I got some feedback on my blog and my current project dalister – the productivity driven startpage! Yeah! It’s great to see that even though the number of visitors is still very low it is increasing and people seem to be interested in what I’m doing and writing about. Benny from www.vanderbeurse.de (a blog about financial topics) commented on my previous post regarding dalister and mentioned remember the milk as a potential alternative to dalister. I have used remember the milk in the past but still find it too cumbersome to actually use it as the nice, handy and easy to use tool I have in mind.

What dalister must look/feeel/work like

When I think about todo lists I think about that piece of paper I have at work that I take wherever I go in the office. I just grab a pen and write things down. It only requires two actions basically (grabbing the pen and writing stuff down) and that’s how I think a todo list should work. Easy, fast access. And that’s the idea I want to center dalister around. It is not about creating yet another standalone webapp that let’s you create todo lists. It is about creating a daily work tool that is integrated into your workflow and allows you to access all the basic work and productivity tools (todo list manager, notes, reminders, calendar, quick file upload, etc.) with a minimum number of clicks and/or actions. The easiest way to do that is by using a startpage that offers you immediate access to all these tiny little tools.

I realized that I might be talking too much about the todo list feature of dalister as it is just one of the various (potential) productivity/work tools I would like to see implemented as part of dalister. However, this is the module I am currently working on and the one I would like to test at work. But in order to give those interested in what dalister could look like a more complete view on the project I compiled a list of potential features and tools that could be built into it:

• todo list manager
• notes
• reminders (via sms, email, automated call, popup, …?)
• birthday list
• quick file upload
• bookmarks
• quick search (e.g. google, leo, wikipedia etc; all customizable of course)
• email access or at least a basic inbox view
• calendar

Dalister as a webapp platform

Tools for all these little things exist already but no one has put them together in a nice and easy to use start page yet. I was actually thinking that dalister could evolve as some sort of online webapp platform where you can purchase and run small applications based on Javascript and AJAX. iGoogle does that already (without charging you for it though) with its gadget directory where you can select certain gadgets for your iGoogle start page. Most of the apps/gadgets you can find there though are poorly designed or were developed with the aim of maximizing advertising revenue. It is hard to find really really good apps/gadgets in that catalogue! Even Google’s own todo manager for iGoogle sucks! Doesn’t that mean there is a potential for a high quality start page provider? Dalister could be the Apple of browser start pages.

I’ll try to write some more blog posts about dalister in the next couple of weeks to further develop the concept and also work a bit on the actual business model. Right now it is all just in my head and I guess it would be quite helpful to write all those thoughts down. You are of course more than welcome to comment, criticize or just say hello whenever you feel like it.

Filed under: Business Ideas by Stefan
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