Idea Otter

[ideaotter-blog]

The thing is, idea-having isn’t a limited resource. Everyone’s coming up with new ideas all the time, but because of the nature of time and work, only some ideas can ever be turned into a reality. The hard bit is deciding what to work on, and what not to work on.

- Stef Lewandowski

[ideaotter-blog]

Thinking Every Day

Idea Otter helps you think creatively, and with that in mind we just rolled out the biggest update to Idea Otter since releasing v2 about a month ago. 

When you click on the settings icon in the top right corner, you'll be given a number of account management options, one of which we're especially excited about:

The best practice for thinking creatively is to do it every single day. Now, Idea Otter can send you an e-mail to remind you to record 5 ideas each day. We've been using it ourselves for the past few days, and it's been a great way to get our creativity going and formulating thoughts you've had over the past 24 hours.

On top of that, you can now turn Idea Otter into a completely private experience (you can still set your ideas privacy level individually), and you can enable and disable e-mails about comments or posts.

We've given you more control over how you want to spread your ideas, while building Idea Otter into the self improvement app we think it is.

[ideaotter-blog]

Idea Otter v2

Idea Otter was a really simple concept when it started out - click on the bookmarklet on your tab to store an idea whenever a new one comes to mind.

We added a little bit of functionality here, a little bit of functionality there, and boy, that escalated quickly. Things really got out of hand fast.

Without a clear direction, the website got cluttered - functionality was added that sounded useful, parts of the site didn't work 100%, facebook log in worked sometimes, there was no unified design, things were plugged into other bits without being thought out, etc.

So we took a step back, a deep breath, and started from scratch. 

Idea Otter definitely has a theme. It's simple and straight forward, but playful. It's a friendly space for you to do your thinking.

We've made some changes.

Removed Facebook Log In. No one uses this. Research has shown it over and over again, and it made our front page too confusing. 

Removed All Ideas From The Front Page. Your Ideas are what's important, not someone else's. You can still access the All Ideas feed, but that's temporary - until you can build your own feed. 

Disabled Registering. For now. we're going to figure out a way to make registering painless and still secure, for both you and us. People who are already registered will be able to continue using Idea Otter without a problem. You can still invite people through slates.

Simplified Idea Page. We got rid of so many options on the idea page that were un necessary. Let's not speak of them again. Oh, and now anyone can add tags to an idea. 

Simplified Slate Page. Ditto.

Back End Business. Large parts of the back end have been changed. 

A couple of months ago we also put a first version of the app on the App Store. We admit that it's not ideal, but it does the job of being there when you have an idea. 

Stuff is in the works.

You'll be able to follow people and tags in a self curated feed.

You'll be able to invite people to Idea Otter through non-slate means. 

Choosing a slate from the bookmarklet (done!) and in the app.

An Android app.

If you have any questions, you can contact us on twitter, or via e-mail.