In addition to the iPhone apps, there is a sync tool for Toodledo and Outlook, plus they have many options for backing up your data through export. While I also wish Toodledo had its own offline access, they do have mechanisms in place for this sort of thing. Hopefully none of that will be necessary, and everyone’s tasks will be brought back on line soon.

Since this morning for Europe, we don’t have access to any of our data. It’s really annoying (read : frustrating). And I mean, all your data in a single datacenter when you manage critical data of so much users who pay a monthly fee, what’s the point ?
Omnifocus doesn’t have any cloud app and Toodledo doesn’t have any desktop app.

I’ll defintely jump on the bandwagon of the first supplier which provides both.

I think the best model is an online/offline approach, often referred to as a hybrid. Here, you would have an offline app, which would have to be developed for each platform. You then can access your data either through the web or through the offline app. Sync your data with the offline app and you can access the synced data even when you are not connected. That way, if there is a crash, then you can still access the data you had synced previously.

@Anders. It is not good enough to say that the program syncs with one program (Outlook) . And yes, you can back up your data to archive, but there is no opportunity to access it or manipulate it once backed up. There really needs to be an offline app developed for each platform. This latest problem illustrates that better than anything,

@dgoldring: I agree: a hybrid approach is best, and in this case, all everything would have been fine if they had backed up in even one other location. I don’t want to complain too much, as this is a free service (at least for what I’m using it for which is just notes synced with my iPhone), but even so, a little more investment $$$ would prevent this in the future.

Oh no. My entire work life is on Toodledo. Everything. The thought of trying to somehow reconstruct all of that data makes me feel sick . Even losing a day’s worth of changes/additions is going to be a significant setback, so I hope and pray they back up frequently.

I’m not trying to flame them or anything. This is as much my fault for depending on a free service for something this important. The universe has just given me a cosmic dope slap.

I guess I’ll just have to weigh how long I can wait on them to restore before I have to dig into my pile of e-mails and try to reconstruct my list of things to do as best as I can.

Charles, I think your experience perfectly illustrates why we need an offline app for this kind of work. That way, if a server cuts out, you do not lose all of your work. It is all secure and accessible offline, adn then when the server comes back, you can just sync the new changes to the server.

I consider myself somewhat lucky. It was just a day or two earlier that it crossed my mind I hadn’t done a backup in over a month and that it would be a good idea to download a CSV export as a backup. Just in case something crashed, or they suddenly went under and my data was inaccessible. Afterall, my whole life is sitting there! I slept a lot better last night knowing that I was prepared, but had this happened a week ago I’d be feeling very ill right now.

My data is on my home computer and I’ll need to wade through my workday without any guideposts today, but my data is still accessible and I can transport it if the site is still down tomorrow. (But I am truly hoping things go live again soon.)

Definitely, having an offline interface that syncs with the website would make this type of situation a lot less painful. I suspect their dev team is noticing the new level of priority for this feature now, too.

Best of luck for everyone!

Sigh… and the real kicker is: I’ve looked around at the different ToDo apps, tried a bunch of them, and Toodledo was far and away my favorite. But if I can’t depend on it 100%, then I can’t use it. I simply have no choice but to find a service or software that allows a local copy – even if it means giving up the online access. I despise Outlook, but it may be the most reliable choice. Blech.

“So, here’s the story. A big storm went through the city where our datacenter is located. The datacenter decided to proactively switch to generators. During the switch, something got screwed up, and the power went off for a few minutes.”

I hate when that happens. My former employer (a university/hospital entity) had the same problem. The transfer switch got stuck in between, and the UPS only lasted for 30 minutes.

It was not pretty. Nor was the look on the face of the VP in charge.

For mac users, OmniFocus w/ a Toodledo combo is proving to an excellent solution for me and others… Check it:

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=7001

And as of 12:50pm ET on July 7, 2009 they are down AGAIN. The problem here still is offline access. The iPhone app actually tries to sync with the server FIRST. It takes a long time to time out, and when it does, the app is not very usable. That is NOT offline access.

Offline access is something like Packrat on the Mac for Backpack’s online-only service.

Amazing there’s not at least an AIR app for this. I’d happily pay $50 for such a thing. And truly, this stuff isn’t rocket science. The data is right there. From gadgets to plug-ins there are plenty of ways to slice and dice this data, and it barely takes a text file to cache it locally. What the heck?