Lifehacker Selects Wunderlist as Best To-Do App for Android

Interesting choice for the fast growing app developed right here in Berlin, Germany.

The article also features some other to-do management apps for android.

Check out the full article over at lifehacker.

David Allen on Interruptions, Focus and Use of the Inbox in GTD

Great Productivity Pattern when Dealing with Interruptions

as shown in a short video by David Allen, author of the great productivity book “Getting Things Done”:

As soon as an interruption appears you stick whatever you are working on into the inbasket or inbox. You can continue working on what you dropped there, whenever you have ressources to deal with it.

And don’t forget to make sure you empty your inbox! ; )

Review: Get Paprika – Simple, Personal List-Based Todo and Notes Management

GetPaprika is a very simple tools that let’s you organize your todos and notes in a single list.

Feature Set: Everything in one Editable List

The core concept of Get Paprika is quite simple and quite different from other todo tools: You can create projects and every project has one editable text page associated to it.

When you switch from view to edit mode you can capture notes, create todos, tags, dates and format your text using basic formatting options via textile.

Once you save your document you can then mark todos as done, filter and search for tags, dates and projects.

There is also an option to share the document via a link that you can send to anybody and they can edit it without signing up. However there is no history or an indication as to who wrote what.

As far as a personal easy-to-use dump for notes and todos GetPaprika does quite well. When working in a team you would wish for more options, more work flows and automation. Such as assignments, automated priorization, reminders and so forth.

Feature rating: 3/5

 

Design and Usability: Fast Capturing, Slow Working

It only takes a couple of minutes to get to know the concept and basic textile commands to use GetPaprika. So you can start working straight away.

The one-list concept for both notes, todos, dates and tags also helps you get started capturing your stuff pretty fast.

On the other hand, once you have captured your stuff and you want to work with your list, you will find yourself regularly switching to edit mode to either remove, reorder or edit your stuff.

The overall design (look and feel, performance and usability) is very well done, straight forward and low-noise. Quite fun to use, actually.

Design and Usability rating: 3/5

 

Overall Impression: Great Approach for Capturing Your Stuff

GetPaprika is free, easy and fun. It allows you to quickly capture and format your notes and todos. No real hassle, no complexity. If you are looking for a personal brain dump which still allows you some degree of todo management, GetPaprika seems like a good choice.

If you need more features, more workflow or better collaboration you should maybe take a look at our review of the task manager “flow” or our review of “action method” – a project management tool.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Review: tadalist – Simple and Well Designed Little Todo Management Web App

tadalist is a very simple web based todo manager that allows you to create lists with tasks and check them off when done.

Feature Set: Focus on Todo Management Simplicity

The concept of tadalist is straightforward: Todos are grouped into lists. Thats almost it:

• change order within list: you can drag and drop todos
• edit and delete todos
• mark todos as done
• share lists with others either via a link (non-editable) or via email (permission to edit the list)
• rss feed for lists and todos

There is really nothing distracting you from creating and working with your todos. However the tool is primarily aimed for personal use and offers little or no flexibility when trying to filter todos via tags, importance or other properties.

Feature Rating: 1/5

Design and Usability: Great Flow and Details

One of the Design Commandments by famous product designer Dieter Rams says:

“Good design is as little design as possible.”

Tadalist pretty much nails this one on the head. Nothing distracts you from creating and working with your todos.

Even more: The user flow for creating todos is almost impecible. It is fast, you can create them with as little clicks as possbile, as many as you want at a time.

Little details make your todo decisions a little bit easier: The more todos a list contains, the larger the little circle in front of it gets.

Design Rating: 4/5

Overall Impression: Good Design but too Few Featueres

Even though I really enjoyed the flow of tadalist, for real work or even real todo management, tadalist has too little to offer. Once you get past 4 or 5 lists with more then 10 todos in each, filtering, prioritizing and a better interaction view become necessary, in my opinion. For real collaboration features such as assigning tasks seem useful but not implemented in tadalist.

Overall Rating: 2/5

Top 5 Collaboration Todo Management Tools

Over at lifehacker.com Alan Henry has written a blog post with a poll to find out, what their readers most popular todo management is. This top 5 is especially geared towards tools that you can share todos or todo lists with.

