Mobile to-do lists: Review of Remember the Milk

Review of Remember the Milk

This is the second of a series of reviews of online organizers where we take a look at using them for mobile use, particularly in light of the iPhone's lack of a to-do list. (At least as of 1.0.2; rumors continue about this coming with Leopard.) In our previous review, we looked at Stikkits. In this review we'll be taking a look at Remember the Milk. (Or RtM for short.)

Overview

RtM promises to be the "Best way to manage your tasks." At it's core, it is a simple web interface to lists of to-do items - you just create lists of to-dos, assign due dates, tags, etc to them, and check them off when done. But, there is real power behind the simplicity.

RtM supports multiple lists, and To-dos can be tagged, and you can set a location for to-dos. RtM supports the ability to create a list of customized locations. This would seem to be a good feature for mobile users, as you could identify the actions you could perform in a given location. (GTD fans could use this do create location-dependent contexts.) There's a very pretty mashup with Google Maps which has buttons to show locations of tasks for today, tomorrow or this week.

RtM has a pretty impressive list of mashups with other organization and communication tools. In addition to the Google Maps integration, RtM has a feature that adds a small icon to Google Calendar. Clicking on this icon will pop up a list of tasks due that day. There are also widgets for iGoogle and OS X Dashboard. There are also iCal feeds, so you can subscribe from desktop calendar applications. In addition to the web interfaces, can submit tasks via email and even via Twitter, so you can post your RtM to-dos for yourself or even for your friends from your mobile phone, IM client, or mobile Twitter client. You can also configure RtM to deliver reminders by email, SMS, and several IM services.

A very interesting new feature of RtM is support for Google Gears which "enables web applications to provide offline functionality". Unlike a lot of Google Gears applications, though, RtM supports not only the ability to view your items offline, but also to update them - a real plus when reviewing your to-dos while mobile or disconnected, say while on a plane. Currently, support for Gears is limited to Firefox (though this may be changing ), so it won't be usable on handheld mobile devices such at the iPhone. To be fair, this limitation isn't RtM's fault, and the RtM developers should be applauded for working to provide support for the offline or bandwidth-disadvantaged user.

Remember the Milk has a page optimized for mobile access. This page permits viewing of your to-dos for today, tomorrow and this week - a real help for getting a quick overview when mobile. You can easily add tasks from the mobile page. Tasks can be viewed by location, tags, or by the lists that the item is on.

Finally, RtM allows you to share your lists with other contacts and send them reminders, so it is useful for organizing to-dos for small groups.

Pros and Cons

Evaluation Criteria	Pros	Cons
Ease of accessing and updating list entries	Simple to-do list paradigm is easy to understand and set up	Modal checkboxes for updating tasks sometimes hard to use (but not in the mobile version)
Usability in a mobile environment	-Mobile interface is readable and easy to interact with -Can input new tasks from email, IM, Twitter -Google gears support for offline work	Tasks not in current week or undated tasks difficult to see and access
Support for multiple browsers	Safari and Firefox work well. Mobile Safari good with mobile interface	Offline support limited to Firefox
Integrates well with other organization tools	Good interaction with other services	Location feature hard to use
Good notification support	Very good notification support for several services

Summary and Recommendation

In practice, I found RtM generally easy to use when mobile, and the iPhone version of the service helps this by providing a clean interface with easy-to-click links.

My principal frustration with the mobile site was that it shows you haw many tasks you have due today, tomorrow and for this week - but doesn't show you how many other tasks you have, whether this is because they are beyond this week or because they are undated. If you're a GTD'er, you tend to develop a lot of undated Next Actions, and these won't show up in RtM.

The locations feature seems cool, but the process for creating locations was confusing - you need to look up locations on a map, and then the instructions tell you to click on the map to add a location, which appears to do nothing. It turns out you can only create a location if you haven't looked up an address, and there's no apparent way to use the results of an address search as a location. Setting locations on tasks is relatively easy on the mobile interface, but amazingly complicated on the regular interface, requiring a combination of check boxes and filling in entry fields (and heaven help you if you accidentally set multiple locations - they are very hard to resolve.) Clearly, locations is a feature that needs some more work on the interface.

