(Preview) Nozbe iPhone app 2.0 - what's new there?

We’re rolling out the first beta version of the new iPhone app for Nozbe.

“We” is a very complex thing in this aspect, as my company is NOT building the new iPhone app, we decided to partner with experts in building stuff for the Mac (and iPhone), a company called:

Why this partnership?

Because building dedicated apps is not our core competency, after we’ve built the first iPhone app we decided to we’d better focus on getting the web app right (hence Nozbe 2.0) and let others create apps for our platform.

What’s different?

1. We’ll be doing it together

First off, we’re building the app with them, so our know-how is there and I’m making sure the app is great, but on the other hand Macoscope team has ideas on their own that will make the app even better.

2. There will be constant development

Macoscope guys recognize that for the iPhone app to be really successful, they’ll need to be updating the app on the regular basis with bug fixes, improvements and most of all, new cool productivity features to make most of the iPhone platform. We’ve got real cool gems in the pipeline. You’ll be amazed.

Continue reading "(Preview) Nozbe iPhone app 2.0 - what's new there?" »

Technorati tags: nozbe, iphone, macoscope

Nozbe Translation Platform tips and tricks - your native language in Nozbe

Update (Mar 1, 2010): Just updated the post with another enhancements – you can now see other translators’ suggestions!

—

Wow, I’ve been blown away the response to our call for translators – there are lots of folks translating Nozbe to different languages and we are totally excited!

It’s time for some tips and tricks

Today, while I was revising the Spanish translation and translating stuff myself, I found out several glitches in the system (which we’ve already corrected) and some tips and tricks that can help you make the translation even better, so here goes:

Tip 1. Read the string IDs

Each text snippet in Nozbe (called “string”) has its own ID that only Nozbe understands. Just have a look at this example:

As you can see these two strings have the following IDs:
BIZ_ACCOUNTS_LEFT1
and
BIZ_ACCOUNTS_LEFT2

so it’s safe to assume these two strings run one after another, and if you look at the contents of these strings, this makes sense:
You have
??
accounts left

so the sentence like: “you have X accounts left” makes total sense here.

This is why try to look at IDs and don’t translate each string separately but treat them as a whole and translate it in such a way, that the X makes total sense in your language, too. If you know some Spanish, you see I’ve done exactly that.

Tip 2. Mind the HTML

Some strings contain HTML in some places, remember about it and don’t drop it from your translation, try to make it as faithful as possible, just look at this one:

Tip 3. Keep the short strings… short

On the right hand side of each translation you can see a percentage number. If your string is shorter than the original, it’s below 100%, if it’s longer, it’s more.

While in long strings the length in your language doesn’t matter all that much, in short strings it might. So please always seek the shortest phrases possible. Just look at this example:

In Spanish, we could have written “Correo electronico” instead of “E-Mail” but the latter one is simply shorter and everyone understands it anyway, right?

Tip 4. Mind the capital letters

Sometimes the strings in Nozbe start with capital letters and sometimes not. This is on purpose and your translation should reflect that. Just have a look at this example:

Tip 5. Translate GTD-style – one group at a time

We’ve divided the whole translation into groups on purpose. We want to give you and ourselves a feeling of completion when one group is done.

So instead of doing everything at once, just do one group at a time and stop at some today, do others tomorrow. You’ll be very effective and we’ll be happy to have a significant part of the translation job done.

Tip 6 (NEW!). Check out suggestions by others

As the translation platform is growing, several people are submitting their suggestions to our system which resulted in sometimes 4 people working on the same set of translations

We’re working hard on accepting these as quickly as possible, but we’re not there 24/7.

To make sure you work only on the stuff that’s new and don’t submit the same things, you can now see other translators’ suggestions like this:

If the other suggestion is good, just move on to another phrase. Saves you time and makes everyone very productive :-)

Million thanks to everyone who’s helping!

Thank you thank you thank you! It’s incredible how we’re quickly transforming Nozbe from an English-only app to a true international and global GTD app. All contributions are welcome and if you haven’t still joined, watch the video and get going – you can help us bring Nozbe to speak natively your language!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, translation, international, web20

Getting Nozbe Translations Done - let's bring productivity app to your language

We’ve got really lots going on right now, the new iPhone app beta testing and now finally we’ve finished preparing our translation platform to make it smooth for you and everyone to bring Nozbe to people in your country who don’t speak English.

Just watch this short 5-minute video to see how it works:

We’ll be busy translating Nozbe to really cool new languages. After all, lots of folks outside of America haven’t heard of “Getting Things Done” and they really need to be productive, too!

We need people from different countries. The primary focus is on Spanish, German and Dutch, but all the other languages are also welcome!

We will really make it worth your while, so please help us translate and bring Nozbe to your countrymen, thanks!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, international

Beta testers needed for the new Nozbe iPhone app

I know you’ve been waiting for this for quite a while now, let’s start the beta testing of our new Nozbe iPhone app:

How will we roll out the app?

This and next week we’ll be distributing the app to the beta testers and we’ll have initial testing of the app:

Phase 1 – Sync and design

In the first phase (until end of February) beta testers will be testing the app against our development server – we’ll give each beta tester a Solo account on the development server so that they can test syncing and the overall performance of the app.