Interestingly enough the classical spreadsheets is currently top 1 (with almost 50%) followed by basecamp and rememberthemilk (check out our review of rtm).

Read the complete article on group todo management tools on lifehacker.

Review: GQueues – A Good Task Manager for Google Users

 

GQueues is an online task management tool with the look and feel of Google. It is not developed by Google, but is build on the Google App Engine and therefore integrates very well with other Google products. Registration is only possible through a Google account.

Feature Set: Good Focus on Collaboration

Tasks are grouped into queues (e.g. “To Do”), which in turn can be grouped into categories (e.g. “Home”). As the name queue suggests, tasks are prioritized by their order within a queue.

Tasks can have the following properties:

• subtasks (which in turn can also have subtasks and so forth)
• tags
• due date (can be a repeating task)
• notes
• person to whom task is delegated (can be more than one)

You can add a tasks in various ways – you can just choose your preferred way:

• via the application
• via mail
• via instant message (Google Chat)
• via GMail gadget (convert mails into tasks)
• via bookmarklet
• via chrome extension

Organization of tasks is pretty easy. You can drag and drop tasks into a different queue. Tasks can be combined according to label and/or due date into smart queues. You can even implement GTD with a personalized set of queues.

One strong side of GQueues is the ability to collaborate. You can share queues with others, and work on them in real time. You can delegate tasks, even to more than one person. They can update you on their work by commenting the task. In the settings you can choose to block people from assigning tasks to you (or explicitly allow). There are also many notification possibilities.

GQueues also works on mobiles and tablets (even offline). It has a extensive integration into Google Calendar. You can easily learn how to use all the features by watching the Video Tutorials.

As you probably already noticed we at teamaton do not like the fixed concept of lists – or queues as with GQueues. We think it is a outdated concept – you should be able to organize your tasks more freely. I did not like the prioritization within queues, but you can just view it as a list of tasks. There could be a little more aid for easy collaboration. Apart from that the feature list is great.

Feature Rating: 4/5

Design and Usability: Google-esk

GQueues does not hide the G in its name – the design is close to that of Google Tools. Therefore it is easy for Google users to feel at home. But all in all, the design is a little boring, you may not be motivated to actually do the tasks.

GQueues hides away the features until you hover over a task, which makes the screen not so overloaded.You can drag and drop tasks from one queue to another. There is also a keyboard shortcut for everything.

Design Rating: 2/5

Overall Impression: Good Feature-Set But Boring Design

Since GQueues requires a Google account, it probably will only appeal to Google users. Which is fine, because it is integrates nicely with GMail and Google Calendar. These people will also feel comfortable with the google-esk design.

GQueues comes in two versions: lite (free) and full ($25 per year). The difference is that you get Google Calendar Integration, Reminders and Collaboration only with the full account. Companies can buy many accounts at once and get discounts. To me, the price is totally worth the additional features.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Review: Remember The Milk–Personal Task Manager with Great Integrations

remember the milk (rtm) is a very popular and free online task manager for personal usage. In its core it works with lists and allows for great integration into your work flow due to a ton of different services and device apps.

Feature Set: Focus on Lists and Simplicity

The core functionality revolves around lists that you can sort your tasks into. You can create as many lists as you want to – you can even define “smart list” by individual search criteria.

You can email your tasks to rtm and they land in your inbox as do all tasks that you don’t assign to a specific list.

The tasks in remember the milk can have the following properties:

• part of a list
• tags
• due date
• priority (1, 2, 3 – visualized by color)
• notes (any kind of text)
• repeat functionality (daily, weekly and so forth)
• location (where this task can be completed)

Sharing, Reminders, Overview and Services

Even though rtm offers you the possibility to share tasks, this feature is not at the center of the tool. The process of sharing a task is not very straight forward and you have to invite the person before being able to send them the task.

A very interesting feature is the reminder. As in most tools you can set a due date for you task. In rtm however you can also set how you want to be reminded: Either by a message to your mobile phone, your IM service or email. And how long before the due time you want to me reminded.