The bottom line: If your need is for a simple to-do list on your iPhone or mobile device, Remember the Milk is worth a look.

[Note to readers: I'm trying out a new way of posting the blog today - I'm using the ability of Google documents to post directly to Blogger. Keep your fingers crossed... TD]

Mobile to-do lists: Review of Stikkits

Review of Stikkits

Overview:

Stikkit is billed as "little yellow notes that think" Unlike other list managers, Stikkit tries to parse the text you enter and extract meaningful information about the list entry. The smart parser recognizes to-dos, calendar events, contact info, and URL links / bookmarks. It also attempts to link related notes. For example, if you have a note with contact info for John Doe, and later create a note saying "Meet with John Doe for lunch this Friday", Stikkits will create a calendar entry for Friday, and create a link to the note containing John Doe's contact info. (But see below.) A further feature is that notes can be formatted using a subset of John Gruber's Markdown syntax, which allows simple formatting of text and creation of lists. Taken together, these features allow very quick creation of lists, to-dos, and events - the basics for the mobile user.

Stikkit supports email and SMS notification. There are separate views for the different note types, with the to-do list view being particularly useful when mobile. Another very useful feature is the iCalendar event feed, which means you can subscribe to events created from Stikkit notes in Google Calendar or from a desktop calendar application such as iCal.

However, there are two drawbacks to Stikkits:

• Stikkits has a very minimalist interface - Icons for key functions are small, and the interface functions are all spread out toward the edges of the page. While this arrangement does allow maximum area for editing the notes and keeps focus on the content, it makes it difficult to use the interface in a mobile environment. The small icons are hard to tap, and you're constantly forced to scroll the screen to find the necessary functions. Clustering all the icons and buttons together would help, and, like many of these sites, a style sheet optimized for mobile users that made the interface elements easier to hit, even at the sacrifice of some content space, would be a real improvement.
• While the "smart" features of Stikkits is usually a big help, it is frustratingly buggy at times. My biggest problem is with the feature for sharing notes with other users - despite endless tweaking, it refuses to automatically link items shared with my wife, even though I've confirmed the sharing information is entered correctly. I can share a note if I manually share it, but this is extra work the mobile user doesn't need.
  

Pros and Cons:

Evaluation Criteria	Pros	Cons
Ease of accessing and updating list entries	• "Smart" parsing of entries eases entry of to-dos and dates • Support for markdown syntax allows easy formatting	• "Smart" parsing is buggy, requiring manual intervention • Markdown syntax buggy, sometimes corrupts URLs
Usability in a mobile environment	• Easy free form data entry using smart parsing and markdown • Can add multiple list items per edit	• Minimalist interface is hard to use in mobile environment
Support for multiple browsers	• Excellent - works in all tested browsers, including Mobile Safari
Integrates well with other organization tools	• Provides RSS and iCal feeds • Accepts email for new notes and updates of existing notes • API allows integration with other apps, including desktop apps and tools (e.g., Quicksilver)	• Interface limited to text
Good notification support	• Email notification of changes in shared notes • SMS notification of calendar events

Summary and Recommendation:

I've been using Stikkit for a while as my online inbox with good success. If it weren't for the two issues above, I'd give it an unreserved recommendation for use as an iPhone to-do list manager. However, the interface issues may be a real drawback for many, so check it out before committing to use it. There have been a number of requests for a mobile style sheet for Stikkits, along the lines of what Remember the Milk has done - this would be a huge improvement and would make Stikkits a solid choice for mobile users.

Review: Online List Organizers

In a previous post, I noted that online list organizer sites are a good way of overcoming the iPhone's lack of to-do lists. Of course, that means actually finding and using a site that matches your needs and style of handling to-do lists. I've been taking a look at three such lists: Stikkit, Backpack, and Remember the Milk.

