Fun Friday: Your Favorite Feature

I like to do two kinds of posts on Friday, Fun Friday and Feature Friday.

I thought we would try something today which is to combine them.

So we are going to take turns in the comments talking about an app we like and our favorite feature in that app.

Since that’s what I do regularly in Feature Friday, I am going to refrain from doing it here and all the action will be in the comments today.

#mobile

Comments (Archived):

  1. markslater

    my favorite app is the leftover food sharing app.you can post pictures of the remains of your din din’s and some hipster will show up and claim it as his…..i kid you not.

    1. fredwilson

      What’s the name of the app? I want to find it in the app store

        1. Henry Yates

          ah, “for the college crowd”. I can see that working

          1. markslater

            i can see lawsuits and pranks.

      1. LE

        Somehow I can’t see gotham gal liking the experience of people coming up to your table while you are having desert or coffee to get your leftovers. Although pictures of it would be interesting on her blog. Also opens up a small liability window (given you have deep pockets anything is possible).

      2. markslater

        in our office right now. 11 elkins st, 02127.any takers?

        1. LE

          I think a good startup publicity stunt would be to actually offer a free good brand new meal a day to anyone who shows up at your office dressed as __________ . With muffins for the runners up. Probably would pay for itself in generated publicity.________ means every day the task is different. Some easy some hard. Some of the hard ones result in really good stuff.

    2. pointsnfigures

      Tried it with Lutefisk. Got no takers. (Just kidding, link if you don’t know what it is—->http://www.youtube.com/watc… )

    3. William Mougayar

      It reminds me there used to be a website called iDrink. You tell it what liquor you have in your bar, and it tells you what drinks you can mix with it. That was 2000 on the web. Someone should make that App if it doesn’t exist.

    4. panterosa,

      so only hipsters forage via app…we give our restaurant leftovers to people on the street.

      1. markslater

        i was being unfairly tongue in cheek……maybe “starving college students wearing plad” would have been more appropriate 😉

        1. pointsnfigures

          Leftover Raman. Blech.

    5. Matt A. Myers

      This is incredibly-wonderfully-amazing.

    6. DoctorVP

      Along with getting ecoli and salmonella. I wonder how well their q&a process is for this leftover food.

    7. kidmercury

      that is seriously an awesome app!

  2. Rohan

    Tie between 2 apps -1. Tumblr’s mobile app allowing me to easily switch between tumblogs2. Whatsapp’s incredible group chat features.. they’re iterating super fast and just getting better and better and better. It’s become the top social network amongst my friends and family – we use it to stay in touch, share media.. everything we’d have used other social networks for.

    1. David

      +1 on switching between tumblogs on Tumblr

  3. pointsnfigures

    I have been mentoring the tradingview.com guys out of Chicago TechStars. I like the idea of publishing ideas, then being accountable for them by the community (and historically being able to track it). Takes a lot of the blowhard breathless stuff that populates a lot of message boards away. Really a put up or shut up feature that can bring a lot of value based on who you follow.

    1. kidmercury

      LOVE tradingview. i think i told you that before but i love it so much it is worth repeating. they make annotating and sharing charts effortless. great collection of indicators available. and free!

      1. pointsnfigures

        Getting more comfortable with it. What features would you add to it, or how what else would you put on it? They did a great job at TechStars.

  4. William Mougayar

    Is there an App that tells you which Apps you use the most on your smartphone?I want an App for the Apps.

    1. Drew Meyers

      But don’t you already know?It seems the cool “app for apps” would be one that showed me what apps my friends used regularly that I didn’t have. I bet that app would get some serious traction…but seems Apple is the only one that could build it (since no one else has access to the data in automated way)

      1. Matt A. Myers

        Apple doesn’t like those AFAIK because it kills their app discovery model. In part because the most popular apps would be the free ones.

      2. William Mougayar

        I’ve seen those, but they aren’t great yet. Apphero is one of them.

    2. Geoff

      Even better would be one that sorted them by frequency of usage..

      1. Matt A. Myers

        There’d have to be a number of metrics that would be important depending on their use case, and what kind of qualitative information you’re exploring.

      2. William Mougayar

        yup. a mini-analytics app about our apps.

    3. Matt A. Myers

      I’m wanting the same, for curiosity sake – and to see if efficiency can be found within behaviours.

    4. Lori Shirley

      I am developing one for you now..

