GTD WebApp: Remember The Milk

I have tried to hate it. I have abandoned it. I have scoffed at it. But I have always come back to it. Remember the Milk is my love hate relationship in the GTD Webapp field. It does so much right, but it does so much wrong as well.

Remember the Milk is not built to be a pure GTD webapp, to get that to work you have to be a experiment a bit and make filters for your searches. And it doesn't work perfectly with a real GTD mindset. But you could make something quite useful by applying saved searches or filters to your tasks.
As you see above I have a couple of predetermined smart lists that I can quickly query my lists through. Computer-Next for next actions I can do when I am sitting next to a computer. Ironically since this list is accessible primarily through a computer that is one list where I don't really ever have excuses for slacking off. Have an Important But Not Urgent list to put those none critical tasks that you would like to get done sometime though. An example of that for me is ordering some replacement parts of a heart sensor I use when jogging. All of these contexts should make sense to people that follow GTD. If you are a serious productivity geek you should be familiar with GTD by now. If you have not you can pick it up by clicking here:

Furthermore Remember the Milk includes a very excellent AJAX interface with hotkeys. Once you get used to the hotkeys adding tasks, modifying them and prioritizing them becomes intuitive and a snap. There is a bit of a learning curve but you'll catch on quickly.

I also like the taskcloud, these are getting more common place these days in all sorts of different apps and are quite useful. Other features abound even though some of them seem utterly useless. Why is there a location feature if it is not going to allow you to just do on the fly location entry. It be nice if it would attempt to solve your daily traveling salesman problem. But it doesn't.

What I REALLY REALLY don't like about Remember the milk is the lack of task hierarchy. I can't preplan a common array of tasks that that need to be done in sequence with the next one popping up the previous one is completed. Hiveminder does that. Other apps do that. Why can't Remember the Milk?

Pros

• Excellent Interface with AJAX
• Integrates well into work flow, very efficent to use
  
• Available with Google Gears, gMail, gCal, Iphone, Mobile version
• Interfaces well with JOTT

Cons

• Sequenced task lists can be a nightmare due to lack of certain features.
• It can't really be integrated into a 100% GTD workflow
• Some utterly useless features

Conclusion
While Remember the Milk has obvious shortcomings. It is currently the best Productivity Webapp that I have tried. I highly recommend it, just keep it simple. And I would absolutely love if they managed to include sequential task relationships in a future update. I'm just saying.

GTD WebApp: Hiveminder (Runner-Up)

The first webapp I'll be writing about is Hiveminder.

Hiveminder and I had a three month relationship in late 2007. There are a lot of things it does better than any of the other options out there, but there are some things that it just does not do as well as the competition. This eventually led to our break up, but fret not Hiveminder is a good choice.

The Interface
I like the interface, but I don't love it. Its best feature by far is its ability to chain tasks and make them interdependent. The lack of this feature with other webapps was a deal breaker for a while and I hated having to artificially play with filters and tasks to achieve what Hiveminder had built in.

It also has things such as the braindump feature that allows you to enter a large number of tasks at one time in the Hiverminder markup language for tasks. It makes it very easy to put tasks into the system and it becomes second nature as time passes.

Once tasks are in the system, you are supposed to do them. But tasks that do slip will then be brought back up by the Task Review function which is pretty neat to rearrange priorities of tasks as your needs change. Truly a useful tool. No longer need to call Ozzie at OzzieCorp? Been ignoring the tasks so it pops back up? Kick the task to the curb in the review.

But here are problems. The inferface, in my opion, is ugly and it clutters the tasks. It does not intuitively use tags to make task views easier. This in the end was a major reason Hiveminder and I were only a fling.

GTD Integration
My personal version of GTD is a bit bastardized from what the actual system is but that is alright a lot of people have their own quirks. One thing that is very important for my implentation are tags and 'duration tags' and more importantly the way that my brain handles these. My brain does not work very well with the Hiveminder tags implentation. I'm sure some people love it, but my brain just doesn't think like Hiveminder does. This prevents me from using my GTD version with Hiveminder.

Pros:

• Braindump
• Task Chains/Dependent Tasks
• Good feature set

Cons:

• Ugly Interface
• Task list and tags that are not intuitive
• Does not integrate with the rest of my work flow
• Not that GTD friendly
  

Summary

Hiverminder is a good choice for your goto productivity webapp. I used it for a while but it just didn't stick. It didn't feel natural in my work flow and it did not integrate with me as well as some of the other implentations out there. Their dependent task system should be copied by all other Webapps. It's not only a good idea but I don't understand why it isn't a standard in all GTD apps?

FireGPG: An easy Gmail plugin for GnuPG

I have used FireGPG some on the side for about a month or so. The problem with encryption in the business world is that you need to make it as unobtrusive as possible in your work flow. If it becomes too much of a bother it just wont get used and you are back on square one. I have learned that forcing good habits on people does not work if it involves an extra keystroke or two.

Now FireGPG is a pretty good idea. It integrates GnuPG into Gmail and Gmail for your domain which I use through out my personal sites as well as my employers email solution. The Firefox plugin adds a couple of extra buttons as seen below and gives you the ability to choose keys, find keys and automatically detect encrypted emails.