With a domain like that, you can forgive the domain-geek in me for gushing over Do.com, a new social productivity app, which launched in private beta today. I first stumbled across the site a few weeks back when it was still in early alpha stage. My first thoughts then, as they are even today, were: that is one heck of a domain name!
So when I finally got my invite for the app’s beta launch, I couldn’t wait to camp out and test the service out. Someone paid a hefty, multi-million dollar fee for this domain name; it would only be appropriate that they utilize it properly.
First impressions: Like Asana (which I covered a while back), Do.com is a ‘social productivity’ app. It means you can create tasks, to-do lists and projects, share them with your co-workers and work together to get things done more efficiently. You can assign tasks to individual team members, follow tasks, share files and collaborate on projects.
After logging into your account, you are deposited straight to the dashboard which shows all your tasks, projects and notes at a glance. Tasks are organized via ‘sections’ (say, ‘Now’, ‘High Priority’, ‘Low Priority’, etc.). Click on ‘Create Task’ and a right pane pops up where you can assign a task to particular team members, ‘subscribe’ to the task (i.e. get updates on its status) and share files with other members on the team.
You can assign tasks to individual team members, follow their progress, and share files
Once you’ve assigned a task to a team member (who must be on the site, of course), you can create a due-date, a description, and add it to an existing project (or create a new one). You can also add ‘subscribers’ who will get regular updates on any changes made to the task. The service integrates with Google Docs, so sharing files for a task is easy as well.
'Subscribe' is a neat way to follow a task's progress
You can sort tasks by section, by due date, by your ‘sent’ tasks, by completed tasks, and even create a custom sorting filter.
Projects can be private or accessible to everyone
You can also juggle around multiple projects, each with its own list of tasks. Projects can be made private to a select group of people, or accessible to everyone.
Do.com doubles up as a neat little notepad as well. You can create simple notes, attach them to a task, and even select text from a note and create new tasks with it. All notes are assigned are color coded and searchable.
The notepad is simple, but useful
Despite being in beta, Do.com is fast, slick and effortless to use. It is powerful, feature rich, and should definitely give upstarts in this field – most prominently, Asana.com – some stiff competition.
Oh, as for Asana.com itself, there are remarkable similarities in how these two sites function. They are both billed as ‘social productivity’ apps, both have remarkably similar interfaces (though Asana’s is most staid), and both have nearly the same list of features.
I like Do.com’s ‘Notes’ feature though, which Asana lacks. It’s not a fully-featured notepad, but it gets the job done. I find myself scribbling down reminders on post-it notes and notepad files on my desktop. Perhaps I’ll buck that habit and start using Do.com’s notepad instead.
This is an exciting little app (also available for the iPhone, by the way), and holds a lot of promise. The company hasn’t released any information on monetization yet, though in all likelihood, it will follow a paid model (like Asana) for enterprise users, free for individuals and small companies.
Oh and that domain name will definitely turn some heads as well.
