Jabber bot is now hmtasks@hiveminder.com by Shawn M Moore on 2008-05-08 00:04:53 (permalink)

Unfortunately, our Jabber bot has been down an awful lot lately (due to difficulties over at jabber.org). Because we enjoy using the bot as much as you folks do, we decided to move it to hmtasks@hiveminder.com.

We'll be keeping hmtasks@jabber.org around for at least a little while, but you should switch over soon.

We're now running a full Jabber server, but we aren't sure what to do with it (beyond hmtasks). Let us know if you have any ideas!

Show your longer lists on a single page by Jesse Vincent on 2008-04-03 16:42:07 (permalink)

We've just made a small, long overdue, change that many of you should find quite refreshing. (Ok, it will mean that you'll find Hiveminder to require less refreshing, but what's a small semantic quibble among friends?

We've bumped up the number of entries on your tasklist pages to 20. At the same time, if you visit your preferences, you'll find a new "tasks per page" setting. You can now tell Hiveminder to show you 10, 20, 50 tasks per page. Or you can do away with paging entirely and have Hiveminder just show all tasks on a single page.

Hiveminder in your email client by Jesse Vincent on 2008-03-03 17:35:04 (permalink)

I'm really excited. I mean, I'm excited every time we launch a new Hiveminder feature, but this one has been the "Killer App" for me ever since I started playing with the first test versions a few months ago.

We've made it a priority to make Hiveminder easy to access, no matter where you are or what you're doing. That's why you can already get at Hiveminder from your web browser, mobile browser, iCal, Atom and plain text feeds, Google Calendar, iGoogle, AOL Instant Messenger, Jabber, unix command-line, Twitter,  SMS (through Twitter), with.hm, published addresses, Quicksilver, or through our Web API (including just-released support for OAuth).

Today, we're releasing Hiveminder for your email client.  (It's a Pro feature. If you read to the end of this blog post, you can save a few bucks when you sign up for Pro.)

First-class email client support

To use Hiveminder in your email client, it needs to support IMAP and SSL or TLS. Thankfully, that's just about every email client out there these days. Here at Best Practical, we've been using Mail.app on the mac and iPhone, Thunderbird and Evolution on Linux, Profimail on Series 60, Claws-Mail and Modest on the cute little Nokia internet tablets and even bit the bullet and tested things out with Outlook Express on Windows XP. Beta users have been using everything from Outlook to "OfflineIMAP", a unixy tool to sync your email to a bunch of text files on disk.

Once you set it up, all the tasks on your Todo list show up in a new Inbox in your email client.  Hiveminder will create email folders for each of your groups and show your tasks broken down by who's responsible for them, too. It's that easy.

You get all the details

Every task shows up like a mail message. Inside, you'll find everything Hiveminder's tracking about the task. Due date, summary, tags, even the task's full history - it's all there!

Whenever you go online, Hiveminder will automatically update each and every task in your inbox.

Update tasks from your mail client

Hiveminder's IMAP interface is designed with "magic" folders to let you manage your tasks. Just drag a task from your Inbox  to "Completed" and Hiveminder will take care of the update. Out of the box, there are also folders for common operations like "take this task" and "hide this task for...."  Moving a message from your email Inbox to your Hiveminder Inbox will create a task for you. Dragging a task to a group does what you'd expect.

(Of course, you can still use your email client's "Reply function to add a comment to a task.  Hiveminder sets every task's return address so replies get routed to the right place.)

Full offline access

The protocol we use to get Hiveminder into your email client (IMAP) is designed to make offline access "just work."  Once you've set up your email client to work with Hiveminder, you can work offline, just like you do with email.  Drag tasks to "Completed", hide tasks away for two weeks or even get to "Inbox Zero" nirvana by dragging tasks into your Hiveminder inbox.  The next time you go online, your client will talk to Hiveminder and synchronize everything.

Free for Hiveminder Pro users

If you're already a Hiveminder Pro user, the new IMAP functionality is a free upgrade. If you're not Pro yet, today is your lucky day.  Actually, any day before March 10th is your lucky day. Just use the coupon IWANTIMAP at https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade. We'll knock the price down to $24 for your first year. That's just $2 per month for your first year.

