For a while now, I've been using Chandler to keep track of my to-dos. Chandler is a semi-historic open source project which I've been following ever since I read Dreaming in Code (and in many ways, it's saga parallels ours at The Open Planning Project with our work on OpenPlans) I've been rooting for it through the last several releases, and have eagerly anticipated updates. So, I was intrigued when I came across this post, which compares a handful of new to-do management applications for Mac. My first reaction was "this field is getting pretty crowded," and my second was "interesting to see that Chandler's not on that list." Finally, my third reaction, after having checked out some of the tools, was "wow, these are just like Chandler, only better." Maybe it's because it takes forever for it to load up, or that it takes forever for it to shut down, or perhaps it's the fact that it heats up my computer and makes my fan go into overdrive every time I use it, but Chandler just hasn't been working very well for me. It's a shame, really, because the project has such a long history, and is backed by so many good intentions. But when it comes to the final level of polish and the feeling that the program gives you when you use it, it's just not there yet. Of the applications featured in the comparison, the two I looked closely at were OmniFocus and Things. OmniFocus is the more powerful of the two, and is actually quite similar to Chander in many ways (both have "Clean up" button in exactly the same place). Both are proprietary applications that come at a price (OmniFocus is $79 and Things is $49), but I'm not an open source hard-liner (I'm typing this on a Mac); I'm willing to pay for software if it actually makes my life easier, though of course I prefer to use and support open source tools. I've been using Things for a few days now, and in terms of usability and addictiveness it's got Chandler beat hands down (at least for my needs). It's still pre-release, but the fundamental experience is very good, and the really important details are done right. It does the things I need it to and doesn't try to do the rest. Creating, organizing, and viewing tasks is quick and easy, and the views they present me with let me focus on what I'm working on at the moment.
Above: Chandler's main screen
Above: OmniFocus' main screen
Above: Things' main screen So, the question is: how come these new applications are better (or seem better to me) than Chandler? Offhand, I can think up a few potential reasons:
Chandler paved the way for many innovative features in task management (e.g., turning tasks into calendar items). Not particularly likely.
And on to the more likely reasons:
Chandler is too complicated, and these other applications do less, better. Yes.
Chandler couldn't cross the chasm between early interested techies and the mainstream market. Seems true. Interestingly, Things seems to be starting with the mainstream market and doing well.
Chandler had too big a team and too much funding. This much seems to be widely understood. Looking through the project wiki, one can find years worth of theories and plans, but somehow those were never translated into actual, usable product, whereas Things was produced by a small, balanced team including just two developers.
It's too bad, of course, but it definitely provides another valuable case study in the danger of not getting real early enough.
"Release early and often" is a phrase often heard in software development, and is more like a mantra for most web development projects. The idea being that it's better to get something "out there" in a simple or reduced form, rather than wait and wait and wait for your grand plan to come together. (In Getting Real, 37signals calls this "half, not half-assed") Well, this applies equally well to projects outside the software realm, and there's a great example right here in Brooklyn. Anyone who walked over the Brooklyn Bridge this summer (possibly to see the waterfalls) probably noticed a new patch of park on an otherwise ignorable patch of land jutting out into the river. This is, of course, the first public taste of Brooklyn Bridge Park project, called Pier 1. It's a temporary park, on the nearest edge of what will become the first major section of the park. It's highly visible, and perfectly timed to capitalize on the buzz around the waterfalls. A few quotes from Going Coastal demonstrate the power of this approach:
"Since popping up with little fanfare June 26 in Brooklyn Heights on a sliver of the future waterfront park’s construction site, a temporary playground at the edge of Pier 1 is giving the public its first real sense of what the long-delayed development will bring to the Big Apple."
I love the "with little fanfare" bit -- no need to make a grand launch; just put it out there and let people find it. And of course...
"... critics of the long-delayed park project are still questioning why it took the city and state so long to offer a first glimpse of the breathtaking waterfront access the planned 85-acre park will bring."
It sounds like a change of administration was what was needed to get things moving in the "getting real" direction;
"Even the development’s biggest critics agree that the project only gathered steam in November after Regina Meyer, a longtime Brooklyn planning director, was appointed president of the state-city Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp.
She replaced Wendy Leventer, a Pataki administration holdover who was fired in March 2007 after the Post reported the agency at that time had spent $16.5 million over the previous five years with little to show expect mounting legal fees and continuously changing project renderings.
But this past March, construction kicked off despite there only being enough government funding to build about two-thirds of the park. Including $6.1 million recently donated by the City Council and Borough President Marty Markowitz’s office, the project’s current budget now totals $231.1 million.
Meyer said she felt it was important to finally get the project going and then lobby to fill the remaining budget shortfall at a later date." [emphasise mine]
This is really the important part, and where the power of the "early-and-often" approach is really evident. Instead of tweaking the plans forever, Meyer decided to just go and build something (anything!), to show progress and give people a glimpse of how awesome things will be. And man, it is awesome. The photo above really doesn't do it justice, but the view from the new (temporary, mind you!) Pier 1 is incredible, and it really opens up the waterfront in an entirely new way.
