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!

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.  

Big Idea Forum Tonight

We go to a lot of events around Chicago, and thought it was a good idea to start mentioning them here on the blog to help get the word out about them to the community. That being said I'll be at The Big Idea Forum's (fashionably late) Holiday Party tonight at The Kerryman. If you're going, be sure to come up and say hello.

Thanks for the Feedback, HN!

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see the word SCARY? "My Bloody Valentine 3D"? Your 401K Statement? The notion of Sarah Palin in charge of the free world in 2016?

Here's mine... As someone who has been involved in creating music for most of my life, "scary" is epitomized in that vulnerable moment when I let someone else actually hear one of my songs - my babies. And while it's one thing for me to play that new demo for my "Yes Man" buddy, or my Mom (who will proceed to convince anyone in earshot that even my most craptastic ditty deserves Grammy consideration), it's another thing entirely when I share my songs with other songwriters. Gulp.

Last week we did something akin to sharing our simple tune with the ones who write the songs. We submitted txtful to Hacker News, a social news site focused on startups and coding. With a great sense of pride (and more than a smidge of trepidation), we invited the HN community to pop open the hood, take txtful for a spin, and give us their honest feedback.

We could hear our hearts beating while we waited for that first comment. Then it came, and after a bit, the feedback began to roll in, prompting some overwhelmingly positive discussion. And okay, we admit we did the fist-pump when our submission was voted up to the #6 spot on the front page. We want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to check us out and offer such insightful feedback. We're already working on incorporating a bunch of the suggestions you made.

We're really looking forward to getting significant "developer dialog" going this year, and invite those of you with a penchant for coding and tweaking to join the txtful Developers Group. If you'd like to get way inside txtful with us, don't be afraid - we'd love to have you singing along...

Changes to our beta

The times they are a changin'. But we like that. In fact, we're really excited to announce our expanded support for sending shortcuts via text message (aka SMS) to everyone in the beta. While this milestone causes us txtful-ites to swagger a bit more when we walk and to whistle happy tunes under our breath, the service must now undergo some necessary housekeeping to ensure that growth gets managed gooder. Better. Well, as amazingly as possible. Hence, the beta (little b) is now transforming into a beta (big B), which essentially means you're gonna need an invite to come in.

That's it. No more crashing the party.

To request an invite, hit us here, and we'll get you in the door ASAP.