Need To Know Who Does What? Try WhoDoes

It is always refreshing to see some startups that do not originate from the Silicon Valley. It is even more refreshing when they actually launch something innovative. We have just been informed of launch of WhoDoes by an Italian startup GotThingsDone. The startup specializes in producing Ruby on Rails web applications - until today it seems that the only application has been the WhatAList, the funny and intuitive tool to create, share and contribute to various topical lists. Today they have added a new application named WhoDoes and they remained faithful to choosing unconventional domain names (http://whatali.st/ and now http://whodo.es/).

This latest addition is a free online project management application which seems to be well designed and even thoughtfully developed. They make it clear from the very first day of the launch that users you will eventually have to pay for WhoDoes. But what I like about it is that they promise all the current features will remain free even when chargeable versions of the product will be launched. Sounds good, isn't it? You do not have to be afraid of having to pay for something you already use - only for features that you may find necessary in the future.

And even now the features are impressive: you can plan activities for the team, find them on your daily calendar, assign tasks, comment on various tasks and track projects. The application even features a repository for all the team members to upload files and find the last official version of the project documentation. And all of the above is available through an intuitive and rather simple user interface.

WhoDoes can be used both as a tool to coordinate a large team working on a long-term project even if the team members work in various locations around the world and as a helpful application to manage your small project as an individual professional - even when you are traveling or constantly moving between your home and office computers.

They also promise it is a totally cross-platform and cross-browser application and I can only respect them for that: we all know so many startups tend to launch their apps as fast as they can even when they only support IE and Firefox without worrying about of many disappointed visitors willing to try the app out but being unable to because their platform or browser is not supported.

Currently it is not clear how this application will evolve into a chargeable version. My idea is that they will limit the repository space and the number of team members for the free version. I think some new features will be added later on which are rather obvious - instant messaging in addition to commenting on a separate task and an ability to edit the project's docs by all the team members. If this features are implemented, it will look like a perfect project management solution and I will be the first to actually pay for the ability to effectively manage various Profy tasks.