To get started with a new Hiveminder account, visit https://hiveminder.com/splash/signup/.

When you're ready to set up Hiveminder for your email client, visit http://hiveminder.com/help/reference/IMAP/Login-options.html

Hiveminder Loves You! (And now you can use Twitter and SMS with Hiveminder) by Shawn M Moore on 2008-02-14 13:06:51 (permalink)

There's nothing romantic about a gift of todo lists. There. We said it. But we wanted to offer you a little something to show you how much we love you. For one day only, use the coupon code HIVEMINDERLOVE to get 25% off of a year of Hiveminder Pro. Just visit:

https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

But, we're not writing just to tell you how much we love you. We have another present for you today. We've been spending an awful lot of time using Twitter to broadcast what we're up to. And we've spent enough time leaving ourselves memos by Twitter that we decided it was time to do something.

Today we're launching Hiveminder Integration for Twitter. If you're eager to get going, you can get started right now by visiting:

http://hiveminder.com/prefs/twitter

Using Hiveminder by Twitter works a lot like our IM and Jabber interfaces with a few important differences to take advantages of everything Twitter has to offer.

Twitter lets you send private messages using the "d" command; to address messages straight to Hiveminder, just prefix them with "d hmtasks". You can use any of the Hiveminder IM commands to work with your existing tasks.

To create your first task from Twitter, just tweet "d hmtasks call my mom tonight". Hiveminder will create the task and then tweet you back with the task id.

If you want to do a bit more, just tweet "d hmtasks help" to find out how.

One of the coolest things about Twitter is the ability to broadcast your thoughts and status to all your friends. Now you can add things to your todo list and let your friends know what you're up to at the same time. Just include "@hmtasks" somewhere in your tweet and Hiveminder will take care of the rest. And your friends might just help pressure you into getting stuff done ;)

I've saved the best for last. Through Twitter, you can now update Hiveminder by SMS. In the US, just text your tweets to 40404. Outside the US, you'll want to refer to Twitter's SMS help.

hiveminder-users forum by Jesse Vincent on 2008-01-31 14:19:32 (permalink)

We've had a fair bit of interest in an end-user forum for Hiveminder users, so we've gone ahead and set one up.

If you're interested in joining, visit http://groups.google.com/group/hiveminder-users and sign up. We don't have any "firm" plans for the group yet. It's not an official support channel, but you can bet that a fair number of folks from Best Practical will be hanging around.

Faster task reviews; Improved mobile UI by Jesse Vincent on 2008-01-21 00:18:34 (permalink)

I had a bit of time this weekend, since I wasn't busy with client work and most of my friends were off at Arisia or The MIT Mystery Hunt.

I took advantage of the solitude to do some work on task review and the mobile interface. Review has been far too slow for far too long. It was one of the earliest parts of Hiveminder we implemented and it desperately needed updating. I took the time to rethink the buttons available within the interface as well. We'd love to know if review feels faster to you.

Mobile got more of an overhaul. You can now view task details, edit them and even show full histories. We've also made mobile prettier and more iPhone friendly. Try it out and tell us what you think!

Developers! Use and abuse our API, please! by Jesse Vincent on 2008-01-18 14:17:37 (permalink)

The Hiveminder API has seen a fair amount of love over the past few months (though certainly not enough documentation yet, we know). We've finally set up a mailing list for API developers to share tips and tricks, discuss your latest API client library or announce your new Hiveminder-using tool. Join us at http://groups.google.com/group/hiveminder-api.