The overview section is supposed to help you decide on what to do next. There are only three list: Due today, due tomorrow and overdue. There is also a tag cloud with all your tags.

The feature that for me personally makes rtm so appealing is their integration into other tools and devices.

There is a whole list of services available:

• ipad, iphone, ipod touch app
• android app (only with a pro account)
• gmail plugin (my favourite – shows a tiny rtm interface within gmail, where you can see and add tasks quick and easily)
• integration into outlook
• rtm for blackberry
• you can use it offline with google gears
• many more rtm services and third party integrations can be found here

Without the services I would have probably only given rtm 2 out 5 for feature. Because it focuses on personal usage primarily and apart from the list view there are not many features to help you get things done. But the gmail plugin definitely integrates awesomely into my workflow.

Feature Rating: 3/5

Design and Usability:

Working with Tasks: Completing and Editing

What really bugs me about rtm is the way there main work area. Especially when trying to work through and edit your tasks.

On the top you have tabs with your lists which break into a second row if you have too many lists. This makes it harder to see all your lists. Also there could be a count to the items in each lists displayed – so that you have a better overview of your status.

In center left you have your list with todos in your current list-tab. This basically is fine. However, if you want to edit or change something with your currently selected task, you have to go up all the way beneath the tab-list and select whatever action you like from a dropdown. You cannot really complete a task at the task. Click and done style.

But even worse is the work flow for editing tags or other information of a task. You have check the task and then on the top right side appears an overview of the tasks properties where you click and edit. So if your task is in a list of 20 or 30 tasks the box you edit in is far away from your task and your context.

Creating a Task

The last critique holds true for adding a task. After you put in your tasks title you have to select it and edit its properties as described – this really is a nuissance.

The only real remidy is to learn the shortcuts which makes working with rtm a lot faster.

Design Rating: 2/5

Overall Impression: Well Integrated Personal Task Manager

Sometimes it’s less about the features or the usability – sometimes it’s more about whether or not a tool fits into your workflow. For me remember the milk works well, because it has a has a widget available in a place I use throughout my whole work day: In gmail. I do most of interaction with rtm through this widget, which definitely works for me.

The tool itself lacks a couple of features (like simple task sharing) and the usability could be improved. If you are looking for a free, simple and versatile task manager – remember the milk could be the one for you.

Overall Rating: 3/5

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For a complete remember the milk guide check out their getting started section.

Review: Flow – Good Looking Task Management with Collaboration

Flow is a web-based task management application, which is also available as an iPhone App. Jarel Remick recently wrote a good review about Flow on appstorm. Therefore I will not go into all the details of flow, but instead urge you to read the review by Jarel Remick.

Design: Nice

I agree with Jarel about the good design. It has written JavaScript all over it, and looks good in it.

There are a few things which I do not like. The items in the left sidebar are quite small – they do not resemble the importance they have. The DropDown-Sign and the Add-Sign on the bottom left are easily overlooked.
Jarel wrote that he liked the speed, with which Flow performs. I have to say I experienced quite a few “Loading” icons – a task manager should not leave you waiting to get into the “Flow”.
Design Rating: 4/5

Features: Collaboration Is Central

Flow makes it easy to delegate tasks and share whole lists of tasks. The collaborator does not even have to have a Flow account – an email address suffices. What bugs me is that you always have to add the collaborators one by one – there are no groups.
Within a Task you can see the whole activity like comments renamings, attachments. In my opinion that is too much. Tasks should be things that can be done within a few hours. There is little need for discussion. On the other hand, I could imagine much discussion in a list as a whole, but there is no such possibility. To me a list comprises many tasks related to each other.
Feature Rating: 4/5


Check out the video introduction to flow:

Overall Impression: Almost Flow

Flow does many things the right way. The design and usability are among the best I have seen. The feature set has much from what one could wish for.
Yet, there are few things which restrain me from getting into the “Flow”: Should I look at all my tasks, or just at the upcoming ones? At which list should I look first? The checked off items distract me a bit from the unfinished tasks.
There is also the price: $9,99 per month per account. You get discounts, if you register you whole team. Still, it is comparatively expensive.
Overall Rating: 4/5

Review: Action Method Online–Project Management with Lots of Features

Action Method Online is a project management application that is geared towards teams rather then being a straightforward todo or task manager.

