Untethered: Do you Remember the Milk?

Posted by: Ragart on Aug 13 2008

I’ve been trying to move away from Outlook and move my stuff into the cloud, but there aren’t really any obvious solutions out there. I’ve had to use multiple programs to move my calendar, tasks, and contacts into the cloud. One of the programs I tried out along the way was Remember the Milk. It’s got a unique name, a moo moo cow for a logo, and is accessible in a lot of different ways on a number of different devices (one of which is in your Gmail applet on your computer!). RTM looks like it’s making a lot of the right moves, but is it really powerful enough or do I just have my head in the clouds?

First of all, the app is still in beta, but I see it like a Gmail beta. It’s got a heck of a lot of functionality to it right now and it’s been quite stable for me, so I treat the ‘beta’ sign like a price tag they forgot to take off of their logo

Setting up your account

Accounts are free, but you do have the option of upgrading. Cha-ching! For $25/year you can get e-mail support, mobile syncing with the iPhone/Blackberry/Windows Mobile platforms, and a pass for their beta features program to help test out new features they might want help with. To simplify things, the free accounts allow you great cloud access, and the pro accounts allow you to sync with your mobile devices. Full details are here.

I’ve gotta say I was really, really on the fence about this decision. I was looking for a cool, free solution for my tasks on the iPhone that could sync with Appigo’s ToDo. The two options were RTM or Toodledo (Doug’s covering this in our next Untethered post). I tried Toodledo out for about 2-3 weeks because it syncs with my iPhone for free, but I found I liked RTM’s interfaces enough to warrant the $25/year expenditure. My logic went kinda like this: $25 / 12 months = approximately $2 per month. $2 per month is one hot dog from the hot dog stand. Milk is better for my health than a hot dog. So I Remembered the Milk.

So now that I’ve drunk from the cloudy udder, let’s move on to how you can join me.

Web Interface

One of the main ways to access RTM is through their website (this also works with Google Gears for offline remembering). You just go there, log in, and remember your milk. There are two main views for your tasks:

Overview

This is your at-a-glance rundown of tasks that are overdue, due today, or due tomorrow. You won’t get any editing done here, though. You’ll have to head to the Tasks tab for that.

Tasks view

Here’s where you see your tasks organized by folder. This is the main tab where you have power to manipulate basically anything having to do with your tasks. I won’t go into everything you can do here (there’s an extensive tutorial and FAQ on the help page), but I definitely would like to talk about this tab for its presentation.

Adding a new task is as easy as clicking a button or pressing ‘t’ (there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts to speed things up). Completing tasks is a two-click process of selecting the checkbox (or checkboxes for multiple tasks) and then clicking ‘Complete’ up top. You can also use this multi-selection method to move, re-prioritize, or delete your tasks. One thing I was missing from my Toodledo days was the pop-up calendar when inputting the due date (you just type in the specified slot), but I’m gonna get vocal about this and see if I can bring about a pop-up revolution. On the other hand, the text input is pretty intuitive. I can write something like “next Friday” or “2 weeks [from now]” and have it recognize the date automatically.

Another streamlined feature of RTM is the side bar that floats alongside the screen as you scroll down the page. I know this is just a small touch, but it goes a long way. The side bar info is an always-on dialogue box with options. Whenever you click on a task its details are instantly displayed on the right for you to edit. I was used to interfaces like Outlook’s where you need two clicks to open a task and one more click to close it. This ends up saving me a lot of hassle when I want to re-schedule several tasks.

Website Features

RTM allows you a lot of control over your tasks, although it can feel rather overwhelming at first (I did my fair share of consulting their FAQ):

Lists

This works just like you’d think, separate tasks into lists like “games to play”’ or “movies to watch”. Whatever strikes your fancy.

Inbox/Sent lists

Your RTM account has its own e-mail address, and anything that comes to this address will be converted to a task and put into the inbox list. The sent list works in the same way for tasks that you send. You can detail everything about a task from within the e-mail.  The inbox list isn’t just limited to e-mail though, as you can add tasks via Twitter if you find yourself tweeting more than mailing.

Contacts

Here’s the section that defines who you can send  to and receive tasks from. You can also publish your tasks and lists for anyone’s viewing – although nobody really wants to know how many Mars bars I intend to buy from the supermarket. The relationship must be mutual for you to share tasks. Once you’ve established a contact you can see the tasks the two of you are sharing via a link in the tab.

Tags

This is similar to lists, although you can have different tagged tasks within the same folder. Tags make it a lot easier to search through your tasks with the built-in search function on the RTM website. This is very useful for my Movies folder, as I can then sub-divide my movies into genres by applying different tags.

