Video review of Orchestra for iPhone

Our thanks go out to Quinn Nelson,That Snazzy iPhone Guy, who made this great YouTube review of Orchestra for iPhone:

We think Quinn does a pretty great job reviewing Orchestra and are grateful for the ‘press’. Oh, and Quinn, stay tuned for specific due dates!

Orchestra is the iTunes App of the Week!

Our little Super Mario Bros sound system has been going crazy over here. To our surprise Orchestra was selected yesterday as “App of the Week” by Apple. To say we’re honored is an understatement. 

Special thanks to Didier who helped us with some last minute art direction and photography. We’re lucky to have him involved with Orchestra — he makes everything more beautiful.

For those of you who are just getting started with Orchestra, thanks so much for giving us a try. We’re committed to building this app in concert with the people who love it and want more from it, so please drop us a note if you have feedback or ideas. 

How to delete a task

Orchestra version 0.9.5 is live in the app store as of a few minutes go, and it has a feature that has been most requested by far: deleting tasks. 
Right now you can only delete tasks on the iPhone. Here’s how you do it:

Open a task you don’t want to do anymore:


Swipe left and click the big red button:


Right now you can’t delete tasks shared with other people. We still need to work out the details of what deleting shared tasks means for other people. We also want to gauge how important deleting of shared stuff actually is, so If that’s something you really want/need, please let us know. Thanks!

Orchestra climbs to #3

Man, watching the App Store is addictive. Earlier this weekend Orchestra climbed to the #3 position in the Productivity category and since then it’s been alternating between #3 and #4. And when your competition for a spot in the list is Dropbox… well, let’s just say we feel honored.  



Obviously being featured plays a big part in that success, but we can see from our logs that a lot of new users are being referred from you, our current users. When you assign someone else a task, they tend to sign up. When you tell your friends about the app you’ve discovered, they give it a try. Those of you who love Orchestra are becoming our ambassadors, and for that we thank you.
If you’re loving orchestra, please help spread the word. And if you can take a second to rate us too, that helps so much. 

Finally, please keep that feedback coming. What you love, what you don’t love, and what you wish was there for you to love — it’s all super valuable.
Thanks!

Mario on a heater

Today is a really really good day.


Yesterday, we had the great honor of being included in the App Store’s “New and Noteworthy” section.  Today we’re hovering in an out of the #5 position among the App Store’s free productivity apps, in some really high-caliber company. New users are registering like crazy, and so far feedback has been great. People seem to be excited about what we’re doing here at Orchestra, and we couldn’t be happier about that. 


People are not only downloading Orchestra — they’re kicking its tires too. And it’s (almost) music to our ears: thanks to an internal app we call MacGeiger, every time someone takes an action in Orchestra (like creating a task or asking someone else for help) we play a sound from Super Mario Bros. When a new user joins our speakers blast the 1-UP green mushroom sound many of us remember from our childhood. As a result, our office currently sounds like Mario is on the heater of his life. Having that ambient sense of people actually using the app is a real rush for us — it makes this new wave of users profoundly tangible and makes us giddy as a result. 

What’s up next?
Thanks so much to those of you who have already given Orchestra a try. We know it’s no small deal for someone to try to run their life out of new piece of software. We’re getting a lot of requests for new features, native apps for Mac and PC and a mobile app for Android. You’ll be happy to hear that all those things are on our radar, so stay tuned! And please keep the feedback coming via Facebook, Twitter or email — that’s how we’ll be able to make Orchestra great… together. 

Hey, we should work together.

Today is a really good day. 
After months of very hard work, iterating over and over on designs and pushing the limits of what’s technically possible, we’re ready to take Orchestra to the larger world. 

It’s taken longer than we hoped it would. It’s been harder to build than we thought. We’ve learned so much so far that it boggles our minds. And we’re just getting started.

Orchestra began with a simple premise: it should be much, much easier to work together.  At home. At the office.  With teams on the go. 
As we see it, there are two main parts to working with others: (1) organizing what needs to be done, and (2) communicating with others to get it done. There are lots of organizational tools out there (think to-do lists), but most of them are just digital lists, unconnected to the people you actually work with. And of course there are lots of ways to communicate (email, text messaging, and phone calls come quickly to mind), but none of these provide much by way of organization. 

Last winter we asked ourselves: what would happen if your to-do list were connected to everyone you actually work with to get things done? What if you could put a task on someone else’s list as easily as on your own? What if you could “check off” a conversation as soon as whatever you were talking about was accomplished? What if you could blend communication and organization?

Limited Preview
Today we’re excited to share the first version of a system that does just that: blends chat with a to-do list to make it easy to get stuff done in concert with others. 

For now, we’re limiting access to Orchestra to ensure we can maintain a great experience for all of our users. To gain access, you’ll need to have been assigned a task from someone already using the system. If you’ve never received a task and really want to try the system, ask around (e.g. Twitter/FB) or send us a tweet (@orchestra) and we’ll add you as capacity permits. 

Basic Features
We knew that for Orchestra to work, it not only needed to provide tools for organization and communication, but:

  • It would have to be faster than pen and paper for recording a task. So we built in voice-recognition. 
  • It would have to be faster than SMS for communication. And it is. 
  • It would need to sync automatically to your desktop. And it does.
  • It would need to be simple and intuitive. You be the judge.


Just the Beginning
As a foundation, we believe Orchestra is ready to go. It’s our MVP, if you will. But there’s a lot more to do. And that’s where you come in. 

We believe the only way to create great social software is to do so in concert with users. So we’ve built a simple tool on a solid foundation that we can use to iterate towards a great product with your help. 
As you use Orchestra, we need to know what you like, what you don’t, and what you wish Orchestra would do, so we can create the tool that we all discover that we want.  Get in touch via Twitter, Facebook, or Email.

We’re really excited about Orchestra’s potential. With a little help, we think it could really become something wonderful. And we can’t wait to get there, together.