2/18/11

Speckle

image

Speckle is a web application focusing primarily on project management. As a web solution, it’s simple, light and pretty snappy.

The minimal user interface looks carefully designed, and unusually de-cluttered for an application of that kind. There is no need for a user manual since everything that can be done is laid out on the screen.

Users can create projects, and lists inside the projects. Each list can hold tasks, entering just the name of the task. No other fields like due dates or reminders are supported, since we are talking about a bare bones approach here.

Lists can be contexts, or anything else, and they cannot exist outside the project. The downsize to this approach is, that if users need to use contexts, they have to be created as separate lists inside each project.

Projects on the other side, offer some customization, since they can have a description, can be shared with others just by entering email addresses, and have user defined project stages, which is a unique feature of this little web application. You can add as many stages as you want for each project separated by commas, or you can choose to use the predefined ones (Started, Done, Checked, Live).

The project stages feature adds a check box for each stage, to each action, so when entering another stage each project’s progress is increased. You can view your projects progress directly from the start up screen of Speckle, which will keep you motivated and informed about your overall projects status.

Although simple and poor on standard features, Speckle is a unique solution for quick project management and it has the potential to be a much better system, allowing users to use it as a full scale GTD solution. On the other hand, Its lack of setup and its simple use, makes it ideal for quick list building, if you want to share data with someone, in case your current system does not support that.

http://speckleapp.com/