Go Pro Today! by Jesse Vincent on 2008-01-16 15:18:15 (permalink)

Today, we're launching Hiveminder Pro. It's $30/year (but read on to find out how to save a few bucks.) For your money, you get:

Reports

Pretty charts and graphs are a great motivator and they can provide useful input about how you work. One of the folks here at Best Practical found out that he tends to get more work done on Wednesday than on every other day of the week combined and that his most productive times are when everyone else is out of the office at lunch. Of course, Hiveminder Pro reports are also available for your groups, so you can see who's overloaded, who's slacking off and whether you're getting ahead or falling behind. To turn on graphs and charts, visit https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

Attachments

Many of you who use Hiveminder to collaborate with team members both inside and outside your organization have told us that you'd really like to use Hiveminder to share documents related to your tasks. The wait is over. As of today, each Pro user has a 500MB task attachment quota. You can work with attachments through the Web UI or simply attach them to tasks you create by email. Attachments you sent in before we created Pro accounts will magically appear when you upgrade at https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

Saved lists

Hiveminder makes it easy to search and sort your task list. But until today, you needed to redo your searches day after day. Hiveminder Pro gives you a "Save list" link on every task list. It's easy to build a list of all items tagged "shopping" or everything you need to do for your boss. We have a bunch more things you'll be able to do with your saved lists soon, too! To start saving your lists, visit https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

SSL Security

On today's wider web, protecting your information from prying eyes is increasingly important to many of you. Hiveminder has always protected your password when you log in, but today we've enabled SSL (https) encrypted logins for ALL Hiveminder users. Pro users can choose to protect all their interactions with Hiveminder by visiting https://hiveminder.com to log in. To protect your account with SSL, visit https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

with.hm

I've saved my favorite for last. Hiveminder has always made it easy for you to create incoming addresses so others can send you tasks by email, but until today it was still hard to assign a task to someone else from your email client. Today, we're introducing a never-before-seen way to talk to an application from any email client.

Once you set up your secret code in your Hiveminder Pro settings, you can send a task to anyone on the planet by appending ".mysecret.with.hm" to their email address. You don't need to do anything to configure your email client.

If I wanted to ask the president to give me a balanced budget, I'd open up my email client and dash off a note like this:

To: president@whitehouse.gov.mysecret.with.hm 
Subject: Balanced budget, please?

It would be great if you could take care of this next week!

Thanks, 
Jesse

Hiveminder Pro will make a task and notify the President that I've assigned him a task. If he's an existing Hiveminder user, the task will pop into his todo list. If not, he'll get an email with a URL to view and reply to the task I assigned him. To get started assigning
tasks by email, just visit https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

It's time to go Pro!

Hiveminder Pro accounts are just $30/year, but since you're a friend of ours (or a friend of a friend), we'd like to offer you (and your friends) an additional $5 discount Just enter LAUNCHCODE at https://hiveminder.com/account/upgrade

If you know someone (or many someones) who could use the gift of productivity, you can use your coupon to give them Hiveminder Pro at https://hiveminder.com/account/gift

In the coming weeks and months, we'll be adding a number of other really cool features to Hiveminder and Hiveminder Pro. We'd love to hear your feature suggestions. Just drop them in the "feedback" box on the left-hand side of every page on the site.

Be Productive,

Jesse, for Hiveminder

THURSDAY EVENING: Hiveminder will be going out for Coffee by Jesse Vincent on 2007-12-26 15:33:32 (permalink)

This Thursday evening at about 9PM US/Eastern (6PM Pacific - 2AM Friday GMT), Hiveminder has a coffee date scheduled with another website. While Hiveminder's out, we'll be taking the time to perform a small hardware upgrade. If everything goes well, Hiveminder will likely only be away for a few minutes. At the outside, we expect to restore service within an hour. This outage will impact all services, including todo.pl, IM and tasks by email, though email you send while the site is down will be processed when service is restored.

Faster. Slower. Faster. Slower *Boom* by Jesse Vincent on 2007-12-18 00:07:38 (permalink)

Things around here have felt a bit like a roller coaster of late. We've been hard at work making Hiveminder faster for you. That's led to us making some experimental changes that...haven't worked out as well as we'd hoped.

Tonight, in particular, we got bit by some of these changes, coupled with an abusive end user, leading to an intensely bad experience for all of you (and all of us). This isn't the sort of service you deserve and we're working to fix it before we roll out Hiveminder Pro. The cool new features (and the ability for you to pay us for Hiveminder) are really important to us, but we don't want to launch them until the service is purring like a kitten.

Again, we're really sorry that the quality of service we've been providing isn't as excellent as it should be.

-Jesse, for Hiveminder