TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

To Do: Build things that people actually use

There’s a bunch of buzz today around Dabble’s (yay Canada) new Facebook To-Do list application which boasts a bevy of good features and a typically web-20-attractive UI. Investor Kedrosky points out the social aspect of it (the ability to assign stuff to others and prompt them to get things done), while TC has a good roundup, in which Arrington expresses a “tepid” reaction.

And “tepid” is the reaction that I’d agree with. Not out of some objection to the Facebook walled garden or outsourced social-net model, but more to the core concept of online To-Do lists themselves. I think I speak for the vast majority of people when I say that unless your a professional PM, To-Do lists are ad-hoc affairs, with scrawled notes jotted at inopportune moments, collected in a miscellany of crumpled papers. I’ve tried using online tools before (TaDa List) but have found that usage drops off rapidly after a brief period of initial enthusiasm as the tool just doesn’t support real-world use cases. I always end up with paper to-do lists jotted down on the go that are out of sync with the web to-do list that in itself becomes a chore to update. IMHO, a good moleskine is a better option.

So - I’m not bothering with online to-do lists until there’s a really good mobile/web option that I can access on my phone, and online.