TimeSnapper 2.0 is near to completion

This article, "Stardock's 10 rules for success" puts it quite nicely:

TimeSnapper's chief developer, Atli, ... (continues)

TimeSnapper's chief developer, Atli, put a halt to adding new features a week or two ago, so we can get ready for releasing version 2.0.

I'm glad he did. The closer we get to a release date, the more features I think of. "Oh oh! It's just got to have this!" Damn it's hard to stop.

I've been compiling lists, big lists, of features for version 3.0. Version 4. Version 53. The tighter the pressure to stop adding features: the more powerful the creative drive.

TimeSnapper has the ability to grow in a number of different directions. (At this point, you can picture an ice crystal forming -- spreading out in a beautiful though slightly assymmetric way)

It has these divergent goals:

1. A Time Tracker
   • Personal time
   • Official time
2. A Scenario Capturer
   • Lazy capture: e.g. "oops my computer just crashed, what did i do to cause it?"
   • Deliberate capture: e.g. "I'll record this action, and then turn it into a movie." (not yet a feature)
3. A Productivity Booster
   • Self-awareness, e.g. "How do I usually get distracted?"
   • A complement to a "Getting Things Done" system.

And, as people love to point out:

4. Surveillance
   • (A direction we've deliberately avoided)

With all those possible goals and sub goals, the array of possible features becomes a vast fractal monster. We've continually sought suggestions and help from our user-base. Not so much to generate ideas, but to give some weighting to the cornucopia of ideas the product has already given us.

It's a weird little product, you know. While other software is doing similar things on some fronts, I think that the TimeSnapper package represents a unique and special niche that is previously unexplored. Thus the voluminous possibilities.

Of course this too presents more possible tasks: create a website where people can suggest features, vote on features, give reasons for liking features and so on. Add features to the feature voting website. Have people vote on what features to add to the features website. Or survey the existing software out there for doing this. Which software is best? Maybe I could write a website where people vote on their favourite software for conducting polls about what features to add to their feature suggestion website. Or maybe we could... maybe we could just finish version 2.0 of TimeSnapper, and build up the courage to release it to the world.

Even the world's simplest code generator is on hold for now. With my current featuritis, i can't be let anywhere near that product. It risks becoming the world's most complex code generator, data miner and email client. With a sandwich maker and hybrid-fuelcell/chicken-coop-cleaner on a collapsible side panel.

Enough. Back to the grind.

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