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Ask HN: What Web apps increase your productivity?

89 points by juliend2 ↗ HN
I can't live without Freshbooks. Recently i subscribed to BaseCamp (and loving it so far).

What are Your web apps that you can't live without that boost your creativity/productivity?

Thanks in advance.

119 comments

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xsc
Google Calendar.

Saves me from calling my fiancée at work to see what we have going on.

Mintz
I can't even remember how I managed my life before Google Calendar. Texting reminders to myself, settings tasks that need to be checked off, having a simple interface to see how my week/month is laid out... it's a lifesaver.
jcapote
Our shop runs effortlessly thanks to a combination of google apps, freshbooks, github, basecamp, and heroku
teej
Rescue Time. It's hard to cheat, it "just works", and it's dangerously good at picking out my unproductive spurts.
rjurney
Thanks, signed up immediately. Am over-stretched and want to see where I can improve my time use.
Herring
Anyone else find that it needs a lot of micromanaging?
9oliYQjP
I'm going to adopt a liberal definition of web app here. The only web app that appears to increase my productivity is Twitter. But I use a desktop client to access the service. I use it for live-searching of programming problems I need to solve. Why is this so funny? Because I didn't comprehend Twitter at all, so much so that I originally joined only to leave my account languishing for months before actually beginning to use it.

I tried Basecamp and it just got in the way of things. When your app is so simple that it can be replicated by email, a calendar, and some shared disk space, don't be surprised when clients refuse to use Basecamp and "degenerate" to using email, a calendar, and some shared disk space. At least, that's been my experience, so I cancelled my account.

Most of the other web apps are pure fluff and/or not productivity enhancers. Freshbooks et all appear to be exceptions to this rule. Online accounting web apps are so much better than their desktop counterparts. If I had a nickel for every time somebody has asked me about an Intuit software problem they're having, I'd be rich.

prpon
I'd be interested in knowing how twitter increased your productivity. For me twitter is a great tool for networking, increasing visibility for your product/project.

I am yet to see any real networking benefits myself, I find having to put up with 'I am running now', 'I am eating a burrito' more than anything of significance from people I would like to network.

cousin_it
Ask the commenters in this thread: What webapps decrease your productivity? Preferably those we haven't yet heard of? I imagine the answers could turn out much more interesting :-)
mrduncan
I'd like to pose a follow-up question to that also (maybe we should just start a new thread) - Why do they decrease your productivity?
rokhayakebe
Youtube. I have to type in the track I am searching for. I would like some sort of Voxli hack for Youtube that will allow speech input (Hold Y + Say the name of the video you are looking for/or say Repeat).
IsaacL
StumbleUpon. Faecbook, as well, but not so much. There's not as much to do on there. StumbleUpon is a potentially infinite time sink.

In fact, I'd say Google Reader has increased my productivity, since once I've skimmed the days articles from Slashdot/TechCrunch/etc, I crack on with some work, and I'm not as tempted to use SU.

thorax
Assembla

Google (if that counts)

Featurelist.org (our own site) -- specifically the user feedback widgets that dump all the feedback from all of our different sites into a handy place (per-project) so I can respond/escalate/investigate/etc.

Google Apps / GMail

Defensio (for avoiding having to manually inspect spam comments on our apps)

__ These aren't in the "can't live without category", but still quite helpful:

Feedback Army (for quick usability/sanity checking)

Paypal

Jing (both a tool and a web service)

Amazon S3/EC2 (once you get over the initial hurdles, it pays back in productivity)

Authsmtp (is that a web app?)

StackOverflow

bug.gd (another of our sites, in the process of renaming to ErrorHelp.com) -- since I log every error/solution I ever run into, often I run into my own errors again later and the solution is waiting for me even if I don't remember how I solved it before. Often enough someone else solved an error I had, too.

santacruz
Skype has screen sharing from now ( download beta)
motoko
Google application suite ---especially gmail (search and worry-free attachments that appear on my iPhone). I've been happy with the recent task list and calendar resource additions, too.
edw519
Hacker News.

