Just as Apple has simplified the personal computing experience for users, web 2.5 has brought us that same simplification in our favorite web apps.

Drop Dead Simple Startups

Our favorite friend Twitter loves to keep everything stupidly simple, limiting conversations to 160 characters and often time telling us not to be so dependent by bringing their servers crashing to the ground.

There are so many startups now simply pushing the features out the door, and retaining 1 core element: share text, highlight information, share music, blog, & write. The ideas for these startups are not new, and none of them offer an entire suite of services better than their competitors. What they do have, however, is a singular focus and a goal of fulfilling one need, and doing it really well.

How to Keep it Simple, Stupid!

Often times people have a huge vision for their project and want to make sure they include every feature imaginable so that their end user will be fulfilled and put up pictures of your site on their bedroom walls.

Unfortunately, thinking in terms of an engineering standpoint, doesn’t help when building a successful community. You have to put yourself in the mindset of how your users will be using the product and what best need can you fulfill. Here are a couple quick steps you can take during your next brainstorming session to help get you in the simple mindset.

• Pretend you had to interact with your app via SMS, would it be painful? Could users still obtain value? Are there ways to add in extra value in this context?
• What would your grandmother say? Using the older generation as a guide, you can glean a lot of insight on usability and keeping everything drop-dead-simple.
• Would someone who doesn’t speak english (or your language) understand your app? What steps can be taken to minimize confusion (besides translation).
• Describe your site in one sentence. If you can’t, revise your sales skills or find a need that needs completing for people.
• How many other sites do something similar to your site? The more the better; find one aspect they all share and create that singular experience.

Early on your business, you’re most likely still at your day job or you might be removed from your co-founders and you’re going to have to rely more and more on remote communication and virtual project management. Even for partners in the same office, often times a lot of work takes place at home, on the go and you want to have a central location to organize all of your brainstorming sessions, to-do lists, and goals and milestones.

Update: As a special promotion for Wise Startup Blog readers, John from MyIntervals has offered a special 60 day free trial of the service, simply head over to MyIntervals.com/wise.

3 Best Free Project Managent Solutions for Startups

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, virtual project management doesn’t take place in a 3d environment as this 90s depiction represents. Project management does, however, allow you to interact with co-founders and employees in a web-based environment where all data is shared and exchanged freely allowing you to make decisions to help your company start earning revenue.

I’ve used the majority of these project management solutions, and while I will admit there’s not “best” solution, these are some pretty great options, and the best way to find out if you’re the right fit is to take the free trials, and see if the solutions will work for you.

Basecamp

Basecamp comes from the 37signals guys notorious for providing innovative ways to communicate in virtual worlds in the most simplified way possible. Their BasecampHQ project manager is the essential of minimalism and falls just in line with the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle and gives you just the right tools to accomplish your goals in your company. They offer accounts for larger companies going up to $100/month, but they do offer a free version that I definitely suggest you check out. You can only have 1 project, but for testing purposes, this is perfect (and actually kind of addicting, too!).

In addition to the essentials, they include an email tracking system that allows you to log all email chains and conversations between clients, employees, and customers. You can also use email as a means to add and discuss content within the system. Simply reply to emails from the Basecamp system and the comment is added to Basecamp, all from your email. Personally I’ve found this to be the biggest advantage to Basecamp, seeing that I hate going on web-interfaces, I’m glad I can get my work done from my iPhone or Blackberry without having to log on.

5pmweb

This is one of the best designed, easiest to navigate project management suite I’ve seen in awhile. It blazes past the competition when it comes to flow-charting and gantt charts and has a wonderful simple, fun, interface that allows you to easily organize projects, tasks, memos, and employees.

While they are actually one of the newer project management suites on the block, 5pmweb definitely holds its own when it comes to deliver features. Just like Basecamp, they have integrated email compatibility so you don’t have to constantly log into the web interface as well as great timelines for project management, RSS integration, and a beautiful dual-pane interface that is reminiscent of dual monitors. I personally really enjoy the simplicity and ease of use of 5pmweb, and even though I’m currently using Basecamp, I am leaning hard on switching to 5pmweb due to their great feature package. They offer a free 14-day trial and then their plans begin at only $14/month (or $2.80 per user).

Goplan.info

This is actually a project management suite that I was referred to by some friends on Delicious. And upon never hearing about them I had some initial second-thoughts, but after trying out the service I was very impressed. As you can tell from the screenshots, they have a lot of similarities with Basecamp in the UI, but that’s where the similarities stop. Goplan is has the capabilities to take on the needs of an advanced project management suite with their developer API as well as ticket tracking for bugs and such.

One of the best features was the ability to talk to team members through their inline chat program. While I also thought Facebook chat would be nothing special, I find myself using Facebook chat all the time, and it’s the same with Goplan. For some reason, the ease of use and instant-nature of chat is great a project management feature. Another cool feature (coming soon) is the addition of instant messaging alerts when items change in the dashboard. Like all project management suites, Goplan emails you when there is an update to the system, and with this instant-messaging notification, the connectivity and ease of use will increase dramatically. Goplan offers free accounts for up to 2 projects and plans starting as low as $10/monht.