  5. Sebastian Wain

    Microsoft OneNote favorite features:- Writing freely in the page space: easier to express ideas in multiple columns- Wiki capabilities: linking pages in a non-hierarchical way.- “Active” content: checkboxes and other widgets can change their state. This feature was copied by their main competitors like EverNote.Google Reader memories:- Being able to read historical blog posts that are not available in the current feed.- Automatic translation of blog posts: very useful for reading development blogs in another language.Readability Chrome add-in:- Being able to extract the main text content of a blog post or page and sending it to a Kindle with one click. Other text reading applications such as Pocket require more efforts to achieve the same result.

  6. falicon

    Gmail -> delete msg. feature.

  7. markslater

    we have companies come tell us what they are working on in our office from time to time. The one i really liked over the last few weeks was a booze delivery app called Drizly. Great young team taking on an old, semi regulated and antiquated industry.The second one was disrupting the refuse industry – again taking on an old, crooked and cronied inudstry. these guys are in stealth

  8. panterosa,

    Clear. Shake list. Email. Shows up in other persons clear app.

    1. DoctorVP

      Not to mention integration with desktop app via iclould.

      1. panterosa,

        ahh yes, your favorite thing – sync

  9. Carl Rahn Griffith

    Twitter > Search.

  10. Cam MacRae

    I really like the “Members also in…” function in the Meetup app. I find it’s better for discovery than search or matching interests.

  11. JimHirshfield

    Call Log –> Redial/Callback feature on my phone. Seriously, where would we be without it?

    1. Matt A. Myers

      Memorizing phone numbers? Oh wait..

  12. Henry Yates

    Gmail “undo send” has saved me from some potentially embarrassing situations

    1. Matt A. Myers

      This has been useful for me, too…..

    2. DoctorVP

      Ah perfect for those late night I’m quitting my job emails!

      1. panterosa,

        You mean quitting your day job…Though maybe those are the ones you want to send??

    3. jason wright

      ‘draft’ covers that. the silent scream and the bitten tongue.

  13. Francois Royer Mireault

    (Visiting a new city and about to go for a walk for the first time…)Foursquare > Explore > Coffee/Music Shops around me (that friends have been to)

    1. fredwilson

      that’s a win every time.

  14. markslater

    how about throwing out some ideas….I’ve always been enamored with the notion that my childrens toys that literally cover the whole house are a perfect trading object in the sharing economy.Why can’t other mums and dads close to me, come over and borrow a toy that my children don’t use or are sick of?millions of families have basements full of unused plastic – Most parents are loathe to keep adding to the pile. There are financial incentives to share toys, there are “do the planet good incentives, there are social incentives, and there are “make you kid super happy as you take a walk 2 blocks away to pick up a tonka truck” incentives.who’s in?

    1. Andrew Kennedy

      You might be able to use the “nextdoor” app for that. You have any concerns re: germs or pervs posing as parents?

      1. markslater

        welcome kit for members includes germ guide. Sign up includes strong verification, app experience includes rating etc….emminently solvable problems – but well brought up for sure.

    2. Elia Freedman

      Ah… but you forgot one tiny detail. When child sees the toy that they haven’t played with in a year and that toy is the object of affection for some other little kid, suddenly that toy becomes the favorite toy ever of child. The trading program always breaks down, literally.

    3. panterosa,

      My friend had a site for women/mothers and this was one category, clothing and sports gear another, just in the kid’s stuff. Great idea because you could bank points and trade for other – I trade my old down to someone, then trade up for my new. She is in Europe, and sadly they didn’t get this idea, and she lacked funding. Mothers are doing this all the time anyways, so it just needed a platform. Platform is nicely done too.

      1. markslater

        and it can be a beautiful mobile experience…..

        1. panterosa,

          We are about to hold a funeral for her site. She really nailed it, but was too early for her region. I wish someone would buy it.

      2. laurie kalmanson

        kickstarter?

    4. karen_e

      Mark, you can also put some of them away in a box and then bring them out six months later on a rainy day. I learned that from a savvy Irish friend. Also, we’ve done a donation box together – my son and I packing up what he chooses to identify as ‘baby toys’. Off they go!

      1. markslater

        yeah but thats no good as it defuncts my idea!

      2. Kirsten Lambertsen

        We do exactly this. Toy rotation. We actually learned it before the kids, when we got our first dog, ha!

    5. Bruce Warila

      Someone needs to create a site where you can download/print quick and simple lego creations that can be built from any (huge) pile of legos.

