Nowdothis, maybe the easiest web 2.0 service ever

Written on July 24, 2008 – 10:28 am
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor

I am not a particular fan of GTD contextual todo lists, they make me grumpy and busy; instead I apply the just-on-time principle: I write down the five most important things in the evening on a paper, and try to accomplish that the next day. And with New York based Jakob Lodwick’s new web application now do this, I can put it online with ease.

Nowdothis.com is surprisingly simple, the online todo is environmental too. Simply go to the site, add the things you need to do in the list, and click “done” when you finish something. It works on any browser, including the Iphone. When you close the browser, your todo will be saved on your particular device/computer.

We have seen simple concepts as Tumblr, Twitter etc. to become highly successful. nowdothis is so simple and effective, that it’s an excellent example to many complicated websites out there. It might be the easiest web 2.0 service out there, what do you think?

I hope you like that post!

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gtd, gui, todo, web 2.0

About the author: Joop is an entrepreneur and blogger located in Seoul, South Korea. Read his blog here.

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12 comments/trackbacks to “Nowdothis, maybe the easiest web 2.0 service ever”

Oct 16, 2008: Did StumbleUpon and Digg just missed an emerging market?
[...] it out for a while and came across some funny websites. I think the site is very simple (and I am known to like that) and effective, but I am unsure how websites are being presented to the users. I [...]

By Patrick de Laive on Jul 24, 2008

With all due respect…. this is not going to work. people have their own ways to come up with todo lists, some use sticky notes, some use todo in their mail program or use draft mails as a todo list and others write things down on paper, just to be able to scratch things off the list (that is always a good feeling).
the problem with nowdothis is that it doesn’t solve a problem in a better way than the alternatives. Oh and did I mention that it doesn’t have any social component in it? Twitter and tumblr are simple, successful AND social. I think nowdothis only applies to the first s.

[Reply]
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Jul 24, 2008

I liked it! Think about it as Twitter. You could say it lacks a lot of stuff but isn’t that its strength?

[Reply]
By Patrick de Laive on Jul 24, 2008

@Boris strength…? Twitter is social, that is it’s strength. Would you tweet if nobody else could see it? Twitter is a new way of communication. You ask a question and somebody out there might know the answer and gives you an instant reply.

Let’s take on a bet. I bet you’re not going to use nowdothis for more than 4 days.

[Reply]
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Jul 24, 2008

@patrick: I know it is not social. I’m not saying it is completely the same as Twitter but I like the ‘less is more’ look & feel at Nowdothis.com just as I like it at Twitter.com.

Oh, and I’m SURE I won’t be using it in 4 days. I was never planning on using it in the first place because I don’t use todo lists at all. But it made me smile when I checked it out and I can imagine other people using it.

[Reply]
By Jeroen Bakker on Jul 24, 2008

> that it’s an excellent example to many complicated websites out there

I hope you don’t mean this seriously.

[Reply]
By Patrick de Laive on Jul 24, 2008

@boris come on, lets face it. This is a shitty service, build in 10 minutes and let’s not waste our time on it. (although I like the discussion :) ).

@Joop love your posts, but this one misses its point. Yes, Less is More, but this is a shitty example. Next one please

[Reply]
By Joop Dorresteijn on Jul 24, 2008

@Jeroen Bakker, damn right I am serious. I know that from a developer perspective, the service might seem simple and can be created in less then an hour; but what I love is that it’s just that… simple.
But I would agree with you, you won’t see me consulting the app to big media companies just for that. But for the record: The Paradox of Choice is a book that discusses the problem with offering to much to customers, and in line with that thought I really like the workout. Jakob might as well made an application like remember the milk but made somethingmore simple and intuitive, a good lesson for many web-services that think from the login, captcha, validator, community & bloated services perspective.

[Reply]
By Jeroen Bakker on Jul 24, 2008

I’m not a developer, I’m a entrepreneur/marketeer/sales person. So what I’m looking for is value, added value. So I’m not interested in the fact that it works like this, I’m surprised to read that you find something with no value ‘an excellent example’. In that case a brick is an even better example to many complicated websites out there.

This is, like Patrick commented before, an idea. But as a product or as an example it’s shitty because it solves nothing, it doesn’t add any value to anything. Let’s strive to build stuff with value!

(By the way, we’re big fans of keeping things simple, to the point and nowhere near one-size-fits-all. That’s one of our core philosophies when designing and developing new software products.)

[Reply]
By Bram Kok on Jul 24, 2008

Very cool.

I love stuff that Lodwick makes or is involved in: vimeo, tumblr and muxtape.

And I love minimalism.

[Reply]
By Lodwick on Jul 24, 2008

@Jeroen, paragin.nl is not simple.

[Reply]
By Jeroen Bakker on Jul 24, 2008

I’m not referring to paragin.nl in my comment earlier. That’s just a site :)

But nevertheless, I’m not dissing your work. It’s fun to build I’m sure, and that’s of course fine by me. I’m just questioning some words in this blog post.

[Reply]