This is not a joke. I realize that hn is not a web app in the classic sense, but I get far more value from hn than any webapp. Let me explain...

I learned long ago that increasing productivity was like "striking out the pitcher". You got small, easily measured, and much appreciated improvements. But the real improvements come in major shifts in thinking and processing.

I once had a choice of 2 projects to work on, each about the same amount of work for me. One would save 8 people 10 minutes per day. The other would change an entire business process, potentially saving millions of dollars. Believe it or not, I chose the first because I didn't understand the ramifications. Until my first mentor stopped me and pointed all this out (That's how he became my mentor.)

I have looked at several web apps and desktop tools but eventually rejected them all (except for Textpad which rocks). I'm just not interested in saving a few minutes here and there. (I also realize that there may be many web apps that go beyond simple productivity improvements.)

Hacker news, OTOH, changes the way I think all the time. Once or twice a month, I come across something that improves my work by magnitudes, not percentages.

I also get my creative juices flowing simply by participating. It's hard to place a value on that.

9oliYQjP
What's interesting here is that a lot of the commenters -- myself included -- are blurring the definition of what a web app is. I wonder why that is? I don't have a point other than to ask that question, because my gut tells me it would be an interesting thing to investigate.
teej
To me, a website is a website. Just because it has forms, uses the "cloud", and has a shiny logo doesn't stop it from being a website. The only websites I use that are anywhere close to "application" functionality are GMail and thesixtyone, and even then it's just ajax frosting on top of a delicious html cake.
dylanmcd
I fail how to see how using HTML and Javascript keep something from being an application. To be an application it has to run on the desktop, and not the browser?
teej
It's about level of interactivity, responsiveness, and robustness. Shiny web front-ends to a relational database just don't compete on the same level as desktop workhorses. Mint, Gmail, and Freshbooks are nice web "applications", but their innovation is in solving simple problems with incredible interfaces. The innovation in Textmate, and Photoshop is that they enable a high amount of manipulation and automation that simply can't be delivered over the web at this time.
dylanmcd
To be an application, you certainly don't need to meet the levels of interactivity, responsiveness, or robustness as Textmate or Photoshop. Maybe to you that's what an application is, but under a more standard definition all a piece of software needs to do to be considered an application is to interact with a user to do a specific task. It has nothing to do with value judgements. A crappy cgi guestbook is technically a web application. It doesn't matter that it's slow and only does one thing.
jackchristopher
I don't mean to affront but isn't that why we're all here; to evolve the web app?

To me the point of starting up is taking a crack at what you'd like to see the web become.

thenduks
In general, I'd put it like this:

A "web application" is a browser-based tool that allows a user to create and consume content.

A "web site" is a browser-based tool that allows a user to consume content.

pg
Yes; for me the test has always been that a web app has something equivalent to File->New.
mixmax
This is so true, if I could upmod you again I would.

Micromanaging your productivity, trying to find out if you use a few minutes too much on facebook, or whether you could save some time having only one cup of coffee instead of two during a workday will only help your bad conscience. Not your actual productivity. The real booster comes from having a good overview, experience, knowledge and knowing what to work on. Hacker News is great for this.

I remember reading an article (posted here of course) about the guy that programmed Chrome's V8 engine. He works on a farm in the countryside, he only works 8 hours a day and goes home at 5 o clock. No long hours, and no micromanaging of time. I don't think anyone questions his productivity.

