William Morris once said, “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Useful and beautiful. It’s this aspiration that drives great web design (and great speeches too). The best web tools are both useful, and they look and feel beautiful.

A while back Stefan and I looked at the needs of Toastmasters clubs and wanted to make a speech timer for Toastmasters that would be useful, simple, and look great too. Many club members carry around smartphones and iPads (useful, beautiful devices) and we tried to create a tool that would capitalize on the technology we already carry in our pockets.

I’d like to introduce you to Toastimer.

Toastimer is a simple speech timer designed specifically Toastmasters who need a convenient timing system on their phone or tablet. Go to toastimer.com on any web browser, select your speech length and hit Start! As you near the end of your speech, the entire screen becomes a highly visible warning light as it turns green, yellow then red.

As we continue to develop Toastimer, we hope that it’s useful for Toastmasters and inspires many great speeches.