We’ve written about Zapproved in the past including a brief review by Mike Gunderloy and a brief mention by me in a useful tools roundup. The application is so simple that you might think all that can be said about it has been said, but with their official launch happening today, I thought I’d dig a little deeper to give you a little bit more.
I love it when I come across several new apps or new features on old apps that just shout out “productivity” to me. First, the latest news that I received in my inbox is that FreshBooks now has a free time tracking app for the iPhone. I was excited about their desktop widget for the Mac way back when, but frankly, I haven’t used it. Even their pop out time tracker on their site is quite functional, but I have yet to develop the habit of bringing it up when I’m working.
But put it on the iPhone and suddenly the mundane and forgettable act of tracking time is fun and accessible and begging for me to use it. Kudos to any cool Web application who ups their cool – and usability – factor by making it work on my iPhone.
Tags: backboard, doodle, freshbooks, gathergrid, iphone, zapproved
Do distributed teams need a better solution for tracking and making decisions? Zapproved thinks so, and they’ve built a tool to be that solution. The idea is relatively simple: when you’ve got a proposal that needs to be signed off on by everyone on your team, you create it in Zapproved’s web interface. The service then sends emails to everyone with great big “Approve”, “Deny”, and “Comment” buttons. An online console lets you track the progress of your proposals towards (hopefully) group acceptance.
Zapproved also lets you attach files to documents, as well as setting due dates, priorities, and project names. Although you need an account to use the service, the others on your team do no. If your team is distributed and you spend an inordinate amount of time chasing down consensus on routine matters, it’s worth a look. Zapproved is free while in beta, though they do say there will be a charge at launch.
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