For a while now, I've been using Chandler to keep track of my to-dos. Chandler is a semi-historic open source project which I've been following ever since I read Dreaming in Code (and in many ways, it's saga parallels ours at The Open Planning Project with our work on OpenPlans) I've been rooting for it through the last several releases, and have eagerly anticipated updates. So, I was intrigued when I came across this post, which compares a handful of new to-do management applications for Mac. My first reaction was "this field is getting pretty crowded," and my second was "interesting to see that Chandler's not on that list." Finally, my third reaction, after having checked out some of the tools, was "wow, these are just like Chandler, only better." Maybe it's because it takes forever for it to load up, or that it takes forever for it to shut down, or perhaps it's the fact that it heats up my computer and makes my fan go into overdrive every time I use it, but Chandler just hasn't been working very well for me. It's a shame, really, because the project has such a long history, and is backed by so many good intentions. But when it comes to the final level of polish and the feeling that the program gives you when you use it, it's just not there yet. Of the applications featured in the comparison, the two I looked closely at were OmniFocus and Things. OmniFocus is the more powerful of the two, and is actually quite similar to Chander in many ways (both have "Clean up" button in exactly the same place). Both are proprietary applications that come at a price (OmniFocus is $79 and Things is $49), but I'm not an open source hard-liner (I'm typing this on a Mac); I'm willing to pay for software if it actually makes my life easier, though of course I prefer to use and support open source tools. I've been using Things for a few days now, and in terms of usability and addictiveness it's got Chandler beat hands down (at least for my needs). It's still pre-release, but the fundamental experience is very good, and the really important details are done right. It does the things I need it to and doesn't try to do the rest. Creating, organizing, and viewing tasks is quick and easy, and the views they present me with let me focus on what I'm working on at the moment.
Above: Chandler's main screen
Above: OmniFocus' main screen
Above: Things' main screen So, the question is: how come these new applications are better (or seem better to me) than Chandler? Offhand, I can think up a few potential reasons:
Chandler paved the way for many innovative features in task management (e.g., turning tasks into calendar items). Not particularly likely.
And on to the more likely reasons:
Chandler is too complicated, and these other applications do less, better. Yes.
Chandler couldn't cross the chasm between early interested techies and the mainstream market. Seems true. Interestingly, Things seems to be starting with the mainstream market and doing well.
Chandler had too big a team and too much funding. This much seems to be widely understood. Looking through the project wiki, one can find years worth of theories and plans, but somehow those were never translated into actual, usable product, whereas Things was produced by a small, balanced team including just two developers.
It's too bad, of course, but it definitely provides another valuable case study in the danger of not getting real early enough.
"Release early and often" is a phrase often heard in software development, and is more like a mantra for most web development projects. The idea being that it's better to get something "out there" in a simple or reduced form, rather than wait and wait and wait for your grand plan to come together. (In Getting Real, 37signals calls this "half, not half-assed") Well, this applies equally well to projects outside the software realm, and there's a great example right here in Brooklyn. Anyone who walked over the Brooklyn Bridge this summer (possibly to see the waterfalls) probably noticed a new patch of park on an otherwise ignorable patch of land jutting out into the river. This is, of course, the first public taste of Brooklyn Bridge Park project, called Pier 1. It's a temporary park, on the nearest edge of what will become the first major section of the park. It's highly visible, and perfectly timed to capitalize on the buzz around the waterfalls. A few quotes from Going Coastal demonstrate the power of this approach:
"Since popping up with little fanfare June 26 in Brooklyn Heights on a sliver of the future waterfront park’s construction site, a temporary playground at the edge of Pier 1 is giving the public its first real sense of what the long-delayed development will bring to the Big Apple."
I love the "with little fanfare" bit -- no need to make a grand launch; just put it out there and let people find it. And of course...
"... critics of the long-delayed park project are still questioning why it took the city and state so long to offer a first glimpse of the breathtaking waterfront access the planned 85-acre park will bring."
It sounds like a change of administration was what was needed to get things moving in the "getting real" direction;
"Even the development’s biggest critics agree that the project only gathered steam in November after Regina Meyer, a longtime Brooklyn planning director, was appointed president of the state-city Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp.
She replaced Wendy Leventer, a Pataki administration holdover who was fired in March 2007 after the Post reported the agency at that time had spent $16.5 million over the previous five years with little to show expect mounting legal fees and continuously changing project renderings.
But this past March, construction kicked off despite there only being enough government funding to build about two-thirds of the park. Including $6.1 million recently donated by the City Council and Borough President Marty Markowitz’s office, the project’s current budget now totals $231.1 million.
Meyer said she felt it was important to finally get the project going and then lobby to fill the remaining budget shortfall at a later date." [emphasise mine]
This is really the important part, and where the power of the "early-and-often" approach is really evident. Instead of tweaking the plans forever, Meyer decided to just go and build something (anything!), to show progress and give people a glimpse of how awesome things will be. And man, it is awesome. The photo above really doesn't do it justice, but the view from the new (temporary, mind you!) Pier 1 is incredible, and it really opens up the waterfront in an entirely new way.
In doing some photo hunting for a side project, I came across this gem of a photo on Flickr. Riding the subway all over the city, I often think about the fact that most great subway moments (and many great city moments, for that matter) go unrecorded. Perhaps this is part of the beauty of it -- there are only participants; no watchers -- but I often wish I had a camera built into my eyes to catch the great little moments that happen almost every day. Musicians on the train are a real special treat; I love the fact that for just a few minutes, perhaps just the distance between two stops, a little concert takes place. For that short period of time, riders goes from being disconnected strangers to inadvertent partners, with feet tapping and heads nodding. This photo has an almost Rockwell-esque quality to it, and you've gotta love the angry glare from the woman in the corner.
In doing some photo hunting for a side project, I came across this gem of a photo on Flickr. Riding the subway all over the city, I often think about the fact that most great subway moments (and many great city moments, for that matter) go unrecorded. Perhaps this is part of the beauty of it -- there are only participants; no watchers -- but I often wish I had a camera built into my eyes to catch the great little moments that happen almost every day. Musicians on the train are a real special treat; I love the fact that for just a few minutes, perhaps just the distance between two stops, a little concert takes place. For that short period of time, riders goes from being disconnected strangers to inadvertent partners, with feet tapping and heads nodding. This photo has an almost Rockwell-esque quality to it, and you've gotta love the angry glare from the woman in the corner.
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