My Dream App

Thanks to the thousands who have voted and supported Blossom through to the top 6!
While Blossom did not make the top 3, it was a good finish for this contest, and a great launch toward future development!

Stay tuned to the Blossom website at www.getBlossom.com for updates.

Welcome voters! Check out the rest of the blog to learn more about Blossom.

Blossom has been getting great coverage in the media, in spite of Steve Wozniak’s hilarious freak MDA judge comment. Woz said ‘This would only be remotely entertaining if the plant was marijuana or opium and when you did certain things like actually work, you killed your crop…’

Ha! Well I think Kevin Rose actually took the time to read about Blossom and ‘get it’. He said ‘Very cool idea - although I’d simplify it a bit. I’d also love to see this applied my to-do list. The more tasks I complete, the healthier my plant.’ Done! thx!

MacBreak Weekly podcast at TWiT. Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, Scott Bourne, and Merlin Mann plug MDA and are all digging the Blossom app idea in this podcast.

New York Times Tech columnist David Pogue’s favorite!

apple.QJ.net “an intuitive and innovative [concept] application running on Mac OS X”

michaelmcracken.net “It needs a new name, but with the right design and art, I think it’d be a hit. ”

More: glennwolsey.com . rogis .net . vincent.van-wylick.com . del.icio.us link
“I would love to see Blossom actively developed, because this application would do dreams to my productivity, and I’m sure it would do the same for many others.”

Update: New Digg about Woz! Past digg users have been very positive. Slashdot user comments for the most part ripped on Blossom. It’s clear most of these users did not read much, with statements assuming MDA was an Apple project and thinking Blossom and Atmosphere were basically the same. However, I did find most informed reviews to be positive, like the podcast and blogs linked above.

To address some of the questions brought up:
First, Blossom leverages the psychological and emotional incentive of growing a plant. It’s similar to the psychology that drives us to finish a good game that we’ve started — the user becomes ‘invested’ in the plant, and wants to see it continue to grow.

Second, Blossom addresses the ’statelessness’ of todays windowed desktop. Turn on your computer and it generally just sits there, awaiting input. Yesterday and tomorrow have little influence on what we see. Time Machine in Leopard may help here, but it’s more for archival access rather than a self-analysis or productivity tool. Blossom will provide insight into one’s past work, and help predict what needs to be focused on for higher productivity in the future.

Third, Blossom can be turned off or on. It’s not ‘big brother’. It’s a self-motivation tool, and it facilitates, not coerces, productivity. The emotional connection with the plant will drive people to keep it on, much like the psychology that drives one to continue to play an engaging game.

And finally, Blossom ‘intellegence’ is based on each user’s workflow. Your own To Do list items feed the plant. Apps, folders, document types, or each document can be marked as healthy or not healthy for your plant. A great idea by one forum member was to create a p2p web-based database of Profiles of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ apps/doctypes, etc, based on work occupations. Eventually many catagories of specific work types would emerge. (even perhaps gamer friendly Profiles, if you work as a game tester for EA :). So it’s not just ‘Excel good, Safari bad’.

Hope that helps clarify Blossom a bit more. Thanks for any feedback, and Vote for Blossom!

Blossom - a friendly virtual plant that responds to your productivity. Get work done and watch your plant blossom! Beautiful plant options and reports that tell you where your time has gone, and predicts what to work on next, helping stay on task.

New to Blossom? Check out the blog posts below for UI designs, and feel free to browse the forums, the Idea, and the Judge’s Comments (above). Overview mock-up:

Click for larger image

And now for the nerdest holiday greeting, free pumpkin… I mean Apple Pi for everyone! :)

Enjoy. :)

Vote, and let your friends know about Blossom. Thanks!

A main goal of Blossom is to have a virtual plant that responds to your productivity.

So, while Blossom will contain a database of default responses to apps, document types, and website URLs, for many users easy custom settings will be vital.

The last blog post talked about how we can set custom productivity criteria. Here are a some UI mockup snippets to illustrate.

At the first launch of an unknown app or website, Blossom provides a small panel to quickly add custom criteria. After 10 seconds of non-interaction, the panel will fade, and default rules are applied.

While the above panel is small, here is an even less intrusive alternative in the title bar. This would apply the custom rule to the currently running profile.

Day-to-day use of Blossom. An optional Apple menu status icon provides feedback and quick access to Blossom preferences.

Integrated with Mac OS X. Context menues also provide direct access to health criteria prefs for specific apps, documents, or folders.

Gotta love the shrooms! :)

And finally, more OS X integration - tracking your non-computer tasks! Blossom responds to completed To Do items from iCal (or any app using Leopard’s new system-wide To Dos) and adds this data to your plant’s health metric.

That’s it for now. Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.

Awesome, Blossom is in the MDA finals! Thanks for your votes and support getting the word out.

Blossom is simplifying. As Kevin Rose noted “Very cool idea - although I’d simplify it a bit. I’d also love to see this applied my to-do list. The more tasks I complete, the healthier my plant.”

As forum user dek pointed out, a common misunderstanding about Blossom needs to be cleared up. A lot of users (and a couple guest judges) are not getting the idea that any app, document, URL, or folder can be set with simple Custom health rule criteria.

So, from now on -
Blossom has a very simple “good” or “bad” rule setup. When first opened, any app, doc, URL, or folder can be set on a sliding scale as Good, to Neutral, to Bad for your plant.

The UI solution here is a small overlay setup panel on any app’s Title bar area seen when an app is launched for the first time. Once Blossom is trained, settings can be later adjusted in the prefs.

Update: As suggested in the comments, Blossom should read the system-wide To Do’s in Leopard (and to-do’s in Tiger’s iCal) by default. Completed tasks items will help feed the plant.

So, with Kevin’s to-do list, by default Blossom will work as desired. Further customization could be done by setting to-do task related apps/documents/URLs as Good for the plant.

Thanks again for all the feedback.