"The idea behind Flow is that you can bring your entire life into one place," Wilkinson says. "In the same place you remember your grocery list or the fact that you need to clip your toenails, you can also be collaborating with your team at work, you can be working on a home improvement project with your boyfriend."
Flow, which launched Tuesday afternoon, is something like a cross between Cultured Code's Things App for Apple products and 37 Signal's Basecamp.
Like Things, it allows users to create projects, schedule tasks and tag items for organization. Like Basecamp's "to do" function, users can choose to collaborate with others and delegate tasks within the system.
Users can add "followers" to projects in order to collaborate, but can also keep lists private for personal use. Everyone following a specific project can comment on tasks within it or drop in files, and they receive notifications when a task's assigned person checks it off as completed. A Posterous-like email integration allows all parties to post to accounts by emailing [email protected].
The price tag for this service, which includes a free iPhone app, is $9.99 per month. It's probably not worth the price for a mere grocery list replacement, but it's pretty reasonable when you consider Things's (one time) and Basecamp's (monthly) $50 minimum costs.
All collaborators currently need to purchase their own copy in order to participate in projects, which is probably the major barrier between Flow and astronomical handiness. The creators are working on a feature that will allow users to delegate tasks outside of the platform, but for now the good news is that buying multiple copies gets you a discount.
Price could become a bigger issue for Flow with the launch of Asana, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz's similar -- but free -- product.
Wilkinson is banking on Metalab's well established design savvy to beat out the growing competition.