This is not an “I hate this app” post. Far from it. In fact, I really, really like this app. But I almost didn’t bother trying it.

A while back my friend Nando Tweeted the following: “Seriously, best productivity tool. Ever. WorkFlowy.” Nando has shared some great links in the past. I respect him. So I was very motivated to check it out. I clicked, and this is what I saw:

I was immediately skeptical. What is this product? Who makes it? Why should I hand over my email when you’ve done nothing to instill trust in me?

So I closed the tab, and responded to Nando saying I wasn’t willing to sign up for something I knew nothing about. He pinged me the next day and asked me (I’m paraphrasing) if I’d gotten over myself and tried it. He said he’d been using it for months and loved it. He also mentioned that there was a short intro video if I’d only scroll down a bit.

Sure enough. There’s a video. But it’s below the fold, and there’s nothing indicating there’s more on the page. Yes, this page is perfect for mobile, but that’s no excuse any more — there are other ways to handle that.

A simple link saying “what’s this?” or an arrow pointing down, implying there’s more on the page would help a great deal. I was motivated to explore this product and I left without learning a thing. Yes, I signed up after additional prodding, but how many people come to this page and think “nope, not going there.”?

The Good News About Workflowy

The good news is this really is an awesome app. Remember when wikis were gaining a bit of traction, and we had this idea that you could just start entering info and it would sort of “organize itself?” Yeah, that turned out to be wishful thinking.

Workflowy inevitably works the way your brain works. It’s drop-dead simple and flexible. There’s a really simple, intuitive tagging system, and it works just as well on your main computer as it does on your mobile devices.

And as much as the initial experience is flawed, the tutorial once you’re in is excellent. A couple of minutes with the walkthrough and you’ll totally get just how useful this tool can be. Like Nando, I’ve been using it every day ever since.

One screen from the Workflowy walkthrough

But really, Workflowy — with some simple tweaks to your home page, I’ll bet your user acquisition numbers would skyrocket.

How often have you wondered what the pixel measurement of a given image or space was on a web page? How wide is that column? How much room do I have for a banner?

Kevin A. Freitas has created a brilliant add-on that works with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari called MeasureIt. Once installed (in Firefox, anyway) you’ll see a small ruler-like icon in the lower left corner of the browser window. Click on it, and you get a crosshairs cursor that lets you measure anywhere within the browser window.

Figuring out web page measurements used to be a pain. If I wanted to know the size of an image, I’d copy the image and open it in an image editing program to check. If I wanted to know the size of an available space, I’d make an educated guess and do trial and error until I got it right.

Those days are gone, thankfully :)

Here’s an example – I went to Google and measured (roughly) the size of the Google logo.

Go get the add-on or plug-in or whatever your browser of choice calls it and give it a try. Then let me know what you think!
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I’ve been using Evernote for over 2 years (I checked. I thought it was longer, actually, since it’s such a regular part of my work process). I only recently started using it for moodboards. A tweet from @Evernote asking if anyone used it this way caught my eye, I responded, we emailed, and voila! My thoughts are right there on the Evernote blog as part of their Creative Series. Nice!

If you’re a designer and are unfamiliar with moodboards, definitely give this a read. They’re a powerful tool to add to your presentation/process arsenal.

If you haven’t tried Evernote, you really owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s web-based, but there are also desktop, iPhone, and iPad apps that sync to it, and of course bookmarklets that make it easy to clip and save stuff to your notebooks. I’ve used it not only for moodboards, but for market research, read-it-later types of things, recipe collections, shopping research, wishlists, idea lists… the possibilities are endless.

I’ve tried quite a few project management programs over the years. Most have been overly complicated and bloated with features I just didn’t care about.

Web 2.0 brought us some solid new options. I use Basecamp for most projects these days, and I love it. But it lacks the ability to show me a visual overview for the timeline of a project.

Enter Tom’s Planner. This is a simple, elegant web-based app for creating Gantt Charts. You name your own project categories and steps and choose your own colors and labels for the bars. The interface is very intuitive once you get in the habit of right-clicking for many of the functions (which they helpfully remind you to do when you get started). Right click to start a time period, give it a color, then click and drag to set the proper length of time. New colors automatically show up in a key at the bottom, where you can name them.

You can also easily edit the timelines one at a time or as a group — just click and drag to select a bunch of rows and move them. You can add your own logo to the chart.

Charts can be exported to MS Project, .png, or published online. The charts themselves are saved on your hard drive as ASCII files, which seemed a little odd, but the contextual help made it a breeze. You can print directly from the chart, but the options don’t include US paper sizes. I’m guessing that will be updated at some point.

They’ve got a bunch of templates for you to work from if you’d rather not start from scratch, including templates for web design, gardening, construction, and a handful of others.

I jumped in and used it for a real project right off the bat. Not only was I thrilled to be able to so easily create a schedule, it turned out to be a great way to show clients exactly why a simple website can take over a month. My client loved the professional presentation of the schedule, and I didn’t have to do any more explaining about time for content gathering and feedback.

And in my dreams…

… Tom’s Planner would sync with Basecamp. I could click on a time period on the Gantt Chart and automatically update milestones in Basecamp. Maybe some day :)

Tom’s Planner is in Beta right now. At some point they’ll implement a monthly charge, but if you sign up now you’re guaranteed a free year. So go sign up right now.