    6. Drew Meyers

      This maternal & baby clothes rental place idea my friend detailed out a couple months ago is exactly along those lines – http://businessideas247.com…Really big opportunity, since there is so much money spent on that stuff. But of course, the toy manufacturers…will probably fight it tooth and nail since it will hurt their revenue 🙂

      1. markslater

        that is the very reason to do it – lets go from being a consumption economy to a sharing economy.

        1. Drew Meyers

          You don’t have to convince me of that. I’m hardcore in the minimalism / non materialistic camp. I think spending $$ on physical things is largely a waste of money. Once you see how happy people in other countries are who own literally nothing — in many cases, way happier than people in the US — you realize virtually none of the stuff we buy is really needed to be happy. The sharing economy that exists in the developing world, by necessity is a big reason for that.

          1. markslater

            great comment. i spent time in indonesia for my last company and i was struck by this dynamic.

      2. laurie kalmanson

        the baby consignment store i frequented when my critter was in the doubling her size in minutes stage of infancy was like a swap meet — never asked for cash, not interested, just store credit; bring a bag of clothes, leave with a bag of clothes, return in 4 weeks

    7. CJ

      There was a startup on the Shark Tank that pitched a similar idea, they were basically the Netflix of toys. They send you a box, keep it until you’re kids are sick of it, send it back, they send you another one. Can’t remember if they were funded or not.

    8. Dave W Baldwin

      You probably do this, but everyone needs to remember your schools. In the rooms that deal with special needs. The stuff that gets donated gets used and needs replacing.

    9. laurie kalmanson

      goodwill bins for those too lazy (me) to have a garage sale

  15. awaldstein

    Google Maps. Search.Life is unimaginable without it wherever I am.

    1. William Mougayar

      Is that a freudian slip- You meant Apple Maps? Don’t tell me you substituted Google Maps as the default on your iPhone. I didn’t.

      1. awaldstein

        Nope, I have Google Maps on my iPhone on the first page of apps.

        1. William Mougayar

          I still prefer apple maps.

          1. awaldstein

            You are an app geek, me just a normal guy navigating my way around the world;)I’ll take a look based on your recommendation of course.

          2. William Mougayar

            i dunno. maybe i couldn’t get used to google maps.

          3. Geoff

            If only they would add an arrow to show direction of travel..

          4. CJ

            We’ll see if you say that from the river you’re about to drive into! LOL

          5. William Mougayar

            It’s been good to me, so far 🙂

        2. JamesHRH

          Me too.

    2. fredwilson

      i agree. and the new version is amazing.

  16. zackmansfield

    gmail -> “it looks like you meant to add an attachment” = so money

    1. Elia Freedman

      The drag feature of adding an attachment is awesome alone. Having to hit a little clip then find the file then wait for it to upload is such a pain.

    2. William Mougayar

      Or suggesting to add people on the cc: because it knows about that. Kind of scary to realize how much Google knows about us. I bet they know more than the NSA does.

      1. Drew Meyers

        For sure. My whole life is in gmail

      2. Ed Freyfogle

        related – google knows your wifi passwordhttp://blogs.computerworld….

    3. fredwilson

      i do love that too, but sometimes i use that phrase and am not actually planning on attaching a file. but even so, it’s a great feature

      1. Matt A. Myers

        I have encountered same scenario, and then being prompted requiring an action. Have wondered if it makes sense to, when saying ‘attachment’ then showing a subtle highlighted icon for alerting – next to the attaching link icon – and if you click it, it’ll take note that you’re not planning to attach a file. At least then it allows you to learn and integrate an action, instead of passively having your flow disrupted.

    4. John Revay

      Had that happen to me for the first time 2 days ago – It was a little freaky but also very cool.

  17. DoctorVP

    Tapatalk…haven’t seem any other app integrate all the forums i read.In terms of medical apps, epocrotes is a lifeline for me for medication information. I just wish someone could design it better as its so hard to use.

    1. Dave Pinsen

      The new update for tapatalk is a step backwards, IMO. Wasn’t surprised to see how low it’s rated in the App Store .

  18. pointsnfigures

    another app that is pretty cool is getfindit.com. It will search email, dropbox and any other place you store stuff quickly. Saves a lot of time and makes search on your phone or tablet really efficient.

  19. loupaglia

    Evernote Sync

    1. Matt A. Myers

      Google Docs has always been good enough for me.

  20. kirklove

    #MicDrop

  21. llonyort

    Evernote – web clipper plugin….changed my life!

