Back some time ago, German based wunderkinder released a to do list app on the web, iphone, Android that took the task management community by storm.

What happens is that we have a to do list that

  • looks beautiful and elegant
  • works on the Mac, Web, Windows, iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone
  • simple tasking nothing complex

What I like about Wunderlist is that I do not have to worry about migrating to another platform. Based on my experience with WAToDo! is that if the to do list have a set of generic functionality and looks awesome, people will have time for it.

But what I do not like is that it is just too simple. As a GTD user, I can’t really do much with it.

It turns out that Wunderlist is a test platform for Wunderkinder to each critical mass, as well as to test their idea for the money making app that they intend to release.

What we do know that the open beta of their new task management app Wunderkit will be releasing in early February.

We were updated that they intend to release their web task management platform before releasing for other platforms.

How good do we think it will be?

For one thing it does look very awesome like Wunderlist. And it does have a social element to it. Lets see what we can derive from the very little released

  1. Eventually it will be ubiquitous (on many platforms). This means that you can go ahead and buy another platform smartphone without worrying you cannot manage your tasks
  2. A separation of notes and tasks seem to indicate that you can clip or take down notes in a manner not like most to do app. Perhaps rich text format?
  3. Collaboration through social means. It would seem you can follow your friends or interesting people and build to do list together
  4. Inbox concept
  5. Priority through starring
  6. Repeating and recurring tasks
  7. Sub-tasking
  8. Single level project

This looks really promising. However, I do see tagging missing. What would really complete it is a good search engine and tagging. I am sure then a lot of people will play around with it.

Advance to do folks like me would love it because we can tinker to match our work flow. As long as you provide

  1. Task Description, Notes, Due Date, Status
  2. Repeating or Recurring Tasks
  3. Sub-tasking or parent child concept
  4. Tagging
  5. Extensible API
  6. Ubiquitous

A lot of advance folks can make it work.

What would really break it for me

For me, Wunderkinder could succeed but could fail as well. They do have a lot of people to learn from

  1. The pricing model needs to offer a good freenium that most users can use. Evernote took off in such a way because they went the alternative route to make their base app and smartphone app so usable you do not have to pay for it. Only people who are really attached to it will pay for it. True enough at the end a lot of people grew attached to it because it became their brain.
  2. They need to make it a platform. They need to offer ways people can extend it.
  3. A search engined and saved search looks very important the more I think about it. What made Evernote and Remember the milk great was the way search can be carried out and saved.
  4. It needs to look great and simple for folks looking for a simple list.
  5. The smartphone applications must be well invested. Meaning they shouldn’t suck! We have seen so many examples where the main app is great but the rest doesn’t add up. For example I don’t want to see a case where they offer subtasking but on the Android because of api limitation they cannot offer that. It’s a fail for me.
  6. It needs adequate funding. Without knowing that this cloud is going to be around for some time not many will adopt it.

We certainly can keep our fingers cross. But personally I do not have high hopes for it.