LooseStitch, the new web-based outliner

When I bought my Powerbook G4, a couple of years ago, Apple did a very thoughtful thing of installing a copy of Omni Outliner on my hard drive. Of course, I didn't know then what an outliner was, but it didn't take me much time to figure out what it did and before I knew it, I was hooked.

Starting from sitemaps for web projects, calculating estimates, creating proposals for clients, I was lost without my trusted Outliner. It has secured a permanent place in my already crowded Dock and I have come to believe that for many, Omni Outliner could just be the reason they need to switch to a Mac.

And herein lies my biggest gripe concering Omni Outliner. I can't share my outlines with others. I can't for instance shoot off a mail to a client asking them to take a look at the draft sitemap I have been working on and to modify/comment on it. That is, short of asking them to get a mac.

So during a brainstorming session at crossroad solutions, Arpan and myself thought to ourselves, what if we can build a tool that could work as seemlessly as possible with Omni Outliner and yet allow others to participate in the creation process of our outlines.

And so LooseStitch was born. We made an outline of all the features we wanted to include in version 1.0 and started coding. Just like that. In a couple of weeks we had most of the pieces in place. Things were already looking pretty and most of all it was great fun working on a project in an absolutely ad hoc fashion.

We are really proud of what we have achieved in just three weeks of intense coding. We wanted it to be fun for people to create outlines, invite others, and once done to be able to share the outlines in as many ways as possible.

Do check it out and let us know if you like what we have done.

Cheers

{ Filed in:  LooseStitch }

Shashwat Parhi

27 May, 04:22 PM