My evaluation will be looking for a few things:

• Ease of accessing and updating list entries
• Usability in a mobile environment
• Support for multiple browsers, particularly Safari and Firefox
• Ability to integrate well with other organization tools such as calendars and RSS readers
• Good notification support

Each one of these sites has strengths and weaknesses as an online  to-do list; however each has enough of the basics to get started. Over the coming weeks, I'll be trying each of these out, and I'll report on the results here.  I'd also be interested in getting your comments on experience with these or other sites.

The first evaluation will be for Stikkits, "the little yellow note that thinks", which I've been using for a while. Stay tuned!

iPhone, Box.net, and the end of sync

I've gotten excited by the idea of using box.net as a way of getting files onto my iPhone. With capability of having drag-and-drop file storage for the iPhone, I don't really miss the USB disk mode present in older iPods. Remote access is like having a 3000-mile long USB cable.

You are limited to the file types supported by the iPhone. Support for basic file types is there,including JPEG, PDF and Microsoft Word and Excel. I've tried some other file formats - I was particularly hoping that iCal (.ics) would open in the calendar, but no dice. Still, it got me thinking. 

It isn't a stretch to imagine adding iCal support to Calendar, or even better, supporting access to .ics feeds over the net - after all, iCal on the Mac does this already, as do several other calendar programs. Combine this capability with the iPhone's always-on access, there's no reason you couldn't just use, say Google Calendar as your master calendar and sidestep syncing altogether. You'd still need to go to Google Calendar to set up new entries in this scenario, though.

Similarly, many have noted the lack of a to-do list on the iPhone. Frankly, I don't miss having a local to-do list. For a while now, I've been keeping to-dos in Stikkit, which gives me a single view of to-dos no matter what device I'm using. There have been an number of other web-base to-do organizers leaping in to fill this need, such as Ta-Da Lists, which is now offering an iPhone optimized page, and ToodleDo, which also has an iPhone page.

While there have been some rumors of to-do syncing coming with Tiger, I don't actually see a need to wait. It's time for iPhone owners to cut the tether to their laptops and switch to a web-centric model for calendars and to-dos. 

Shoulda done my homework dept: Roughly Drafted has a good article on the iPhone, iCal, and syncing.

iPhone mini-reviews

I've had my iPhone for the long weekend, and I'm still highly impressed by both the functionality and the integration among those functions. Rather than save up my impressions for a single big review, I plan to post these on my Technodad Tumblog. An RSS feed of the articles is cross-linked in on this blog's home page.

Beauty and the beast

Well, I finally took the plunge and got an iPhone. After a seeing the coverage in the press, and a good recommendation from my buddy Graham, who knows of what he speaks regarding user experiences, I went to the Apple store and tried one out.

The preliminaries: Having heard some of the stories about activation, I called my company's phone plan administrator, and she called AT&T to see if there would be any difficulty in activating my number on the iPhone. They report that my number has no "Foundation Number" and that we should be OK.

After work, off to the Apple store in Burlington. The store was packed, but the employees were moving the customers through. There were plenty of iPhones on display, all activated so you could check them out. There seemed to be plenty in stock. After handling one for a few minutes and trying my favorite websites, there was no question...this gadget is magic. So, I bought one.

Unboxing: The packaging is the usual hyper-elegant Apple packaging. Maybe too elegant - I kinda felt like one of the apes approaching the monolith in 2001.

Good news: Got an iPhone.

Bad news: I got home and tried to activate it. No luck - iTunes reports "AT&T has determined your current number cannot be used".

The descent into the first circle: Into AT&T hell on activation – despite having our company admin check this in advance, the AT&T activation trolls won’t let me activate on my current number. I’m going to have to try and activate on my home account (which is AT&T) as long as I can transfer to my current number.

The second circle: My interactions with AT&T just get crazier: I got permission from my company to transfer my business number to a personal account. I called AT&T and they tell me that I can't transfer my number to my personal account, unless I transferred to a business billing. Huh? I thought the point was to move to a personal account - which is exactly what the AT&T policy on iPhone activation says to do.