Feature Set:

The core of Action Method revolves around the Action Sthtml Entwurf kanban boardep. This is basically a todo or task. However, the idea behind the tool is to incorporate some of David Allens “Getting Things Done” methodology in which there are no real todos just next steps you need to take. So, whenever you create a task or todo, think: “What is the next step I need to take to get this done or move it forward? And what is the outcome I want to achieve?”

Action Steps can have the following properties:

• project
• delegate (by email invitation)
• target date
• time tracking and estimate enabled
• color

You can filter your tasks with the following options:

• projects
• overdue
• color
• steps I need to do
• delegated to others
• delegated to me
• active vs. completed

You can manage your todos by either editing them or drag-and-dropping them.

Discussions, Backburners, Events, References, Activity Feed, Contacts, Messaging

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of features that try to make your usage of Action Method more productive:

Discussions are conversatione between people within your organization or team. You get notification as soon as someone posts something new here.

Backburners are ideas that you do not want to act on now – however want to keep them in mind for later.

Events are dates such as milestones, due dates and so forth.

References are simple documents that can be reviewed and edit by everyone in your team.

References and discussions can have files attached (docs, pdfs, images) to them. However this works only in the premium account (12$ per month and user).

Furthermore there is an Activity Feed with an overview of the latest activities in your project, a list of all your contacts (team members) and a possibility to send short messages to your colaborators.

Organizing Todos by Projects

All your actions steps are grouped into projects which can be anything you want them to be – think of them as tags. You can also combine projects into groups.

For a better overview of your current project you can switch to “project view”. Here you get a good impression of what is going on in your project. You can see action steps, discussions, backburners, events and references all in one place.

You also can assign your projects priorities: In “Energy Line” you can set them to high, medium, low or idle.

Desktop Tool: Same as the Browser

Even though there is a desktop tool (via adobe air) which you can download for both Mac and PC – the interface and speed is just the same as in your browser. There is also an Iphone App available.

Overall Feature Impression: A lot of Features and no real Flow

The features all seem to make sense when you work in a team – however, the tool itself becomes very crowded – a lot of things are going on. This results in lack of focus on the actual stuff you want to get done: Your actions, todos, tasks. There are tools for all of those extra features and maybe you do not want to integrate them all in place.

Also the user and work flow does not seem quite intuitive when navigating the features – it seems that sometimes they could be better integrated into one another.

Feature Rating: 3/5

Design and Usability: Nice Look and Feel – Performance and Navigation Could be Better

The overall look and feel is quite appealing. On first glance it is calm, not too much clutter or visual noise.

When you go into detail though, there are a couple of things that are confusing. The hierarchy navigation for example is misleading, because you have your project categories (actions steps, references, etc.) above the project navigation.

Also the main navigation changes when you navigate to different features of the app. Which is a bit of nuissance because you have to navigate back to do something new.

As said before, there could be a bit more of a flow to going through the application. Due to the feature density this surely is not as easy to achieve.

The performance within a certain page is quite decent. Some of the interactions are done without page reloads and thus reload quickly. However, when you switch between features, almost always a page reload is required, which slows the performance down quite a bit. (Navigating to the premium sign-up page even took almost 10 seconds – which seems like quite a bummer.)

Design Rating: 3/5

Overall Impression: Project and Team Management Tool

Being target to teams and corporations and more complex processes (such as discussions, file sharing, and so forth) rather then being a real todo or task manager.

Most of the features seem quite appealing and the overall design is appealing even though it could support your work flows better.

Overall Rating: 3/5

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Here are more screenshots over at the Action Method site.

If you are interested in the Action Method Iphone App – take a look here.

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If you are interested in simpler todo manager check out our review of wunderlist.

Review: Wunderlist – Popular, Gorgeous Task Manager with Little Features and Some Bugs

Wunderlist is a personal task manager that recently has gained a lot of attention and popularity. The overall visual design is very appealing, the feature set is rather limited, however the multi-platform support make it an interesting tool.