Yes, because the testers will be using development server, we’ll ask them to migrate using our newest backup/restore feature at least a few of the most intensive projects for them to the development server so that they can work on those both on the iPhone and on the web.

This will be an extra hassle for the testers but will enable us to thoroughly test syncing to make sure no errors or missing data happens during the sync. The most important “problem” people are having with the current app is the lack of consistency when syncing so we want to make sure we’ve addressed it once and for all.

Phase 2 – Comments, Sharing and Inbox

In the second phase, starting beginning March, we’ll be rolling out a new beta 2 version of the app that will hopefully work already against our production server.

We’ll invite more beta testers, especially those who have Multi-user accounts to test our sharing, delegating and commenting features on the iPhone.

Phase 3 – roll out by the end of March

By the end of March we should have a final app ready and submitted to the Appstore for you to enjoy. This time it will sync perfectly, work beautifully in team environments and make you and your teams really productive.

How to become a beta tester?

Continue reading "Beta testers needed for the new Nozbe iPhone app" »

Technorati tags: nozbe, iphone, apple, appstore

How Nozbe works with your favorite apps to make you even more productive

Over the last 3 years we’ve integrated Nozbe with many many cool apps, web apps, web services, etc.

Just have a look at the variety of apps Nozbe works with:

We’ve recently prepared a dedicated page:

Nozbe Extras

where you can learn all about these integrations, watch the videos and step by step instructions as to how incorporate Nozbe into your workflow and the apps you’re already using.

We’ve also recently updated the Nozbe Tour page where you can learn nore abut cool Nozbe features, our integration with Email and watch basic as well as advanced video of Nozbe in action.

Hope both the Extras and the Tour pages will help you get even more done with your Nozbe account. Please let me know what you think!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, productivity, evernote, twitter, apple, iphone

Nozbe celebrates 3 years of web-based productivity!

Three years ago, I’ve officially shown Nozbe to the world – as you know, I’ve been using Nozbe before as my private productivity tool since early 2005… but it was February 2007 when I had something I could show to the world.

What happened in these three years?

• We had three major design changes
• We had two logos (the one you’re seeing now is the 2nd one)
• We are serving tens of thousands of users around the globe… and helping get them stuff done!
• We integrated with lots of 3rd party apps
• We killed other branches of my company: after first year of operation I closed down apivision.com consultancy business as Nozbe was so profitable (and so much fun to work on!) that I wanted to focus only on Nozbe
• We survived economic downturn with a significant revenue and profit increase (when every company was going down, we were, and are, going up)
• We found not only a business in Nozbe, but more of a calling to increase people’s productivity around the world with other initiatives like Productive Magazine, Productive Show, Internet Business Productivity blog and my Twitter profile

Where is Nozbe headed?

• We’re building apps around Nozbe, the completely new iPhone app to be released next month, apps for other platforms (Blackberry and Android and Desktop) in the works
• We’re finally translating Nozbe to other languages to make sure people all around the world get things done! (translation platform to be rolled out this month)
• We’re focusing on business customers with better sharing and collaboration capabilities. We really want companies and teams to get a lot done this year!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I can’t thank you enough for all of your support and for using Nozbe as your productivity tool.

Without my customers we wouldn’t be running one of the leading productivity apps on the Internet and we wouldn’t have achieved better productivity ourselves.

We owe it all to you! Thanks again!

- Your Nozbe Team: Michael, Delfina, Tom and collaborators.

Offline Nozbe Backups and SSL for everyone

We’ll be celebrating 3 years of business on February 1st 2010 and because of that we’ve prepared some extra stuff for you to help you get even more done this year:

Offline Backups of your Nozbe account

You’ve been asking for this one for quite a while now and we finally delivered… but we made sure we’d give you a lot more than just backups!

While some apps let you backup to XML, CSV and some other strange formats, in Nozbe you backup to a plain, nice text file that you can actually read on any computer and get stuff done when not connected to the Internet.

That’s correct, in Nozbe you can download the backup, open in a standard text editor like Notepad, add actions, mark some as done, add projects, etc… and upload your backup back to Nozbe and see the changes!

Watch this video to see Nozbe Offline Backups in action:

Isn’t that cool?

Enhanced SSL Security to all paying customers

We’ve been listening and we decided that our dedication to Internet security is more important than anything else so from now on even Solo users get full Enhanced SSL Security by default during their entire Nozbe session.

We make sure your data is safely stored on our servers, we use triple-backup technology, firewalls and fingerprint restrictions to make sure nothing happens to your data on our backend and now we use Enhanced SSL Security on our frontend.

All of our paying Nozbe users now can enjoy the same level of security they are accustomed to when visiting online banking system. Your actions and projects are as important (if not more)as your savings.

More contexts and projects on all plans

We’ve raised Contexts and Projects allowances on most of the account plans – all existing users have been upgraded automatically and can enjoy these today. Solo users get up to 50 contexts, Plus users 200 contexts, Family users get 2000 projects, etc.

Let me thank you so much for your continued business and for being a very productive Nozbe user!

Thanks to you we’ve been enjoying a steady growth throughout these 3 years and 2009, the “recession year” for most businesses was our best year yet. We’re sure to have an even better 2010 and we’re expecting to roll out some great enhancements to your favorite productivity tool.

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, video, offline, backup, security