Klok + Klokwork + iPhone = :-)

I lost count of the number of people who emailed me telling me how great it would be if there was some way to track time in Klok from their iPhone. Well we are getting ready to kick off the private beta of Klokwork, a hosted service for tracking time with Klok, which has the capability of syncing up time tracked from an iPhone (or any smartphone with a web browser) with time tracked from the Klok 2 desktop application.

Before the rumor mills start churning out false information, let me clarify what this is and isn't.

This is not:

• an AIR application running on an iPhone
• a Flex/Flash application running in mobile Safari
• connecting the iPhone directly to the local SQLite databased used by Klok
• going to be sold through the App store

This is:

• a JQuery + JQTouch based AJAX application running in mobile Safari
• able to be added to the home screen and accessed like any other application
• connected to a hosted Java-based web application called Klokwork
• synchronized with the Klok desktop application using Klok's new pluggable connector architecture

Agile and UX - I couldn't have said this better myself

Although... I think I have said almost exactly this a number of times.

If you know me, you know that I usually don't completely agree with Jakob Nielsen. However, in this post about Agile and UX, I really can't disagree with anything he says in the post. I haven't read the entire report (I don't have an extra $148 at the moment) so it is possible that I will eventually find something that I can disagree with.

One of the things that really stands out for me is this quote:

You can't just design individual features; they have to fit together into a coherent whole — a whole that must be designed as well. Bottom-up user interface design equals a confused total user experience (the Linux syndrome)

I am not really a Linux user so I can't speak to the User Experience of Linux in general, but the idea that "Bottom-up" design leads to poor results is just plain obvious. Not to mention in my experience I have seen it happen numerous times. In contrast I have see first hand how a small investment "up front" in design proves to really pay off.