Feature Set: Just the Basics – Tasks, Lists, Filters

In it’s core wunderlist is a simple task manager that works with lists.
Tasks can have the following properties:

• title of the task
  
• longer text for task description
  
• star for importance
  
• due date

In order to have a better overview of your tasks you can group them into lists.
You can filter your tasks with the following options:

• due date: today, tomorrow, next 7 days, without date
  
• freetext entry
  
• lists
  
• starred tasks, done tasks

Sharing Lists – Not Tasks

Those lists can be shared with other people which is not a quite straightforward process.
First you invite your colleague or friend. After they have signed up you have to share the list again – which is a bit of a pain. Also creating a new task by your colleague leads to you having a new and empty list by the same name – which seems like a bug.
Individual tasks can neither be shared or assigned.
There is a feature to share lists via cloudapp – which simply gives you a public link with the tasks in a certain list – however no interactivity.
Feature Rating: 2/5

Multiple Platforms: Windows, Mac, Iphone, Android

Wunderlist is available for multiple platforms and syncs very well accross them. I have not tested the mac and iphone app and there are some uncritical bugs, which certainly will get fixed soon. All versions are free so far.
For capturing todos or notes on my android while on the road – I would still prefer catch.com – because it is so easy and quick to use.
Adding a note in catch is a matter of two blazing fast clicks. In the wunderlist android app you have first open the app, navigate to the correct list and then within two clicks you have created a new todo. This takes too long just to do it on the fly – for my taste. Especially when you are walking or talking to someone.

Design and Usability: Gorgeous, Personalizeable but Buggy

The overall visual design is very appealing. You can certainly see, that it is inspired by the recent apple designs. It is clear and minimal with a certain character to it. The icons and descriptions are self-explanatory – you can start using wunderlist straight away. For example “overdue tasks” are displayed as a red and visually present button.
You can personalize the place your lists are shown and the background image. I definitely enjoyed the design with the monster and the balloon ;)

The response time is very good. There are no real page reloads – all interactions are almost instantaneous. You can drag and drop tasks into lists.
Some of the bugs I have found:
When signing up for the service you type in your email and password to register, press the “register” button and come to almost the same form to enter your data again.
In both the android and the windows desktop version there is a bug with the display of the dates. Which in the case of the windows desktop version leads to wunderlist showing we overdue items even though I have none.
Design Rating: 4/5

Overall Impression: Too Simple, Personal and Free

Overall I think wunderlist is primarily aimed at personal use. Sharing is not a central and well implemented feature. Which limites the tool to one person.
Also the lack of further task properties such as tags, priority does not make it a contender for an optimal todo manager.  Also some more features such as sending tasks as emails or integration into other tools would make wunderlist more attractive.
The visual design however is well done and quite appealing.
If you are looking for a free personal task manager which syncs easily with your mobile device – wunderlist might be the tool for you.
Overall Rating: 3/5
Check out this review video by lifehacker:

Productive Email Management: Getting Things Done in Your Inbox

Email is big part of our everyday workflow. Getting hundreds of emails daily is a normal thing these days. Different people, different contexts, different actions make even harder to stay on top email.

Step 1: Emptying your Inbox

In an interesting free paper by Getting Things Done author David Allen, the classic GTD approach is applied to email:

1. regularly empty your inbox
2. file everything that you don’t need to take an action on
3. complete the emails that will take less than 2 minutes
4. file those that you are waiting someone else to take action on in a folder: waiting-for
5. file those that take you longer than 2 minutes in a folder: action

Now your inbox should be empty.

A very similar approach is presented by Merlin Mann with “Inbox Zero” over at google:

Step 2: Being in Control - Review your Folders

After getting your inbox to zero or emptying it you still have a lot left to do: Check the folders you have created regularly:

• manage and complete the emails in your “action” folder
• keep the mails in your “waiting-for” folder up-to-date
• keep emptying your inbox :)

If you are a gmail user you might like our article on getting productive with gmail priority inbox.

What is Todo Management All About?

We have been thinking about what todo management actually want to achieve and instead of writing a post about it, I thought a tag cloud could actually illustrate our ideas quite well.

