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 | 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]
No comments:
Post a Comment