Get On Task Tuesday: Zoho Planner
Posted by melting on Jun 16, 2009
Welcome back to the second of many posts for “Get On Task Tuesday,” yes it counts since it is not yet midnight here in the west coast of the good old USA.
For today I will talk about one of the beset task list planning web applications yet. This has until very recently been one of my favorites. It meets many of the prerequisite features and is accessible anywhere with an internet connection, though I haven’t tried it with my iPhone.
Features it meets: Many lists that are easy to create and share which they call pages. Those lists are then filled with sub-lists that can contain many items. Also the sub lists are collapsible for simple viewing of the overview. Finally everything is draggable making it somewhat easy to reorder.
Things that bugged me: While there are nested lists there is a limit to how far down it would go and only 2-3 levels wasn’t enough for me. Sorting was easy when it was within one sublist or page, but trying to reorganize after the initial brainstorm was just to challenging.
The conclusion: While this is a spectacularly well done task list and is great for planning, it doesn’t meet the needs of a task list for everyday tracking of the otherwise forgotten chores. If you are looking for an online document suite I would fully recommend Zoho’s line up and planner. Unfortunately though, as you would expect, it didn’t meet my exacting taste.
Get On Task Tuesday: Google Calendar
Posted by melting on Jun 9, 2009
As an engineer and computer scientist I am both lazy and exacting. I look to find tool to help me do everything. One tool that I have looked for throughout the years is a great task list or todo list program. I will save what I want in such a program for a different post, but be rest assured that no ordinary task list would suffice.
Today while I was using Google Calendar I noticed a new feature. They tend to pop up at the top menu in red.
TASKS!!!
I know, you say Google has been playing with tasks in GMail and iPhone for awhile now, but it is a completely different concept when they add it to calendar. First it says that this is not just a side project in the labs of GMail just to be ripped away at any moment. Well then again it is Google.
All of your tasks are added to the daily summary at the top of the day and can be checked off individually. Just as expected you can drag them around to any day that they should be completed. Editing is simple and adding is as easy as selecting event or task. If you are already used to the nested tag list in GMail, well it can show up on the right.
As you would expect I have not fallen in love over this new feature either. First all of your list show up as only one calendar to show or hide as needed. My task tool needs to work for home and for work. Well a different way to accomplish this is by select which list from the tasks menu on the right. This might work if you have just one list for work and one list for home but not many for each as I do.
One last issue that doesn’t make sense to me. If you put a due date for an item that has sub-tasks well only the items that have a due date will show up on the calendar. This destroys the whole part of breaking a task into smaller pieces.
Google is now currently in the lead for my favorite task list, but mostly due to convenience. Perhaps it will be replaced by whatever is next in my somewhat weekly post Get On Task Tuesday.
