'm disappointed since everything else looks excellent.


As you probably understood, we do this on purpose. We believe it doesn't matter if you work late in the evening or early in the morning, but that the important thing is that you're going to work on something, and that the task has a certain value, in this case how much time it will take.

Then later on, you can worry about when exactly in the day to do it.

We don't want people to stop using their calendars, so we would encourage you to integrate it with Timely instead.

Appreciate the feedback though, really.


If you want automatic time tracking with durations, see if CreativeWorx TimeTracker fills the bill. It automatically activities within applications (Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Apple productivity, browsers) plus your calendar events. www.creativeworx.com


Have you considered a locally-hosted version? Cloud is a no-go for certain markets.

Otherwise, looks phenomenal. I've looked hard for an app that integrates time budgeting, scheduling, and calendaring, but never found anything good.


You can actually use the iPhone app without creating an account, so that should be work. But you won't be able to use the desktop web app without creating one.


Sweet!


Preface: I really like the overall look and feel, so consider these points really small nitpicks:

- Your "About" page is missing an "a" in the first line, right before "tiny".

- You could style the <select> tags on your registration form to match the other inputs, right now it looks a tad unfinished. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5912791 for example.


We love nitpicks! Thank you, will most definitively get these fixed.


Very small compliment (I like other things, but commenting about this one):

I love that your call to action button says "Watch the 1-min video". I NEVER click on product videos because I am afraid it will be 6-10 minutes of founders in the studio talking about how great the app is. With the specific detail of "1-min" I immediately watched the video and found out more about the app that I would have from reading the home page for 5-10 minutes.


This looks really great! Does this tool have any desktop apps for logging hours? I can't seem to find it on the website. This is the only must-have feature that's missing for me. Logging hours only from the website is not suitable for my workflow.


If you're looking for a comprehensive time tracking alternative, CreativeWorx TimeTracker has a desktop application in addition to a browser version. There's a new desktop application being released in about a week, and it's killer! Check it out: www.creativeworx.com


Thank you! We don't have a desktop app right now, but we want to get it done in the future. We are however working on some pretty cool integrations stuff with the web app and the native iPhone app, so stay tuned for that!


Definitively +1 on the desktop app. And more that just bc that fits better on some workflows is bc the kind of features that a desktop app leave you to implement. Currently my team is using timedoctor, i hate its ui/ux but they have this feature: "track keyboard activity" that lone is not impressive but their desktop app using this feature after a configurable period of time can alert me to ask if im still working on the selected task and if i don't answer he fallback to a "time break" activity. That is great bc right now with timely i can forget about a timer and let it grow for ever and later will be hard to remember when did I really ended doing that.

Great ui/ux I'm on trial now.. and i love what you got... but w/o this feature my team will keep using ugly timedoctor, nothing personal btw ;)


If you haven't seen it, I would recommend checking out Aaron Shell [1], the cross-platform desktop JS runtime environment that Github uses for Atom editor. If your app is mostly frontend JS with an API, porting it should be easy. If the backend is in node.js, porting it will be even easier.

[1] https://github.com/atom/atom-shell


Seems to overlap with, err, Timely, which has been around for a while now. I'll let them know (I'm an investor) http://www.gettimely.com


Actually, long story short, I launched a product called Timely long before gettimely.com. It has however been changed and restarted, and since ended up into this. I have already talked about this with the founder of your company ages ago :)


And he was okay with it? That seems surprising since your businesses are about as close in scope as you can get without actually overlapping. If I heard about Timely from a friend, and searched for a scheduling app called "timely" on the App Store or the internet, I would just assume the first one I landed on was the correct one. And if it was wrong, then I would see it doesn't do what I want, and leave.

Seems like the naming conflict could canmobalize sales for both of your companies. Why wouldn't you change the name? Especially if you knew so far ahead of time??


Also the name of an alarm app with 1M+ downloads https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.bitspin.tim...


Yeah, really annoying that one. I launched a product called Timely ages before those guys, but have since changed and restarted the whole thing into what you now see.


Not to mention the name and logo look a lot like these guys too: http://time.ly/ Doesn't anyone check these things first?


I am guessing you probably have some bade trademark news coming your way... cool app though

http://www.bitspin.ch/ (aka timely the clock app aquired by google)


If I were Google, I would've continued shopping, and acquired @matmik and Timelyapp.com as well:)


Love it. I wanted to build something just like this in my spare time for personal use. I only made it to the timing portion.

Any plans for Android in the future?


Thank you so much! :)

Absolutely! Started on the design, but we haven't done any programming just yet.


Going to need to change the Android app name, too. :-) http://www.bitspin.ch


Looks really promising...but without an API you are missing one of the best parts of the what makes Cloud (SaaS) so great.


We're almost there! The API is currently in beta: http://blog.timelyapp.com/post/86357933852/help-us-beta-test...


Awesome stuff! I did look and found some of your roadmap, but missed this. Can't wait to give it a go.


We're looking forward to having you test it! Email mathias@timelyapp.com, and I'll invite you to the beta if you want.


If you're looking to integrate with an automatic time capture platform with a RESTful API, checkout CreativeWorx TimeTracker. www.creativeworx.com


I'd love to see a $5/mo "me and my SO" type plan for this. Could use something nice for home


I have this same exact problem with it. Unfortunately they don't respond to support emails...


Crazy days with this and TechCrunch article going on. Lots of things to respond to – so sorry about that!


Were you thinking of a $5/mo for two users type of plan?


That is exactly it


matmik, not sure you remember but we met in SF.

I'm still amazed at the level of polish your product has. Lots of subtle animations and transitions.

What tools did you use to produce the video?


I remember! Mr. France! :)

Really appreciate your comment, thanks a bunch! We put a lot of time into the polish, so glad to hear people take notice.

I screen recorded everything on a Retina Macbook Pro. iPhone simulator and just a regular chrome browser for the web app.

Then I add the clips into after effects and create the 3d movements with Element3D. I'll export all the clips from there and do the final edits in Final Cut Pro X. Hope that helps :)


Great for logging hours, love the new mobile app!


Thank you!


Looks fantastic! Amazing job Mathias!


Thanks so much! Appreciate it :)


Awesome app, really clean and simple!


Thanks a bunch!


Is this basically Trello (w/ Plus for Trello) on a calendar-based grid?


Nah, this is pretty far from what you would use Trello for.


did you even watch the video? Trello uses lists (to mimic SCRUM), this uses days (to mimic a calendar). Not that similar.


Thanks for clarifying for us :)


No, hence my question.




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