  22. Barry Nolan

    App: Hailo. Feature: Babysitter’s Taxi Home.1) I know the drivers identity2) I can track their route home3) I get a notification when the babbysitter arrives home4) Cashless; charge my card

    1. Anne Libby

      Hailo’s top feature is Safety, as far as I’m concerned. Followed closely by Quality. My last 4:30 am departure time was stress free (no worry about standing outside alone hailing a cab), and in one of the cleanest cabs I’ve ever been in, with a nice driver. (Mohammed K!)

    2. Matt A. Myers

      This is a great use case. Jokingly was going to suggest to Fred should invest in it.

    3. JamesHRH

      Yes – that is impressive.

    4. fredwilson

      oooh. sounds great. although i haven’t used babysitters in years.

  23. Tracey Jackson

    The one that never lets me down when I really need it – The Flashlight.

    1. panterosa,

      which one?

      1. Tracey Jackson

        It’s called iHandy. Or iHandy makes it. It has a compass. Lost keys, dark nights, dark restaurants. Couldn’t live without it.

        1. panterosa,

          Thanks!

        2. LE

          “dark restaurants”Ever wonder why dark restaurants don’t offer reading glasses and or some kind of led light so you can read the fucking menu if you forget your reading glasses or don’t want to pull out your phone for lighting? I don’t get that.

          1. Tracey Jackson

            The music is blaring and it’s pitch black. I guess then one knows one is getting old. But the dark thing drives me crazy. Some restaurants now have those back lit menus, those are good. And yes, the glasses, they should have about 10 pair of the magnifying ones. Sometimes my husband has to read the menu to me and I feel like Helen Keller. Hate that.

          2. LE

            You can get three reading glasses for $4.98 on amazon. I bought a bunch of these and sprinkle them liberally everywhere. They are actually as good as the ones you buy at the pharmacy for $15 to $20. So Mr. Restaurant owner could easily buy these and even if they get damaged or stolen at that price it’s not a big deal.http://www.rchelicopters.co…Once again, three for $4.98 +-.

          3. Tracey Jackson

            We should start a campaign!

          4. Ruth BT

            I worked in a restaurant decades ago and we had all manner of reading glasses for patrons – in the days before standard drugstore prescriptions. Always got great tips from tables that had to use them.

          5. Matt A. Myers

            Ambiance my dear Watson!

    2. karen_e

      I hear you. Apps are utilities. The ‘feature’ within an app that makes me smile the most is a text from my husband with a pic of my kid. Second to that is Mint showing me my bank balance just after I’ve stopped at JLM’s pay window.

      1. panterosa,

        Where’s the PayWindow™ App? @JLM??

        1. Matt A. Myers

          The developers are too busy making money.

    3. Matt A. Myers

      What do you do when you drop your phone? 😉

    4. fredwilson

      yesssssssssssss

    5. William Mougayar

      I use one called Light. I love the Strobe effect. Try it in a dark room, put some music, and you’re in a disco 🙂

      1. Tracey Jackson

        And what might be our playlist when you head to your homemade disco. Please share:)

  24. karen_e

    New York Times app. All the content that’s fit to scroll.

  25. jeypandian

    I like the Yahoo! Weather app. It’s very intuitive and easy for me to slide through forecasts and different cities.

  26. Tom Hughes

    I’m pretty feature-fickle. Today’s favorite is tomorrow’s forgotten folly. But right now I’m enchanted with the Calendar “power up” on Trello. Trello is inspired by agile programming and project concepts; the governing metaphor is a “card” (like an index card stuck to a board). Trello has let you filter cards for those with due dates but, thanks to this “power up” (not sure that this bit of ‘gamification’ works for me, but I’m old) you can now see cards with due dates in a calendar view. It’s super handy and gives you a great feeling of understanding your projects, your team’s work, and how to budget your time against your upcoming deadlines.

  27. andyswan

    Skitch…. It lets you take screenshots. Then, you can mark them up right there in the app, and drag the image directly into gmail/hipchat.Saves me a lot of minutes/day because alternative is typing out what is wrong/interesting/etc on the screen OR screenshot, image editor, save, attach.

    1. LE

      Agree on skitch.Only thing is the newer version requires you to setup a skitch account to upload.The old version you could sftp to your own server with one click. So in order to do that now you have to drag to the desktop to save (and it will warn you of an existing file with the same name instead of just auto adding a digit) and then sftp that. A real pain. The older version was better. I still use it though because I haven’t found anything to replace it.