The third circle: I called the support line for my existing personal account. While they said they couldn't help me directly, they said they could help transfer my work number to the personal account. Many transfers to various different AT&T departments later, I got an extremely polite person who could crack the code: she consolidated all my phone numbers onto a new account number, preserving all the features of my current personal account. (I also have to note that Bertha, the AT&T rep who helped me with this, was polite and constructive throughout.)

The escape: Well, Bertha's magic worked. After getting off the phone, I waited a few minutes and plugged my iPhone in. iTunes springs to life, and with trembling fingers, I enter in my phone number. Success! After a bit of entering account info, iTunes offers to add the data plan to my account. I'm bask in the well-lit world of Apple service.

I'm off and syncing; I'll update on the actual experience with the phone once I recover from the AT&T experience.

The bottom line: AT&T's policy on iPhones makes no business sense. Their admin staff is clearly going through hoops dealing with activation issues, which must cost them plenty in labor costs, let alone the reputation damage. In addition, I’m trying to spend more money with them for the data plan, which I’ll gladly pay. I have my account administrator’s support in adding the phone to the corporate account. If AT&T just changed their policy, or empowered their employees to make the decision, they’d have another $240/year in their pocket, they'd lower their admin costs, and have a happy customer to boot!

There's another lesson here: There is someone at every company who is on the clue train, and will actually help the customer solve their problems, rather than just read the three-ring notebook of policy. Those people are gold, and need to be recognized. Thanks, Bertha!

Oh, arise, ye prisoners of starvation...

Oh, arise, ye prisoners of starvation...
Originally uploaded by technodad.

The big news this week in Kennebunk is that George W. Bush is staying at the family compound on Walker's Point in Kennebunkport. The town is decked out in both American and Russian flags, including the local fried food joint, the Clam Shack. Reports are that the Clam Shack is supplying 25 pounds of lobster for the dinner with Putin.

Safari pulls more lead on Firefox

In my previous post "Five Applications I can't Live Without", I noted my struggle in choosing between Firefox and Safari. Well, it looks like Safari has pulled ahead: Both the latest nightly builds of Webkit and Safari 3.0 beta support Google applications such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Google Reader. Given Safari's edge in speed and better workflow support, my use of Firefox has dropped significantly.

"..from my cold dead hands.."

I've been travelling a lot lately (which partially explains the few postings here.) On my last trip to the UK, my trusty Powerbook G4, which was pushing it's 4th birthday, developed a problem with its screen - the bottom half started fo flicker intermittently. Since I was going on another two-week trip the following week, our IT department kindly agreed it needed to be replaced, and I orded a nice new MacBook Pro. The MBP arrived on Wednesday the following week. I got a little nervous at this point - should I risk migrating to the new system just before a major trip, or should I take my chances on the old one? After all, if I held the lid on the old one just right, let it warm up well, and sacrificed two chickens and a gleek, it mostly worked...

Well, I decided to power up the new MBP, and it started to take me through the initial setup - and then I was reminded about the Transition Assistant. The setup program asked me if I was transitioning from an old Mac, and took me through some simple steps to connect my old Mac via a FireWire cable. It put up a progress bar saying it was transferring all applications, files, and configuration from my old Mac to my new one. I went off and reviewed some documents, and one hour later, it said it was done. I clicked coninue, logged out and in (and significantly didn't reboot) and wham-zing, I was looking at an identical Mac. Every application I tried worked prefectly. My mail setup was exactly as I left it. My to-do system was intact. Everything I checked worked.

One hour. Identical. New machine. No upper-brain work on my part. Back to billable work.

I worked on the new machine for one day with the old machine next to it. I kept expecting a shoe to drop. "Surely", I said to myself, "some part of MS office is going to be non-working, or some other obscure third party app will flake out on me." Nope. So I stopped talking inanely talking to myself, and got back to preparing for my trip.

