What is Podums?

I’ve decided to put the specs into a blog post with the hopes that I will start the feedback loop with you now. I’d love your thoughts on the whole concept while we build the first version this week.

Podums – Play your to-do’s

What does it do: Give users a fun incentive to continue using a to-do list to track and complete your projects using game mechanics (badges, points, achievements) and social incentive. It will be an iPhone app first and eventually be a web app as well.

What are we making: A task management iPhone app (to-do’s put into categories – life mission, work mission, mission critical) Set task, importance of each + time to finish task. Award badges + awards for achievements.

How will we know when it is useful?: When I feel incentive to contribute checking back in and updating my to-do’s. Also, when I feel incentive to complete them on time aside from personal guilt. For example – When I feel guilty or rewarded when I see I got something finished late or early. (I want the next badge or more points, etc)

Social incentive: using the short url podu.ms, auto tweet out when you don’t do something or are late at completing a task from your due time. Social incentive to keep you accountable. ie.

“I failed to complete ____ task on time and lost 3 points http://podu.ms/te3ad”

Alternatively,

“I just finished ____ critical task and gained 20 points http://podu.ms/f82dex”

The link will go to their Podums page where it will show their points breakdown. The idea is this also makes you think twice about putting something on your list that you know you’ll never do.

The 3 types of tasks will be:

Daily – Day to day lifes to-do’s. Pick up groceries, etc. (+2pts for completion, -1pts for not)
Work -  Project and work tasks. (+6pts for completion, -3pts for not)
Critical Missions – If I get one thing done today, it must be this. (+20pts for completion, -10 for not)

Scratching my own itch: The whole project spawned out of putting together BizBreak and the Limitless VC Contest. I would never stick with any to-do applications because they were all just digital notepads or way to complicated. The problem was I wouldn’t stick with any that I used. I want to build one that makes me want to keep using it through game mechanics (I want more points or the next badge) as well as social incentives.

What do you think? Is there something you think we should change or tweak? Your thoughts will help shape this.

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Related – The Race To Running Software

After reading 37 Signals book, Getting Real, I’ve decided to adopted one of the core ideas from the book. The idea is simple, the sooner you get your product out there, the sooner you’ll start the feedback loop. No matter how basic of unpolished it is, get it out into the wild now.

I’m announcing today that I’m going to attempt to start and launch my next application in roughly 1 week. The SXSW conference is now 8 days away. I’m setting the deadline to the first day of SXSW which is Friday March, 12, 2010.

For now I’m calling the app Podums. It will start as an iPhone app and will eventually also be a web app in the future. It is a to-do application with game mechanics, further details to come.

I thought it would be perfect to set a goal of having something running by the first day of SXSW. I chose this close deadline for two reasons; One, because I want to have something to share with people I meet at the conference, and two, in order to finish, I in time I’m forced to scale the scope back so much in order to get it out there in time. This is an exercise in finishing and doing the bare essential.

The finished app will just be an Ad Hoc version to demo on my phone. I won’t be able to get it into the app store before SXSW, but of course it will. Mind you, this is also going to be a part time ordeal, as I’m a full time student among other things.

I’ve written the specs, got my programmer ready, and have been sketching UI and design today. I’m going to blog as much as possible on the progress over the next week and will share the results.

Wish me luck and I hope you watch the results unfold. It’s going to be quick and dirty.

Last year I attended Yanik Silvers Underground Online 5 seminar in Washington D.C. as one of his young entrepreneur scholarship winners. That single event was a huge boost for my business, plus I made some sweet contacts.

If you don’t know, Underground 6 is not very mainstream, it is, well, very underground. Last year I met Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com (pictured above) and Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy.com to name a few. The networking opportunities at the event are amazing.

The event will be held in Washington D.C. from March 12-14, 2010

This year Gary Vaynerchuk and Kiva.org co-founder, Jessica Jackley will be the Keynote speakers. The event consists of 3 days worth of  intense information offered up by top entrepreneurs quietly making millions. Trust me, you’ll walk away with tons of information you can apply immediately, plus if you’re smart, great contacts. Yanik just announced that the event is now sold out, however when he got involved with the Limitless VC Contest, he also gave me 1 ticket to give away.

To enter, tweet this…

Hey entrepreneurs, @BizBreak is giving away a $3,495 ticket to the sold out UG6 seminar! RT & enter here: http://bit.ly/ardScc

And then…

Leave a comment telling us why you want/need/deserve to go!
I have to give them a name of the winner this Friday, so we’ll only be doing this until then. We’ll choose someone we think deserves to go and contact you via twitter or from your comment.

Optional, but you would be dumb not to…

Enter your business in the Limitless VC Contest, full details are on the contest page – http://BizBreakApp.com

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Here’s a bit of a recap from last years event written by my friend, Michael Dunlop
Here’s this years list of speakers