“Opinions are like noses, everyone has one”

When I mention that my company is selling PIM software, I almost can hear “On no! Another one?!”. Other PIM developers surely share similar experience, so let me try to explain what the heck I was (we were?) thinking.

Back in 2002, when our first products just started to pick up and I was getting serious about all this stuff, I needed PIM / to-do list application that I can actually use. After trying out dozen of existing products, I finally came to the conclusion that none of them suits my needs. Some were too complicated for what I need, some were too simple for what I need and some were just too ugly for my taste. Of course, I was aware that these products were perfect for some other people, but still, I needed an application that does things differently.

Full of enthusiasm, without hesitation, business plans and similar mumbo-jumbos, I sat down and started a new project: Agenda At Once. Back then I didn’t know what we will do with it: give it away, sell it or just use it internally. I was simply satisfied with a feeling of creating something new and innovative.

After seeing what doesn’t work for me, I had a decent picture of what will. I took these as starting points:

1. My job doesn’t include much fixed appointments – I should probably pay most attention to to-do list management.

2. Of course, time after time I do need to schedule or attend a meeting, so application should have this possibility too.

3. It should be possible to divide tasks into subtasks. Strangely enough, in 2002 not much (if any) PIMs supported this.

4. It should be possibile to enter free-form notes somehow, for any data that doesn’t stricly fall into a “task” category.

5. It should be really easy to use – drag & drop, plenty of keyboard shortcuts, descriptive and simple interface.

It turns out that what worked for me worked for lot of other people too. Soon enough users started suggesting new features and most of them were implemented in all these years. Although number of features and options is multiplied compared to first release, I think we succeeded to maintain almost same level of simplicity and keep original philosophy.

So, what’s the answer? My guess is: yes, as long as at least one developer is motivated enough to create it – there’s a good chance that many non-developers have similar noses opinions.

Few days ago we have uploaded online demo of Agenda At Once in action. You can see how easy is to add tasks, drag and drop them to schedule and few other advanced features.

Agenda At Once online demo – how to create to-do tasks and more

Is it too long? Too detailed? Too sparse? Feel free to send us your comments.

As you might now, Agenda At Once was almost completely rewritten for v3.0 and it took much more time than we expected in the first place, as beta testers would confirm. That’s why we are more than happy to see that our multi-year efforts of development went in right direction.

As popularity of Agenda At Once grows, we hear more and more praise from the users, and it really means a lot. We are also glad to receive some feedback about what they are missing in AAO as it points us to the right direction for future development.

One of probably most enjoyable affirmation of the hard work is when one of independent websites publishes a review, especially if it’s a positive one. That’s what happened with Agenda At Once some time ago.

PC World’s reviewer Ian Harac wrote a quite pleasant description for AAO. He immediately recognizes main advantage of AAO over the competition:

“A well-designed program should be intuitive to the average user–but not at the cost of depth or functionality. AgendaAtOnce passes this test admirably. Despite not being a regular user of scheduling software (AgendaAtOnce might change that), I was easily able to set up a task and some subtasks, add contacts, schedule appointments, and perform all of the tasks one expects from a personal information manager.”

Read full review

We usually don’t announce each super-minor update (third version number) on the blog, but we have decided to make an exception now. The reason for this is that changes between original v3.0.0 and current v3.0.5 are really numerous, and don’t include just bug fixes: they contain large number of improvements and even few new features. We could (or should?) call it v3.1 without hesitation…

Anyway, the update is here, it’s is free for current customers and you can download this to-do list software from the usual place.

Agenda At Once product info

Direct download link