Aspirations

Version 0.9.2 has been released, which fixes some memory management problems that were causing crashes. Thanks kindly to the great people on the Unifiq User Forum for their help in hunting this down.

We've released version 0.9.1, the first update to our preview of Aspire. There is a new option to print without the background image and colors, new context menus on items and the background, and we fixed a bug where it appeared you could change the font of item names while editing, even though the changes were later ignored.

You can just download the new one, or check updates (via Preferences) within Aspire will let you pick up the upgrade via Sparkle.

There's been a great response to the public preview of Aspire, and I've received a lot of good comments and suggestions. Please keep them coming!

I wanted to share a few of them, to see what others think.

First, the ability to export to a mind mapping or outlining program. Getting data in and out of Aspire is certainly something that should be expanded in the future. What specific applications or formats would be most useful to people?

Second, localizations — once things settle down a bit, it's definitely something I'll be looking into further. What are the most common languages that you've seen other applications localized for?

Third, an option to print without the background image. A good idea, and will help save some ink!

Fourth, right-click menus on goals, obstacles and solutions, to allow adding "child" items, deleting, adjusting priority, etc. Though right now this can be done through the toolbar, menu, and keyboard equivalents, adding the ability to do it through context menus sounds like another good idea.

Finally, the ability to drag items around to reorder them (and possibly "reparent" them). Not including this was a deliberate design decision, though one I expected and am prepared to revisit. The rationale was to keep things as streamlined as possible, so people are focused on the task at hand. In my experience, the temptation to start playing with layouts in these sort of applications is hard to resist, leading to lots of time spent tweaking, which doesn't really add anything. Take the ability to do the tweaking away, and the temptation goes away too. Your thoughts?

Again, thanks for the suggestions so far. We can also definitely use your help to let other people know about Aspire...!

Well, that didn't take long... someone sent in this picture of Aspire running on an Acer Aspire One netbook hacked to run Mac OS X. (Click the pic for a larger view.)

After probably way too long, I'm glad to finally be able to "open up" unifiq.com and Aspire for public consumption!

As you can see by reading through the main Aspire page, the underlying goal is to help people look at their big picture goals.  So in one sense, it's definitely a "productivity" application, but it comes at the problem from the opposite direction that most productivity tools take.

It's important to say up front that I don't think one approach is "better" than another; in fact, what I think is important is a balance.  The last thing I want Aspire to be is something that tries to pull your to do list, project management, or GTD software from your cold dead hands.  Instead, I want Aspire to help you in thinking through and tracking the long-term goals in addition to the short-term ones.

More than ever before, with all the economic and other craziness, I think now is really a time where a renewed focus on long-term goals is a very good thing.  I'll have more to say about that another time.

So I'd invite you to please check out the website, view the short screencast, and download Aspire to try it out for yourself. Please send me your feedback, whether that is things that don't work right, weird behavior, things that (perhaps pleasantly) surprise you, or suggestions for the future.  

Thanks are also of course due to the volunteers who helped beta test Aspire, and whose contributions have already helped improve the software, web site, and more.

Finally, even though Aspire is officially "pre-1.0", you can actually purchase a license now, at the greatly reduced price of $19 (the planned regular price is $39).  You'll still be able to upgrade for free when we release 1.0, and will also get all minor (1.x) upgrades free as well.  So if you like what you see, here's an opportunity to get exactly the same license you'd be able to purchase later at a really great price.