I often have whole days where all I do is think. This is time well spent because once I get coding I know exactly what to do, and have thought out many of the problems that I will eventually run in to. The more experience, overview and broad knowledge you have the better you are able to do this.

racerrick
I had the same initial reaction. Then I thought "well it's not an application".
crocowhile
I am new to this place so I am not sure I know what you are talking about. Is it about motivation? Reading about successful stories makes you less procrastinating or what?
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metachor
I think what edw519 is saying is that reading certain stories on HN induces a paradigm-shift in his/her thinking. This leads not to a slight gain in productivity or slight reduction in procrastination, but instead to a whole new way of working or thinking that completely dominates his/her previous mode of operation.
ryanvm
Oh brother - what a circle jerk
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SwellJoe
And here you are, right in the middle.
huherto 

  "...But the real improvements come in major shifts in thinking and processing."
Or as Alan Kay put it "Perspective is worth 80 IQ points." The more I think about it the more I agree.
Hexstream
I'll go for HN too, but for another reason: it points me to the good stuff (among them, incidentally, webapps that increase my productivity).

Things I found via HN because it's been mentionned a few times as something great that I now use:

github.com (git repo hosting), slicehost.com (VPS), namecheap.com (registrar), lighthouseapp.com (issue tracking).

Things I'm looking into: aws.amazon.com (cloud stuff), freshbooks.com (invoicing).

And certainly other stuff I'm forgetting...

jbrooks
We too use Basecamp for our project management.

Also, I tried using Freshbooks for invoicing, but it's restrictions with multiple currencies made me to look out for an alternative solution.

Recently, I found CurdBee for invoicing which turned out really productive to me. It allows managing unlimited clients with multiple currencies seamlessly. Also, their UIs are so intuitive making the whole process very simple. If you are budget conscious like me and also want to get your work done you should try CurdBee.

rjurney
EC2. I run an XL instance and do any actual program execution on it while I code.

How often are you waiting on your computer? How much is your time worth, compared to $0.80 an hour?

zacharypinter
Can you explain this setup a little more? What type of applications are you working on and in what language? How do you send code quickly to the server (i.e., do you have to commit code before you execute)?
rjurney
When I'm waiting on code, I'm usually doing database stuff. At the moment I've been working on the same database conversion for weeks, that takes a few minutes to run on an XL instance, and about half an hour on my macbook pro.

I have an svn checkout on the EC2 box (which I update each reboot), and I scp the file I'm working on over for test runs in between commits. I'd use rsync if it were a bunch of files at once, but it usually isn't.

It also sometimes runs Perl/Catalyst web apps.

I save the image each day (when I remember to turn it off), but a smarter setup would be to simply mount my working directories on an EBS mount.

rokhayakebe
IDidWork could tremendously increase my productivity if I could update my account using IM.
mcantor
www.rememberthemilk.com
steerpike
Diigo

Netvibes

Box.net

Google docs

Google notebook

Google project hosting

greengirl512
Remember the Milk...If something's not on my Remember the Milk to-do-list, it often does not get done. Also, Less Accounting-it's similar to Freshbooks, but I found it first. I'm not sure which is better, but I'm too lazy to switch at this point. And of course, Google, Gmail and associated apps. ReQall is another handy scheduling/reminder service. If they made it easier to organize tasks with tags and to add time estimates for each task, I might switch over from RTM.

Incidentally, the website I write for is a great place to discover new web apps. We try them out and review them for you, so you can decide if they'll be helpful to you or not: http://www.usefultools.com/

kirubakaran
http://smacklet.com/

Wrote it for myself. 'Productivity through consciousness'.

greengirl512
cool idea! I'm going to try it out!
greengirl512
I like it, but what does it say about me that I need an electronic babysitter?
kirubakaran
Well, think of it as your friend, not a babysitter :)
Raphael
The under-construction pages are really annoying.
kirubakaran
Okay, I'll do something about it :-) Since don't have many users and since the current feature set is all I need for myself, I just left it at that.
ashleyw
Not a web-app, but I saved a hell of a lot of time by ditching my digital clock and getting an analogue one instead. Not sure why exactly, I guess I just like seeing a pie chart on my wall…
racerrick
feedus - got it installed in several applications so that all the hardcoded text can be changed by anyone in our organization.