    2. andyswan

      Example made in 28 seconds…

      1. LE

        Yeah disqus needs a way when you forget to attach the image to attach the image you forgot to attach. Eh?

        1. andyswan

          Actually I didn’t think of attaching an image until after I posted the comment. Thus, the moron admission

          1. Drew Meyers

            haha

        2. Matt A. Myers

          I’m not sure it’s as high of a regular occurrence with commenting as it is for email – though Disqus would be able to look at the stats behind that.

          1. LE

            For disqus this should be regular CRUD functionality. If you can attach an image when posting you should be able to add an image or delete that image upon “edit”.CRUD for those not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…In computer programming, create, read, update and delete (CRUD) (Sometimes called SCRUD with an “S” for Search) are the four basic functions of persistent storage.[1] Sometimes CRUD is expanded with the words retrieve instead of read, modify instead of update, or destroy instead of delete. It is also sometimes used to describe user interface conventions that facilitate viewing, searching, and changing information; often using computer-based forms and reports. The term was likely first popularized by James Martin in his 1983 book Managing the Data-base Environment.[2][3] The acronym may be extended to CRUDL to cover listing of large data sets which bring additional complexity such as pagination when the data sets are too large to hold easily in memory.Along those lines and within reason the easier you make it for people to format and make beautiful comments in theory the more they will comment. Which is the idea behind disqus and why it’s a shame most people don’t even know there is a way to bold text or how to easily format a quotation.

          2. Matt A. Myers

            Yup. It’s silly when they don’t – I can’t understand why not either. Only scenario is where they don’t want people to be able to delete mass amounts of data – but then that’s what edit time limits can prevent.I used to edit my comments like crazy for formatting – still do to some degree, depending on their length.

          3. LE

            In no way shape or form do I think they put that much thought into this stuff. But they should.I mean how hard would it be to put in a popover showing some formatting tips or commands? How hard would it be to make the flag and collapse icons make sense so they are there not only visible on mouseover?If I saw regular changes and enhancements I would say “feature creep they can’t do everything but they are doing something and have decided based on something I don’t know about”. But that’s not what I am seeing.

          4. Matt A. Myers

            They could be doing it behind the scenes and testing it … maybe the costs associated with it are too high, unknowable without seeing them implemented? I dunno..

      2. Jim Bumbulsky

        GLUI is a paid alternative, but awesome as well.

    3. panterosa,

      I also adore Skitch. Was my #1 until Clear.

      1. LE

        Clear? Please explain.

        1. panterosa,

          Clear is for lists, iPhone, and desktop sync. I made a comment above.

          1. LE

            So the answer to that question gives me an opportunity to harp on one of my favorite subjects which is naming.Note that “skitch” is unique enough that if you google “skitch” you find what you need. It does have some drawbacks but the fact that it’s fairly easy to remember and fairly easy to hear and find if you google it (or in an app store search) overides the drawbacks.But if you google “clear” what do you get?Nothing.I even googled “clear” followed by some other obvious stuff and I didn’t get anything. The obvious stuff meaning things that I thought you meant since I hadn’t read anything else you said.It escapes me why or how someone would come up with a name like “clear” for this product when they could come up with something unique (or at least have the domain name for it but I still stand behind my original though since the domain alone doesn’t trump other important things).This is a total marketing fail.It’s interesting that with the other offerings by realmacsoftware some are good and some are as bad.http://www.realmacsoftware….”courier” – bad”rapidweaver” – good (at least by seo value)”littlesnapper” – good and I like the name [1]”analog” – bad”clear” – bad as mentioned.[1] On their website if you click on the “littlesnapper” link it goes to a product called “ember”. Oh geez.

          2. panterosa,

            LE,You are a precision nut, which is good. You are what David Foster Wallace was to punctuation, for domain names.Not everyone gets it, or ever will. Most people are just pushed along with the flow as the world turns. 80/20 seems generous.

          3. LE

            “You are a precision nut”I know and it’s so effortless for me to boot. It just jumps out at me.Difference is though that punctuation doesn’t put money in your pocket. And with punctuation it’s ok to just be “good enough” unless you are an academic or working for the state department or a major newspaper. Etc.I remember talking to Morris Ballen (Diskmakers, bought CD Baby – Kirk Love knows him) in the 90’s when he first was coming out with his catalog (he had transitioned his business). The first thing I said to him was “what really annoys me is having to hunt for the index to products in catalogs it should be in an obvious place”. He replied by handing the prototype catalog to me and saying “well where do you want it to be?”. And it was right where I wanted it to be, on the first page iirc or maybe the last. He got it and understood because was a persnickety guy who got annoyed at the small stuff as well.

