There are a number of online apps that let you create a timer that counts down to a given date and time, but frankly, most of them suck. Enter itsalmo.st, an appropriately named Web-based tool that lets you quickly and easily create a countdown for essentially anything (e.g. Doomsday) and provides you with you a custom URL to share with your friends.
The app, which was hacked together last week by Type/Code, is squeaky-clean and works as advertised (above is a screenshot of the countdown to TechCrunch Disrupt SF).
You can’t tell from the screenshot, but a bar at the bottom of the screen lets you access all the countdown URLs you’ve created, start a new one or share it on Twitter or Facebook instantly.
A couple of suggestions for the guys who built it to make it even better:
– there’s a whole world outside of the United States and people who live there might be interested in using your handy little tool as well. Perhaps those users could be given an option to change settings somehow, so they can mark the date and time the way they’re used to.
– the bar at the bottom is pretty hard to notice at first glance – consider moving it up top, changing the color scheme to make it stand out and placing default, recognizable Twitter and Facebook sharing buttons under the timer once users have created a countdown.
– let people edit and thus decide what the countdown URL looks like.
– without touch the clean look, consider some themes for people to customize their countdowns.
– consider making countdowns embeddable and/or available as a spiffy widget.
You know you’ve made an app that brings value when users want to see it improved. Nice work.