Rough Underbelly more style than substance |
The name, I know. Rough Underbelly is still better than something missing an ‘e’ but I have no idea what it has to do with keeping track of daily to-do list items and scoring them. I do like how easy it is to register, add to-do tasks with rankings, minimize and then move on.
For rankings you have four choices: 10, 5, 2 or 1. The highest number being the most important/critical and the lowest being the least important daily task. I came up with five daily to-do list items added them and then have been working through them as the day has gone on. There is a timer built into the page which can be reset. No way to add any notes on the times that I saw.
As I mentioned during my last to-do list related review, I’m not very good about creating and maintaining todo lists. A daily one for web-related items could be helpful if I remember to actually use it. As I wrote this, I realized update the to-do list wasn’t on the list and added it.
Rough Underbelly is free and has all the trendy web features: big fonts, serene colors and rounded corner graphics. Once you have some data it generates some graphs. I only saw one ad in the lower left corner. No Adwords. No search. No bell bottomed jeans.
The July 31 message seems a bit suspect:
You’re looking at the new server! Things should be more reliable now, and much faster.
It’s August 8, certainly there is something else noteworthy to point out? Maybe they went on vacation after switching to a more reliable server? It’s not marked as beta, so are scaling concerns open season? The point is if you are someone seriously thinking about using a free web hosted service like this to help you with your productivity, you’re probably expecting/hoping/praying it will be around in six months or a year, yes/no? Also, how can they be having server problems with a service like this? It’s not like there is a lot happening here programmatically or via database, so I’m perplexed by the message.
Please tell me this isn’t running on $5/month virtual hosting.
Things I didn’t like about Rough Underbelly include no export function for the data. Look, if we use your service to track our activity, it’s still our activity. Give us a way to take it with us before your server goes down permanently.
I realize this seems very selfish for a free service, but being free these days isn’t enough, we want more. Too much free service competition that looks very similar except for color scheme, fonts and marginal feature differences means you need to try harder and be more flexible and open to compete for our time.
We want to be able to take our data with us or use the functionality on our own sites/servers. That’s the model that any new startup that wants to be appealing should be striving toward. The core functionality of Rough Underbelly is something that an apprentice coder could create in a weekend, if not a single day. Not sure this one shouldn’t be a widget or Firefox Extension instead with a blog. There are no RSS feeds to keep up with lists like tadalist. I didn’t see much in the way of sharing the lists with others at all, does this exist yet?
Rough Underbelly leaves me with a rough, growling belly. Hungry for something more. Besides being the first service I’ve reviewed after getting back from vacation there is no other good reason to write about this one. I suspect many readers won’t want to waste their time, but please prove me wrong in the comments area. I would score this a “1″ because it looks nice but asthetically most services/sites/tools these days are pretty.
Useful? Not that much for me, but it does have some potential by focusing on every day recurring to-do list action items. Grade: D.
Did this post make you go hmm?
(1 votes, average: 2 out of 5)
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Thanks for the unflinching review of my site. Seriously.
I built this site for myself and I use it daily. It was actually on a shared host until I realized that 3,000 people had signed up and a dedicated server would be in order, so it’s now on a beefy box that is shared with a friend.
You are the first person who has complained about the lack of news on the site. Most people want to go there and enter a few items, check them off, and track their progress. Other features have been suggested which I hope to implement sometime (mostly customization or community-related).
RU is about a very simple todolist to keep you motivated throughout the day. It’s based on the Printable CEO concept popularized by Dave Seah. If it’s useful to you, use it. If not, there are approximately one billion other todo lists that you could use.
Seriously, why does every free service like this have to compete with others? I’m completely ad-free, unlike many other services. I wrote the site in a weekend and have updated it occasionally as I’ve needed more functionality. I thought that some other people might benefit as well, so I opened it up to the world. Not every site is trying to get millions of dollars in VC funding or be acquired by Rupert Murdoch.
The web has become so commercialized and we are surprised when someone tosses out a personal project just for fun. What’s wrong with that?
Comment by topfunky — August 8, 2006 @ 5:21 pm PST
topfunky - thanks for stopping by and reinforcing that this was done in a short amount of time. You have no name? Your service isn’t completely ad free. Look at the screen shot. What is “advert” — just a misnomer? I took time, looked at the service, used the service, grabbed screenshots and wrote about it here like I’ve done with plenty of other services. It’s rare when somebody with a negative review actually does something about my comments, so be different if you want or tell me to go pound sand. Matters none to me.
However, none of my concerns were answered in your response except my quip about the reliability of your hosting which was admitted on 7/31. Instead of getting your feelings hurt why not address the more important issues I raised:
1) export for data function (very important!)
2) RSS for integrating
Are these features you don’t think users would find useful? Or are you doing this project only for yourself and screw what anybody else thinks?
I didn’t see anywhere in the service that it was “a personal product just for fun” but if that’s what it is, maybe you want to advertise that and you’ll avoid this type of review/commentary.
I do not know you personally and this review wasn’t meant as some personal slam, these are my honest feelings about the service in its current state. You are welcome and encouraged to return when/if you upgrade and add other services and I’ll take another look.
My opinion might be harsh at times, but it’s the truth.
Comment by TDavid — August 8, 2006 @ 6:32 pm PST