          4. panterosa,

            I give up A LOT of precision in many places for speed, bc I have enough places where it matters and hairs are split. I only have so much tolerance per diem. I’m sure many are like me. Your, and my gripe is being precise where it counts most, but that is super subjective.#bandwidthissues

      2. Anne Libby

        I like Over, replaced Skitch for me.More complex, related functions, NoteTaker HD. (Made by Dan Bricklin, for the fogeys out there…)

    4. Sheamus

      I’ve had Skitch installed on my Mac forever. Never even opened it, I don’t think. Just did now, after your recommendation. So simple and quick to use. Will be awesome for editing blog post images. Life will never be the same again. Cheers!

      1. andyswan

        Nice!

    5. laurie kalmanson

      so simple, so useful

  28. $3236

    Favorite app = HP12C Favorite features = same UI as device, no new functionality needed, kids can’t figure out how to use it.

    1. fredwilson

      yup. i use mine every day.

  29. JLM

    .One Note — the unending creation of lists that last forever.Cockroaches, gamma radiation and lists.Indispensable for me.JLM.

  30. LE

    Download Helper for Firefox allows you to grab any youtube video (or really many other types of videos) to your local machine and save to play back. So you no longer have to worry if youtube pulls the video.https://addons.mozilla.org/

  31. William Mougayar

    Someone said a few years ago Love is the Killer App, and wrote a book on it. I never read that book, but I think Love is Still the Killer App.

    1. Anne Libby

      And civility is one of love’s awesome features.

    2. Matt A. Myers

      Title fits perfectly with what I’m working on. Putting book on my to-read list..

  32. matthughes

    MLB At Bat.It streams live radio broadcasts, has a slick game-cast and shows video highlights.It’s the good life for baseball fans.

  33. Mike Cuesta

    Spotify’s collaborative playlists.Airplay on iOS and OSX.Facebook’s chat.The entire Expensify experience, but namely the mobile app for capturing receipts.Path’s update/status emoticons/reactions.Kindle’s highlighting.Very thankful to live in a day and age with so much awesomeness.

    1. Drew Meyers

      I’m a fan of expensify, too.

    2. fredwilson

      airplay mirroring between mac and appletv is great

  34. Kirsten Lambertsen

    Facebook’s “hide everything from this person” feature. (But FB is not my favorite app.) Text messaging is still the killer app for me.

    1. Drew Meyers

      I’m surprised texts have survived. Seriously, some of my favorite moments with my friends have taken place inside group texts…and I have no way to go back and find those again to relive/remember them. Really sucks. But how do you get everyone on an app that puts them in a visually appealing format and are findable later, across all devices?

      1. awaldstein

        Never going to happen Drew.

        1. Drew Meyers

          🙁

          1. awaldstein

            I’ll be thrilled if you can build it and prove me wrong.Single platform anything are just beyond my imagination to believe in. Community needs to happen cross or maybe intra all the nets.Or so I think.

          2. Drew Meyers

            I have no desire to build it. It will have to be someone else to prove you wrong.

          3. Matt A. Myers

            It can be a different M(e)yers..

          4. Drew Meyers

            Have at it! I will try it once it exists..

          5. Matt A. Myers

            I think it can happen. I’ll send you a whitepaper I’m working on, soon, will explain my version of how I see it happening. I need to polish it still. Side-tracked with other priorities.

          6. Dave W Baldwin

            Go to my reply to arnold

        2. Dave W Baldwin

          Never say never. Technically the data pool is building, but you have to get to place where machine understanding moves into truly predicting intent. Say @drewmyers asks about a response you gave last week to a sarcastic remark made to @kristenlambertson, the data search will already be started. Technically, this could be done via Disqus, Twitter and in the personal text based on your work is more from that end.

          1. awaldstein

            Great response.Anything on a whiteboard is possible. After drawing the future for 25 years, I’ve learned that just because you can shoot the ball, doesn’t mean you can play basketball.Some things are good market bets. Building solutions that depend on ubiquitous connectivity for example. This one I don’t think is. It’s like video chat–it will sit at the cusp of market ready forever.And–I need to say this. Disqus is not a data mining company. I’m a huge fan but just because they have some percent of comments on their platform doesn’t mean they understand how to parse them. It’s simply not who they are from my opinion from the outside. When 10% of their staff are data scientists, I’ll take this more seriously.Great chatting.

