Exactly 2 years ago, on May 14th we started charging for Nozbe after a three month “free beta” period.
Feels like it wasn’t all that long, but two years have gone away very quickly.
What started as a passion turned into a business
When I launched Nozbe I never thought I’d be building a full time business, yet starting from May 14th 2007 gradually Nozbe transformed from a side-project into a full-time project and I’m happy working on it.
We’re still a small business and we want to keep it that way. Nozbe started as a one-man shop (yep, just me!) and now I’ve got a great chief developer (Tomek), assistant and customer support representative (Delfina) and I’m constantly working with other great developers, user experience experts and graphic designers on an as-needed basis. Right now our team is quite big while we’re finishing up Nozbe 2.0. Lot’s of stuff to do and we want to get it done as soon as possible.
I love it when Nozbe really helps!
Helping people organize their lives and getting more stuff done is both fun… and very rewarding… and helps my personal development, too!
Thanks for being with us and for choosing Nozbe!
Thanks to you Nozbe is improving and getting better and better and thanks to you we’ve got a great job and we really love what we do. Hope you can see this love while working with Nozbe :-)
Nozbe 2.0 beta was just a technology preview
While Nozbe 2.0 beta is already usable, the final Nozbe 2.0 will be a lot more polished and will have a slightly different layout and a lot better design.
We’ve been listening!
We know you like the speed and the way Nozbe 2.0 operates. We know you want it nicer and more beautiful (we want that too!).... and we know you want to add notes to tasks and want to add multiple contexts to one action and you want more collaborative features.
These will all be there in Nozbe 2.0 (and more!)
We’re currently finshing the wireframes
We’ve conducted a series of usability interviews in April and based on the feedback we’ve received we are currently preparing the wireframes (layout) of the new Nozbe 2.0.
The first wireframes have already been sent to the graphic designer and he just started working on a great, beautiful and really modern Nozbe 2.0 look.
Here’s the new layout of Nozbe 2.0 (again, it’s not the design, it’s layout, design is in the works as we speak).

The image is small on purpose, you’ll see a bigger version of the actual design once it’s ready. It’s just to show where we’re going.
Sidenote: When the graphic designer is working on the beauty of the app, our development team is already working on the features!
Again, thanks for being with us and thanks for the 2 years in business and counting on many many more years to come!
Please post your feedback on the layout of Nozbe 2.0 in the comments :-)
Comments:
Looking great Michael. Can’t wait to see the new design! Will the Projects & Contexts (I see they are opposite sides as 2.0 Beta) be able to be switched? Just curious. Are you still shooting for end of May release?
Also – do I see “Priority” in there? Will there be a way to flag priority within an action?
I’ve been using Nozbe for about six months now and am VERY excited about the 2.0 release! I’m glad to see that you’re taking some extra time to do it right!
Thanks everyone for the heads up, today we finished another part of the wireframes and our designer is already working on first sketches, I’ll keep you posted as we progress. I don’t think we’ll manage to get it all done until the end of May, but mid-June seems a very reasonable timeframe. We realy want to do it right and make Nozbe really great :-)
Thanks for the helpful post. It’s good to see development on this already wonderful tool.
Quick, not-entirely-on-topic observation: the link from the Start page to the User Forums now points to this blog page rather than the forums…
Congratulations Michael, It’s great to be able to work on things you have passion for. I switched from Backpack to Nozbe a few times before I made a permanent switch a few months ago. I haven’t looked back since.
I’m loving Nozbe just as it is…an upgrade is icing on the cake. I noticed in the beta one of the most useful features was missing: “filter by” in the Next Actions view. Please don’t forget to bring that feature along in the next version. Thanks Michael and the Nozbe team. Keep rockin!
Michael,
Has there been any consideration for creating an app for the BlackBerry?
Doug
An S60 app for my Nokia phone would be nice too. :) (http://www.ovi.com)
@Paul – I know that an upgrade is an icing on the cake, but we need to make this happen – and we’ll make sure all the “old” users get their old features as well… just in the new interface.
@Douglas and @Shing – yes we’re currently beginning to work on Nozbe for these platforms. But no estimate is ready yet. Thanks for your comments!
+1 for the S60 application request from Shing.
Hi Michael, I think a filter of projects, and now contexts on next actions would be helpful. Also I like to use contexts as people working on various actions accross projects. In collaborative working could you define others to be able to see all actions with a specific context, in the current way they can see projects they have permission for. Finally under collaborative sharing, it would be really good if you could share on a “read only” basis as well as a full basis.
Steve
Will version 2 allow better filtering within the “Next Actions” list? I often need to exclude the next-actions from a shared project. Otherwise my next-actions list becomes a list of everyone’s next-actions and I cannot see my own. It would be good to choose which projects are included in the next-actions list. At the moment I have to stop using the shared projects feature at all, thus giving me no incentive to use anything above the personal free of charge program.
2.o is looking very good! I am especially excited about notes being linked to actions
+1 for Mark’s comment; ‘Next Actions’ becomes less useful when you must see your collaborators’ next actions.
Any chance that there will be a Full Calendar View with Monthly, Weekly and Daily Views?
That would lock me in!
Oops Sorry… In my previous post, I am referring to a calender view on the iPhone app. But I do understand the ‘not getting chained to your calender’ approach as well, Soooo??? ;)
I recently came across Nozbe when looking for a GTD tool that was web based and had an iPhone app and so far I have been extremely happy with Nozbe and I am looking forward to 2.0