Timeful is a new free iPhone application that wants to help users better manage their calendars and to-do lists at the same time. Timeful is an intelligent “Time Assistant” that relies on machine learning and behavioral science to automatically insert tasks in busy calendars, thus helping users get more things done without having to worry about scheduling.
Timeful can grab calendar events from all sorts of supported calendars, with users able to manually configure them, and add as many to-dos and actions as they want, which, in turn, can be manually slotted in the calendar. However, Timeful is able to analyze all that, and offer suggestions in the future based on past actions, taking into account various parameters including location, personal preferences and available time on a certain day.
The more Timeful is used, the better it gets – a line used by many other virtual assistants – as the app learns what the user likes, wants or has to regularly do.
“We’ve successfully applied technology to improve our lives in many domains – search, finance, music, shopping, you name it. And yet we haven’t applied it to optimize the use of our most scarce resource – time – and there’s so much algorithms and behavioral science have to offer,” Timeful CEO and co-founder Jacob Bank said. “Our first application is based on the simple observation that what doesn’t make it onto your schedule is less likely to get done. By making it easier to put everything that vies for your time onto your schedule, including automatically suggesting good times to do things, we hope to make you more productive and less stressed.”
Web and Android versions of Timeful are also in the making and will be launched at some point in the future.
Videos showing Timeful in action, and the full press release, follow below.
Timeful Product Introduction from Timeful on Vimeo.
Timeful Product Walkthrough from Timeful on Vimeo.
Timeful, Intelligent Time Manager for iPhone and iPod touch Brings Flexibility And Smarts To Time Management
Intelligent Time Manager Combines Behavioral Science and Sophisticated Algorithms to Help People Find Time for the Things that Really MatterMountain View, CA – July 31, 2014 – Timeful, a technology company with a singular focus – helping people make good use of their most precious resource, time – today announced the launch of the Timeful App for iPhone and iPod touch. Timeful enables users to easily organize all important items that vie for their time in one place, and automatically optimizes their schedule to ensure tasks are getting done. It achieves this by seamlessly merging the concepts of a calendar and a to-do list, and turbocharging them with intelligent algorithms. Available for iPhone and iPod touch, Timeful is compatible with existing calendar services including Apple iCal, Google Calendar, Exchange and many others.
Underlying the application are two technical innovations. The scheduling suggestions are based on the Intention Rank, an algorithm that uses machine learning and behavioral science to rank potential activities within time slots. Intention rank in turn relies on the Intention Genome, a unique data model that breaks down intentions to their very basic components, thus capturing the full gamut of human activity, from meetings to errands to family and social commitments to more amorphous personal aspirations regarding one’s well-being. When embodied in a tastefully-designed mobile application, the result is a “GPS for time” that not only makes our daily lives more productive, but also more enjoyable.
“We’ve successfully applied technology to improve our lives in many domains – search, finance, music, shopping, you name it. And yet we haven’t applied it to optimize the use of our most scarce resource – time – and there’s so much algorithms and behavioral science have to offer,” said Jacob Bank, CEO and co-founder of Timeful. “Our first application is based on the simple observation that what doesn’t make it onto your schedule is less likely to get done. By making it easier to put everything that vies for your time onto your schedule, including automatically suggesting good times to do things, we hope to make you more productive and less stressed.”
The Timeful App has two key features:
· Flexible intention representation: Users can organize everything that vies for their time, including events, meetings, daily to-dos and long-term good habits – in a single app.
· Smart scheduling suggestions: Using optimization algorithms and behavioral science, Timeful suggests time slots for to-dos and good habits based on available time and location. By simply specifying a timeframe for completing a task, Timeful will find time on the user’s schedule to ensure it gets done.Timeful was founded by three experts in artificial intelligence and behavioral science – Jacob Bank, Stanford PhD candidate who has applied data mining, machine learning and optimization algorithms to time management; Yoav Shoham, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University well known for his AI research and previously co-founder of TradingDynamics (ARBA) and Katango (GOOG); and renowned researcher and author Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, an expert in human fallibility and short-term thinking.
In May 2014, Timeful raised nearly $7M in a Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greylock, Data Collective, Pitango, and Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments, among others.
The Timeful App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at http://www.AppStore.com.
To learn more about Timeful, the Intention Genome and the Intention Rank algorithm, please visit http://www.timeful.com.About Timeful
Timeful is a technology company with a singular focus – helping people make good use of their most precious resource, time. Timeful’s iOS app is the company’s first product and debuted in the App Store in July 2014. The Timeful app helps users place the all-important items that vie for their time in one place, their schedule, and helps optimize that schedule using two technology breakthroughs — Intention Genome and Intention Rank. Through the collaboration of some of the leading minds in artificial intelligence, big data, behavioral science and product design, Timeful is helping people take back their lives by making time for what really matters. The company, based in Mountain View, CA, is founded by Jacob Bank, Stanford PhD candidate who’s applying data mining, machine learning and optimization algorithms to time management; Yoav Shoham, Stanford AI professor and Silicon Valley veteran whose past companies include TradingDynamics and Katango; and Dan Ariely, New York Times best-selling author and one of the leading experts in human fallibility and short-term thinking. To learn more about Timeful, visit http://www.timeful.com or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