          2. Dave W Baldwin

            I was just addressing the word never. And just like the big dump sites the guv is setting up for data, what is there is data as well as in other places like disquis is data. It depends on what you do with it. Many tools need to evolve and will. Have a good weekend.

          3. awaldstein

            Understand and really liked your comment Dave. Stirred me into thinking on the way to the gym.Never though, at least to me, has little to do with tech possibilities and more to do with market potential. I see them as very different. I care personally way more about the later.

          4. Dave W Baldwin

            It is a matter of connecting the dots. At present, many want you to believe whatever they’re thumping is on a higher plane than it truly is.The bigger game is the vehicle (phone, tab, tv, wearable) putting the customer in touch with what they want and at a snap. Those with the pocket change will buy.

      2. Kirsten Lambertsen

        Oh you’re just bad, putting questions out there like that ;-)But it does seem like we should be able to make something that works with the existing texting mechanism on the phone, putting text conversations into the cloud… I think if one person in the equation just started using it for archiving and then social posting (sorta like how you can post screenshots of your iPhone text conversations now – except this would be an interactive embed), it would be naturally viral.

        1. Drew Meyers

          yea, there has got to be a way…but it seems it would have to be a different phone number. Google Voice could pull it off…some people text me using that, which I like because it also goes to my email and I can reply there.

    2. Matt A. Myers

      From what I have experienced, they seem to unset the “hide everything from this person” sometimes.

      1. Kirsten Lambertsen

        No doubt.

      2. Dave W Baldwin

        There seems to be a NSA joke lurking…

  35. Colin Devroe

    Two geeky things to add to this list.1. I just discovered ‘git config –global color.ui true’ which will color your git messages in Terminal. Great for looking at large commits, diffs, etc.2. At Plain we just replaced 37signals’ Campfire with Slack. Slack is really great. One feature I really like in it is the creation of channels and then reporting to those channels with webhooks. So now everything we do as a team in GitHub, Trello, Stripe, etc. all gets thrown into a #notifications channel in Slack. This cuts down on our emails by about 60%.

  36. Yalim K. Gerger

    iOS Safari Reader button. It improves my reading experience by a factor of 10.

  37. RichardF

    Favourite App – xbox smartglass, controls my xboxFavourite Feature – turns my phone into a remote control

    1. CJ

      I wish smartglass would tell me what’s playing and let me control the xbox that way. If I have Amazon Prime going for the kids, it blows to have to go down to the den to switch to the next episode when I’m cooking and my hands are a mess.

  38. tgodin

    Not really a feature, but my birthday was in late August, and Google’s home page that day presented a birthday theme (cake, candles) for me. Cute.

  39. Anne Libby

    I would love to be an Evernote user, but it’s just got too many bells/whistles for me. bitly’s my default for “read later” items, as well as the place I save things I want to share at some point.I love, love, love that when I copy a url from anywhere on my device, the next time I open the bitly app, it’s there to be saved/shortened. Awesome.

    1. Matt A. Myers

      Ooohhh, I like that.

    2. Vasudev Ram

      That’s interesting. Could you describe how you use bitly for that?

  40. Simon

    Tablet talk on my nexus 7 and Htc one ,if there was something similar for ipad I would use that too

  41. tsella

    FAKE FAKE GRIMLOCK: YOU ALL BE LYING. BE HERE BECAUSE WAITING FOR HEART IN CANDY CRUSH

    1. Matt A. Myers

      So confused but upvoting anyway..

  42. nipulpatel

    IFTTT gmail:dropbox integration.Every time someone sends me an attachment, it automatically stores it in a dropbox folder named after that person. So simple and easy to find stuff that people send me.

    1. Mike Cuesta

      Whoa. Great tip.

    2. Matt A. Myers

      I like that. Google somewhat does that with Google Drive now though, no? I guess not specifically to a person-named folder, though – but it’d be a good idea to offer as a default.

  43. Pat Clark

    Dropbox –> Auto Camera upload from phone

    1. fredwilson

      killer feature. turned me from a “i don’t like dropbox” person to a “dropbox is awesome” person

  44. B12N

    Google Maps’s Traffic feature. Given that commuting is the #1 source of unhappiness, it’s easy to tell why!

    1. fredwilson

      and it will only get better with waze data

  45. Andrew

    Google Feedback / Report a bug is slick. Highlight / blackout area screenshot. Well thought out feature.

  46. anon

    mint.com

  47. Ro Gupta

    The Undo option on just about any app is fricking great.I sometimes find myself doing something IRL and instinctively wanting to type Command-Z … and then being sad when I can’t.

  48. Tom Labus

    Bloomberg for WP8The market snpshots

  49. Nate Quigley

    Bugshot -> Open in Droplr -> Copy/Paste to Kanbanery.

  50. Matt A. Myers

    @fredwilson:disqus – I was expecting a Hackpad list…

    1. fredwilson

      good point. i blew it.

  51. Youssef Rahoui

    Gmail + undo send = life saving

  52. Matt Candler

    Stitcher: autoplays favorites (list starts w npr 5 min news summary, longer form stuff follows if i have time)

  53. andyidsinga

    for hackers : emacs :C-x r s <#> — copy text to registerC-x r i <#> — insert text from registerM-x view-register <#> — duh#letTheEditorWarsBegin :)Non-hackers:twitter > the “tweet” feature – its pretty sweet, you should try it.

  54. Ana Milicevic

    Songza’s mood-based playlists are rocking my world right now.

    1. fredwilson

      they are good. but they let me down at times.

      1. Ana Milicevic

        They get a bit repetitive if you listen a lot so I’ve learned to pace myself with certain playlists. Mixing things up b/w Songza, Spotify, Pandora and my music library seems to be a good way to tackle the repetition issue.What I’d really love to see them do is enable playlist subscriptions — kind of a cross between an old fashioned radio station and Turntable.fm where I can follow/buy curated playlists from different people vs. just the Songza-curated ones. A playlist marketplace of sorts — although just thinking about the licensing model for something like that is painful.

  55. Vasudev Ram

    I’ll be a bit shameless and mention my own “app”, xtopdf:https://bitbucket.org/vasud…It’s basically a toolkit for conversion of other file formats to PDF. (It includes both a library and multiple programs (apps) based on it, that you can run standalone – command-line, GUI and Web-based ones.)It has many features. Some that I like about it are: PDF in a Bottle, XMLtoPDFBook, and PDFBuilder. Googling should find all of them.

  56. CJ

    Android and the intent system. Being able to pipe data around the OS easily is so overlooked but is so awesome. Runner up is Tasker/IFTTT/ and every other automation software out there. Favorite a tweet, link gets shipped to Pocket and I have new reading material for the train. You can’t beat that.

    1. fredwilson

      yep. so good.

  57. Brad Dickason

    I’m such a fan of Github’s Pull Requests. It takes the anxiety out of any code/text/design changes and lets you easily submit a humble change to any project, whether it be open source or your own team’s.Pull requests have turned into a great code/design/product review tool at tons of companies, and the resulting conversation that gets kicked off by the code change is oftentimes more helpful than the change itself :)Never heard of Pull Requests? Read this: https://github.com/blog/112

  58. Carl Rahn Griffith

    Try again – revised choice – after a 9hr shift in a mega-busy commercial kitchen my favourite is the snooze feature on my iPhone alarm…Duplicate entry, sorry – Disqus doesn’t like kitchens, clearly Zzzzz

  59. Carl Rahn Griffith

    I revise my earlier choice – after a 9hr shift in a mega-busy commercial kitchen (on quick coffee break now) my choice is the snooze button on my iPhone alarm…

  60. Bear

    Shazam -> play in SpotifyHear a song I like and within a couple of taps I’m downloading their album to listen to on the way to work. Love that.

  61. JJ Donovan

    Touchnote.com. Take a picture, make a postcard mail it from your phone. A great way to stay in touch when you are on the road.

  62. Lee Blaylock

    evernote browser based webclipper and private email address to categorize and then use as my prosthetic memory + give access to that folder for my specific team members. simple and effective. can’t run a business without it.

  63. Pete Griffiths

    Humbling.

  64. D.Cory McDonald

    I like Skitch. It works great for my profession (oil field engineer), but I wish there was something a little better, there probably is and I just haven’t been smart enough to find it yet.Gmail. Best email app there is I believe.Apple Maps. I’ve heard and read complaints about it, but I like it better than a Google Maps.CNBC. It’s my absolute favorite app. I can get stocks, news, and various other business things all in one place.

  65. Paul White

    If only the would add a real Auto on/Off feature like BBRY has had for YEARS!!!

  66. Matt A. Myers

    Turning the world on.

  67. Matt A. Myers

    Beaches.

  68. Matt A. Myers

    Oooohh.. Enjoy. 🙂