Locations

If the task is based at home or at work you can attach a location to the task to make it even easier to identify where and when you can act on it. The Locations tab lets you view and manage your locations via a Google Maps overlay. My life isn’t so hectic that I need this function, but it’s good to have it there. You can add new locations by typing in an address or clicking on the map. There’s also a tag-to-locations converter if you confused tags with locations, but I haven’t found a need for this yet.

Reminders

You can set task reminders via e-mail, messenger, or SMS. As always, make sure to check what your plan is before allowing 10,000 sms alerts to skyrocket your phone bill – although you can set SMS alerts to a maximum of ‘x’ per day.

Now that I’ve covered the basics of the website, let’s take a look at the other ways you can access RTM.

iPhone Access

One of the biggest downsides of switching from WM to the iPhone was losing my ability to manage my tasks natively (I know Sir Doug Goldring agrees here). RTM’s effort to fill this gap was their iPhone optimized website. The site does a good job of keeping the power of the desktop version: folders, tags, locations, as well as indicators for the number of tasks in each section. There are also quick buttons to add and search for tasks. The thing is, the site never really clicked for me. Even on wi-fi, I still feel like the whole experience is just too sluggish. I don’t think iPhone web apps can ever really compare to native apps in this respect, so I’ve stuck to using ToDo in conjunction with RTM.

Google Access

Gmail

I initially thought that RTM was owned by Google, but it turns out they’re an independent company (thanks Judi). With that in mind, it’s pretty cool that there’s a Firefox add-on for Gmail that allows you to see RTM as a side-bar wherever you’re outside of conversation view. I didn’t think Google would allow 3rd party services to share the same hallowed ground as Gmail. RTM did a fantastic job of scrunching up the interface to fit in the space where Google ads normally show up on the right.

Going from the top-down: there’s a text entry box at the top to add new tasks, a drop-down list of folders and tags to sort by, and then a display of the tasks in the selected category. Mousing over a task will show you its details and allow you to edit it. The Gmail access is a fantastic feature, and there’s just one thing I’d like for them to improve upon here: when you have too many tasks in a category the RTM side bar actually grows its own scroll bar which takes up a lot of horizontal space, which in turn blocks tasks with long names.

iGoogle

You can add an RTM gadget to your favourite super web homepage. The interface isn’t as fluid or as rich as the ones in GCal or Gmail (Remember the Skimmed Milk), but it does fit right on iGoogle if you like working from there. Clicking on task names will load up RTM, the arrow beside the names lets you complete/postpone/edit, and the settings button lets you see your different lists.

Google Calendar

You can add RTM to GCal in the “other calendars” section. Once you’ve done this you’ll see small checkmarks above each day. Click on the check

mark to have this handy-dandy Moo Task Box (ok I made that name up) to see the tasks for that day. You can add new tasks within this dialogue or even view a mini google map if that’s the kind of thing you like doing on google calendar (seems like overkill – but the good, cool kind).

RTM Tool

If you don’t have your browser on often but want to RTM on your desktop, this desktop tool should help you quickly add tasks when the need arises. You can specify the list and tag in a dialogue box that pops up at the push of a button (or three – I have it as ctrl + alt + L). This is a great, quick solution to add to RTM, although some users might miss the ability to specify a due date.

Other Means

• Mobile Access - I don’t have a dumb phone to test this with, but RTM is accessible via m.rememberthemilk.com.
• Thunderbird – It’s an alpha release right now, but there’s a plugin for Thunderbird here.
• Remember the Moof (Mac) – It’s a fully featured widget, available here.
• Launchy – I’d never even heard of Launchy before this review, but apparently it’s a text-based launching application that you can configure to work with RTM. Personally, I’ll stick with the website, but for those of you who really wanna speed things up with as little screen space as possible, instructions are on Lifehacker.
• RSS – You can use any feed reader to pick up your lists in the form of atom feeds. Just go to the Tasks view on the RTM website, de-select all tasks in the list, and click the atom link on the right side of the screen. Feed that URL into your reader and you’re good to go.

Concmoosion

It was tough to write this piece without making it into a manual. RTM is an incredibly feature-rich task manager, and a fantastic cloud app. Syncing without docking at the computer is just liberating. I started off as a real skeptic (and a cheapskate), but RTM’s interface, presentation, and great set of help features really won me over. RTM lets you get away with a lot with just a free account, but I think a lot of users will be charmed into upgrading. There are a growing number of task managers forming up in the clouds, but I’m convinced that the best of their ilk is Remember the Milk (I sincerely apologize for this rhyme and any [sh]uddering it may have caused).

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