So, Here I am in LA, with a new and perfectly working machine, and no worries about my old machine keeling over completely while on the road.

This is exactly how I want to be treated by a computer company. Sure, it would have been nice if my old machine had lasted forever, but it's been through so many airports it has its own TSA profile. Given I needed to buy a new machine, having a no-hassle one hour clone was exactly what I needed to de-stress my preparation for the next trip. Well done Apple - put me down for this week's unabashed fanboy award.

Five applications I can't live without

These are the five applications I really couldn't live without on a day-to-day basis. I certainly use more than five regularly, but these are the ones I spend the bulk of my time in.

I also want to draw a distinction between applications which run principally on my personal computer, and services which are accessed via the web. I'll cover the latter in a separate post.

1. Quicksilver - While this program is nearly invisible, I probably invoke this more than any other app on my system. In addition to launching programs and bookmarks, I use it to move files without touching the mouse, entering to-dos, making iCal events, and creating entries in my work log file.
   
2. iCal - I live in my calendar. I use iCal both for my "hard landscape" appointments, and also for my to-dos. Thanks to sync services, my Google Calendar, mobile phone, and iPod are all synced - but that's a topic for another post.
   
3. Safari - Still the fastest browser, and has good support for the Services menu. I use services heavily in my workflows, which makes using Firefox a real pain. (But watch this space for the new Firefox Gran Paradiso alpha, which has Cocoa support (and therefore hopefully will support services.)
4. Omni Outliner Pro - My grade school English teachers instilled a respect for the power of outlining that still serves me well, and Omni Outliner is the tool of choice for serious outliners. Not only is it a powerful and intuitive outliner, but its ability to import and export data into lots of formats are a godsend if you have to work with lots of different document formats.
   
5. DevonThink Pro - My universal inbox and snippet collector. There are three great things about DT Pro: First, it does the hard work of categorizing the information you dump into it - you don't have to think about tagging or filing. Second, the Pro Office version seamlessly links to your scanner - DT Pro Office will scan you paper documents, OCR them, and categorize and store a searchable copy. Finally, DT Pro also does a great job of improting and exporting lots of different file types.
   
6. TextEdit - Hey, there's still nothing better than a plain text file for getting things down quickly, and you can always send someone a plain text file no matter what platform or tools they use. Beyond this, Text Edit can create simple HTML and RTF files, and does a credible job of handling Microsoft Word files.
   

Ok, so that's six - but I have to subtract one. I also have a few faded loves - those applications I use often (perhaps as much as some of those above) but I now think twice before using. Most prominent these days is Microsoft Word. I'm very fluent in Word, and have used it for years. It's still the lingua franca for written corporate documents, and you can't beat it for writing a moderately complex document. However, these days, I find myself pausing before I use MS Word and asking two questions: Will I be collaborating with someone else on this document, and does this document need some unique MS Word feature? If the answers are respectively yes and no, I use Google Documents. It has really changed my workstyle for collaborative document creation. I may end up making a pass through MS Word for the final publishing, but the creative stuff is getting done online.

More on moving to web services, the impact on the applications I use, and faded loves in another post.

A cold farewell to CompUSA

A cold farewell
Originally uploaded by technodad.

So long, CompUSA..you'll be missed. Ok, the stores were dim, the stock was always a bit in disarray, and you couldn't find a Mac- or network-knowledgable person with a geiger counter. Still, the nearest Fry's is 2500 miles away, and wehre else are you going to go if you need a 320MB SATA disk at 8 PM?

Just testing, really.

Twitter...moblogging...mobile Flickr - when will the madness end?

Moving on up..

Well, my wanderings through the web-mediated world have led me to Blogger. I've previously been using Yahoo 360, principally because I have a long-term presence on Yahoo, and don't expect to be doing heavy blogging. However, Y 360 has always seemed a bit cutsey and limited, and recently things like blogging via mobile email and RSS feeds have simply stopped working.

So, let's try Blogger!