Tag Cloud of Todo Management Connotations, Ideas and Goals

• attention
• avoid anxiety
• being in control
• clear the mind
• commmitment
• efficiency
• focus on the important stuff
• get into a flow
• getting things done
• habits and patterns
• less confusion
• managing projects
• more free time
• no distractions
• performance
• productivity
• purpose in life
• reduce stress
• relax
• review your todos
• start living
• stop procrastinating

(you can click on any of the links to get to a more or less relevant page/article/video on that topic)

Gmail Priority Inbox: Getting Important Things Done First

If you get a lot of emails and have trouble deciding which emails to read and reply to first, google mails new priority inbox might be the right thing for you:

It sorts your emails into two categories (you can even set more) important and everything else by following criteria that are displayed as seperate blocks beneath each other:

• emails you read
• emails you respond to
• emails you mark as important or unimportant

You even get a new navigation item called “priority inbox” so that you can switch to you standard inbox any time.

To turn it on, just go to your settings –> “priority inbox” tab. You can adjust your settings any time.

What About “Getting Things Done” and “Inbox Zero”?

If you are familiar with Merlin Manns “inbox zero” concept or David Allens Getting Things Done methodology, you might be wondering, whether “priority inbox” actually keeps you from getting things done.

Both todo management strategies rely on you not having to decide what to read and what not, but just going through your emails or todos and either archiving, delegating, making an action out of it or just doing it. The goal is to get your inbox empty.

Priority Inbox on the other hand seems to put emphasis on certain emails instead of others. This “everything else” part could not get enough attention and eventually grow over time until becoming unmanageable. Thus being an annoying stress factor in your todo management strategy.

Have you tried gmails “priority inbox” and what are your experiences?

I will try it out the next couple of weeks and report on mine :)

[via avc.com]

Todo Management Tools: Top 14 Feature Requests by Users

[via lifehacker und Gmail Blog]

As we develop our own task management tool, we of course ask ourselves what features it should incorporate. I stumbled upon two articles. Here is a summary of the features that a perfect todo or task management tool should incorporate:

1. task lists should vary in appearance (depending on context and time)
2. the tool should be available on many platforms
3. the tool should be available on the web as well as an app on mobile devices
4. it should keep all installations in sync
5. tasks should be highlighted by a user defined color scheme
6. mails can be transformed into tasks
7. tasks can be deferred, so that they are not seen until a certain point in the future
8. tasks can be captured in a fast and intuitive way
9. tasks should have enough room for notes
10. the tool should give the user the power to adjust the settings, so that everyone feels comfortable using the tool
11. there should be hierarchies between tasks and projects
12. users should be able to get notifications and reminders
13. users should be able to share tasks / task lists with others
14. tasks can be repetitive

Of course there are many more feature wishes out there. We will be on the lookout for more inspiration for our tool.

Feel free to post your feature wishes, ideas and suggestions in the comments.

Best Mobile To-Do List Managers

[via lifehacker]

I would say that many people who use web apps as to-do managers also have smartphones and want to use to-do managers on their mobiles. Plenty of to-do manager users may even only use them on their smartphones.

Lifehacker asked its readers and here are the results:

1. Remember The Milk (22%)
2. Others (20%)
3. Google Tasks (18%)
4. Things (16%)
5. Astrid (16%)
6. Omnifocus (9%)

It would be interesting to know, how many people rather use paper and pen when on the road. Probably paper would outscore Remember The Milk.

Lifehackers Top 5 To-Do List Managers

Jason Fitzpatrick has written up what to-do list managers the readers of lifehacker.com like.

1. Google Tasks
2. Paper
3. Remember The Milk
4. Things
5. Toodledo

I would have expected paper to be on top of the list, however google seems to be omnipresent, as ever ;)

Check out the post - there is a video and short explanation to every tool. At the end you can vote for your favourite.

Getting Things Done: Mobile vs. Desktop Tools

Kevin Purdy over at lifehacker.com writes that the right todo manager should be very quick. That is why he suggests using a text file as a to-do list.

Web Based is Always Slower?

Even if you have high-speed internet connection, working in the browser with a web app will always come short of well programmed desktop tool.

