* Making lists ... Ta-da!
Here’s an interesting Web application: A free list manager from 37signals (see editorial links below) called, rather whimsically, Ta-da. Even though making lists is all that the site does the idea is interesting because it is simple, it works, and it has value.
With Ta-da you can create and delete lists, add and remove items from your lists, share your lists with anyone or even the whole world, and people can subscribe to your lists via RSS.
Signing up for the service is painless and the company swears that your registration is completely private – a nice assurance on a free site. You can immediately start making up to a maximum of 10 active lists (you can have any number of lists with all of their items checked off) and each list can have an unlimited number of items in it. As soon as you create a list, an RSS feed is created that echoes the list items. From the list management interface, you can also-mail a copy of your list to yourself.
What isn’t mentioned anywhere on the site is that list entries can contain any HTML content you like so embedding URLs, photos, Flash content, and so on are options for more creative users.
When you share your lists with the world it is on a read-only basis. You can also allow specific people to add to or modify the list – you just need to provide the e-mail addresses of the lucky recipients along with an optional message.
When you as the list owner or a specified user with read and write privileges clicks on a check box to indicate that an item is completed, through a combination of JavaScript and CSS, the user interface immediately hides it. Even though the items are no longer displayed you, as the list owner, can go into the management interface and re-enable them.
Ta-da requires Internet Explorer 6.x or later, Safari, or FireFox and is actually a free, lightweight version of a feature in the company’s main product, Basecamp, an ASP-based project management system that I will review in a future newsletter.
