Tuesday, April 21, 2009

txtful gets noticed

The last couple of days have been pretty exciting for txtful. On Sunday, the always helpful makeofuse.com blog wrote a flattering post about us, and then yesterday the super-popular Lifehacker blog picked us up as well. We also got mentioned here, here and here. We've been working hard on making txtful a service you'll love, so thanks for noticing guys!

We're also relieved that all the increased traffic seemed to have no effect on the service's performance for any of our current or new users, and we hope that everyone writing in is receiving prompt responses.

As a boot-strapped Chicago start-up we try our best to create the features and shortcuts you want, so we look forward to
hearing your requests. Or better yet, if you're feeling frisky, you can write your own shortcuts to share with the world. In that vein, we've heard you that you need a way to add more credits to your account, and we promise to have that working in the coming weeks.

Finally, for all of our friends outside the US interested in SMS access, we ask you to please be patient. Getting the infrastructure in place to do that takes considerable time and resources, but we're working on it. And remember text messaging is just one way to send your shortcuts, you can also just as easily use email, Google Talk, your mobile browser or Twitter by adding them on your account page.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The many facets of txtful

Our friend Pek finally got the txtful religion the other day, and wrote it up on his blog.  So we just thought we'd give him a shout out and say, "Thanks Pek, we think you're pretty great yourself."

It's a funny thing with txtful.  Everyone seems to think it's cool when they hear about it, but they don't necessarily get it until they find the specific shortcuts that speak to their interests.  So be sure to go browse through our collection of shortcuts to find the ones that would make your life better.  And if you use an RSS reader you should subscribe to our Latest Shortcuts Feed as we add new ones all the time.

And be sure to check out some of Pek's other posts, he's doing some really cool stuff!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Connectiviity Event Tomorrow Night

I'll be at the IIT-Knapp Entrepreneurship Center's Connectiviity event tomorrow night, so if you're going come up and say hi.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The lightness of txtful

The other day I came across an old post on John Gruber's excellent Daring Fireball blog that captures why txtful feels so light and fast for getting things done. 

To summarize he posits that tasks done on a screen feel heavier or more onerous based on the number of "nouns" or elements you have to deal with.  He uses the example of IM feeling lighter than email because you don't have to deal with the To and Subject fields as well as the Send button. 

With txtful it's the same way.  You don't have to deal with the address bar and all the usual form fields, buttons and clicks.  Just start a new message, type and send.  

Thanks for the helpful analysis and validation John! 

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Shortcut Spotlight: Add a Gmail Task

Those of you who can't live without your GMail may already be actively using Google's new "Tasks" feature.  We love it, and have just built the "Add a Gmail Task" shortcut which allows you to add items to your task list NOW -- and from wherever you happen to be when those pesky "Gotta Do's" come to mind.

BTW, if you're not using tasks in Gmail yet, you should try it.  Go into your Gmail Settings, click on the Labs tab, and enable tasks. Then, come on back here to really make it fly.

Friday, January 30, 2009

New Dashboard

Introducing -- that spankin' new top left tab (Dashboard).  Log-in and click it.  You like?  Now you're able to quick-scan your important txtful deets all in one spot, which should leave you more time and energy to swerve around all them speedbumps comin' at ya along the information superhighway.

Here's what's on your Dash: 

UPDATE SHORTCUTS - consider this your "low oil level" warning light.
TIPS - 1001 ways to make txtful even more useful, and it's absolutely FREE!
SUGGESTED SHORTCUTS - go ahead, try them out and tell us we're wrong.
BALANCE - how many more times you can fire off shortcuts this month.

We hope you find this a most helpful update to the site.  More cool stuff is on the way!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

KillerStartup on the Rampage!

Another great mention yesterday, this time from the folks over at KillerStartups. Something definitely got lost in translation in the last paragraph of the writeup, but hey - we're glad to have the pub, matter wacky no it how is. :)  Thanks also to Fred Imparatta for his additional blurbin' on Killerblog

We were up all night churning together another stack of invitations to the beta (digital caligraphy is downright TRICKY, kids!) so stand-by to see where we show up next, and then get ready to spread the love.  

Links

Blog Feed
Latest Shortcuts Feed