As a freelancer, I have EXACTLY this problem, so I started hacking away on my own solution. Don't want to shamelessly promote myself here, but if you're interested, link is in my profile.
Your users and their clients are still going to be using Slack and email, but it seems like you're giving me one more thing to log into. You write:
> Schedule your time spent and group distracting reminders and notifications in one place
If this "one place" is a separate silo from Slack, Outlook, Basecamp, Skype, SMS, Discord, Hipchat, IRC, and Github...it's not the one place I'll need to check. It's the n+1th place.
Now, if I can put my credentials into Calmbird (securely would be nice, but you can have the plaintext if you can make this insanity stop) and have it do the API connection to - or, if necessary, the nasty DOM-manipulation, Windows message hacking, and client-impersonating - to put all these services and their notifications in one place, that would be a solution to the proliferation problem.
Also:
> schedule automatic emails to your clients with updates
My clients don't want automatic emails, especially from templates/digests. They want me to hand-craft them as if it was the most important thing in my life. And while they can understand a curt update message or a missed daily status notification, the real point of these updates are to confirm that I'm still on the project. If a message accidentally went out with a placeholder like "I'm still working on {todo-insert-task-here}", and I didn't know about it, that would be...bad.
- Your users and their clients are still going to be using Slack and email, but it seems like you're giving me one more thing to log into
That is not the aim, the real goal here is exactly what you state next i.e you'll be able to (securely via OAuth, so you can also revoke access anytime) log into your Slack, Basecamp etc. and Calmbird will be the one 'dashboard' where you log into, kind of like having a social network client that supports Twitter, Facebook etc.
> My clients don't want automatic emails, especially from templates/digests. They want me to hand-craft them as if it was the most important thing in my life.
That is very true from personal experience, this is a feature where you'll craft a sort of an 'emergency' email yourself in advance and when you indicate in calmbird that you're working, it'll send if off to your client if there's an email from them, optionally with the latest updates. It's not a 'machine-generated' email in the traditional sense and this feature is in my current version entirely optional, which is how it will stay at launch, (if it stays at all, I'll certainly be thinking a lot about how can this be improved, there's no point if it's not going to be useful.)
Well, perhaps but I am more trying to develop a service to avoid the Slacks and Basecamps of the world, while still being aware of what's going on, rather than just being a multi-network client.
>or, if necessary, the nasty DOM-manipulation, Windows message hacking, and client-impersonating - to put all these services and their notifications in one place, that would be a solution to the proliferation problem.
This isn't possible for web services due to the state of U.S. law. Speaking to a server without the consent of the server's owner is both a crime and a tort under the CFAA. There is also liability for copyright infringement, among other things.
If you publicly advertise your service I can probably assume your consent to speak to it. I don't have to wear a funny hat while doing so just because some hidden legalese on your website says so.
At least in Europe, news organizations pushed this kind of argument in their campaign against adblockers and failed in front of the courts. US law may differ, of course.
>If you publicly advertise your service I can probably assume your consent to speak to it.
The implied access and license is probably valid as long as you're abiding the ToS. If you're violating the ToS after agreeing to it ("agreeing" means that proper notice is given to make the ToS binding, etc.), the implied license would probably not work. If you've been specifically asked to stop, either directly or indirectly (e.g., through an IP ban), any implied license or access privileges would almost definitely be revoked at that point.
>At least in Europe, news organizations pushed this kind of argument in their campaign against adblockers and failed in front of the courts. US law may differ, of course.
Ad blockers differ because they alter the payload after receiving it under legitimate terms (though this could still probably be considered copyright infringement under the argument that the license is for viewing only, not alteration). The CFAA would not be applicable because when the adblocker comes into play, you're not accessing someone's network (which is what the the CFAA addresses).
If a site clearly disallowed AdBlock users in their ToS and adequate notice was given to users that they were to be bound by these terms, it would be "unauthorized access" to the server, which is not allowed under the CFAA.
As an aside out of curiosity, is the client/freelancer graphic representative? Are you really in the Kimberleys with a client in Western Sahara? Just struck me as odd as there are few places on earth that are less-densely populated (while still being populated) :)
I don't have a need for the product myself, but I do like the name for it.