There sure is a point to this argument. However, it seems to me, that it is a lot about getting the user experience right. Even though your web app such as rememberthemilk (which I currently use) might be slower than a desktop application, the actual user flow might be done smarter and thus quicker. For example: I use the gmail widget of rememberthemilk, which let's me add todos on the fly in a very useful context, which is open all day long anyway: reading my emails.

What about Mobile?

Another thing Purdy is not happy with is the speed on mobile devices.

I have tried several tools for capturing my tasks and todos and come to love the note taking android app www.catch.com. It is free and the guys have put a lot of thought into the mobile interface.

It is actually so fast that I use it for every mental note these days: One click to open, input with tag-capabilities, one click to save. Done.

And reviewing your notes in the browser is almost as easy. Due to a very clean and reduced interface.

Simple Setup, Availability and Backups

Purdy suggest todo.txt as his tool of choice. It works as a pimped-up text file with dropbox synchronisation (for more details check out his post).

I actually very much understand the idea of availability and backups as a reason to use a text file:

• it is always available
• it will never be out of date
• you don't need support
• choosing a reliable, long-lasting todo manager application requires a lot of trust in the company that builds and runs it
• you decide on your backup strategy
• it is free

However, I see some disadvantages:

• setup is not faster: the whole idea behind web apps is to get rid of installation, syncing, back-ups and so forth
• web apps are accessible from any browser on any machine with internet access and mobile devices
• there is no possibility of interaction with co-workers, family or friends when working on your todo lists (assigning tasks, delegation, and so forth)
• no visualization: in a well designed application the design actually helps you get things done. Through colors, shapes, graphic elements. A text file is just plain text with maybe some special characters.

Wrapping it up: Do the Right Thing!

I am not saying that a text file cannot be a great tool to some extent.

It always depends on your needs, your work flow and in the end discipline to use the tool. However, if done right, a web app can be a great tool to manage your todos, actually get things done and thus make you more productive.

So, what works for you? What kind of tools do you use? Feel free to share your experiences!

Illustration: Bermuda Triangle of Productivity

If you want to get things done you should definitely try to avoid this area :)

[via ffffound.com]

Getting Things Done: Don't Forget to Ask What!

Review TodoTweet - Todo Management for Twitter: Fast and Social

If you are a high volume twitter user - todotweet might just be the right tool to manage your todos.

It will integrate easily into your daily routine.  Simply add the #todo hashtag to any of your tweets and todotweet imports this post as a task. Which you than check as done within the app.

All in all it has a very limited feature set. However the idea behind it is simple and compelling.

Feature Set: Concentrating on the flow

• twitter integration
• tasks and their properties
  • due now vs. someday
  • privat vs. public (published on twitter)
  • assigned (not clear, how this works)
• task overview
  • simple list
  • display by todo properties (private, due now, assignement, tags) and search box#

This is it - no more features needed. Todotweet definitely concentrates on a simple integration into twitter and a useful user flow for creating tasks.

If you are looking for team assignments, commenting, due dates, microblogging, email notifications and so forth probably bantam or mangotasks might be more suitable for you.

Feature rating: 2/5

Design and usability: No Tasks Editing

The overall design is aesthetically pleasing however lacks some core functionality such as editing the tasks or their properties.

Also the lack of a help or support section can be rather frustrating, when trying to figure out the functionality.

From a flow perspective though the tools definitely helps you stay on top of your todos because it uses a daily routine of yours to capture your tasks: twitter posts. Even though I doubt, that a lot of people want their followers seeing all the stuff they have to do, it is an interesting attempt to help people get things done. Also the fact that your tasks become social and you commit to them this way even more.

Due to the fact that there is almost no interaction within the application itself, there cannot be said much about perfermance and speed.

Design rating: 2/5

Price: Free for a Reason

Todotweet is free and due to the limited feature set I cannot imagine a whole lot of people spending significant money on such a tool.

Price: 4/5

Overall Impression: Potential for more

Integrating your todo management into daily routines such as tweeting is nice move. However, the overall lack of todo management features such as due dates, assignements, task editing do not make todotweet a real contender.

Overall rating: 2/5

Checkout the presentation video of todotweet for an overall impression of the todo manager: