Experimenting With Productivity Web Apps

Posted on June 16, 2008 by Bruce Keener

The recent reader survey showed that many of you are interested in Web Apps. So, I decided to experiment with a few that are geared toward productivity:

I have not finished testing these, but I’ll offer a few first impressions. Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

Remember The Milk

This web app is designed for list management, and is easily adapted for use in a Getting Things Done (GTD) implementation. The following articles describe a couple of ways of using RTM for GTD:

My own implementation of GTD using RTM is more simple: I have a list for each GTD context, one for Projects, one for Someday, and one for Maybe. For each project, I use the Notes section of the Project to write out its successful outcome and next action. For more detail on this sort of implementation, you can see this Keen PDA Task Page and projects page to see how I do this with a Pocket PC, Palm, and/or Outlook.

RTM Pro, which is only $20 per year, gives you access to an iPhone/Touch interface, along with syncing to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device.

The iPhone interface is laid out well, and gives you a good bit of editing capability for your lists (including adding new items). I have not found a way to delete an item, or note, with the interface, but most other editing functions work well. The iPhone interface is much nicer than the regular web interface for RTM. The web interface uses light gray tabs with white lettering for the context tabs, and really looks pretty dorky. But, it is functional.

  • Update: I just learned from Just Another iPhone Blog that RTM has won Apple’s Award for Best iPhone Web Application:

The BlackBerry sync seems to work pretty well, but the Windows Mobile sync generated a lot of duplicate items. I have not found a work-around for this, and it is rather annoying to say the least. If I had started with all empty lists in RTM, the WM sync may have worked okay … so, if you haven’t tried it yet, don’t be discouraged by my experience with it. It definitely keeps me from a giving an otherwise solid thumbs-up to RTM, though. For me, the word sync should really mean sync.

Toodledo

Like RTM, this is another list manager web app. I found it easy to set up, as it lets you import tasks from Outlook. It uses a Folders concept that is somewhat similar to the Lists concept used by RTM.

The Toodledo interface is much cleaner than RTM’s, but it does not have an iPhone/Touch interface. Of course you can access it from an iPhone or Touch, but its display is not iPhone-optimized.

Toodledo also lacks syncing capabilities, although that’s probably not terribly important. After all, one normally thinks of a web app as something that displaces a desktop app. The only interface to a desktop app you really need, in theory, is one that lets you import the data you already have. And, Toodledo does have that capability. They do need to work on a mobile interface, though.

  • Update: Russell points out in the comments that Toodledo does have an iPhone/Touch interface. After piddling with this interface on my Touch for a few minutes, I think it’s actually better designed than the RTM iPhone interface. Thanks for pointing this out, Russell!

Basecamp

Unlike RTM and Toodledo, Basecamp is a full-fledged project management system. It is intended for much more than a stand-alone, personal list manager. It has tools for collaboration, so that work can be divided up and tracked.

I signed up for the $24 per month version, which gives me the ability to manage 15 projects. I’ll probably stick with it for a couple of months, so I ramp through the full learning curve. There is a lot one can do with it, and, while it is probably a more powerful system than I need, I am enjoying using it to manage a couple of projects. I like the fact that it is different, so my brain looks at projects a little differently when I set them up on Basecamp, which helps get me “out of the box.” That could change once the newness wears off, but that is the effect it currently has for me.

My understanding is that the 37signals folks are working on an iPhone/Touch interface. If they come out with one soon, I would be more likely to continue to use their system.

There is a free version of Basecamp, which lets you manage one project. That’s probably a good way to check it out to see if it’s what you are looking for. Again, the system is really designed for collaboration, more so than for individual use, but I am finding that I can make it work for my individual use. Also, there are times when I get involved in collaborative projects, and it would be interesting to see how well it works in those situations. I suppose I could also try assigning myself different roles, such as strategist, author, developer … so I could experiment with collaboration.

Wrap-up

If continued use of any of these web apps causes me to “fall in love with” one of them, I may do a follow-up article. In this article, I just wanted to introduce the three products to you, so you can decide whether you want to experiment with them. Note that there are several other productivity web apps available. My intent was just to introduce you to a few of the more popular ones.

Share


 

This entry was posted in Getting Things Done, Productivity, Web Apps and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Russell Cook

    Toodledo’s iPhone interface url:

    http://www.toodledo.com/slim/index.php

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Thanks Russell !
    I’ve edited the post to point to their iPhone interface.

  • Diego Zuluaga

    Toodledo rocks! I tried Remember The Milk. And Toodledo interface is much more comprehensive. And is US$10 less expensive.

    Substask management much better than RTM.

    Cons: Toodledo SMS is done through phone#@carrier.com, which is not convenient in Canada with Rogers, since you have to provide to reply to your messages “Reply” to be able to get email messages. It doesn’t work as Google calendar that you get SMS message without this annoying SMS “reply back” meessage.

    Integration with Todo from Appigo on iPhone is amazing.

  • Saskia

    Toodledo is fab; I keep going back to look at RTM because it gets so much hype, but it just doesn’t compare in it’s customisability. Toodledo can be tailored to your own style so easily, it gives you so many options for how to organise your data, but the key thing is that you can hide all of the options you don’t need! So strict GTDers who don’t use prioritisation can hide all priority fields and ignore it altogther, for instance. The saved searches are a really powerful feature for viewing exactly the tasks you need to see, although with all the built in views (e.g. view by context, folder, tag, due date, priority, star etc) you might not even need the searches!

    I find RTM forces you to use it in the way that THEY think you should use it. Toodledo accomodates your individual requirements, and the developer is so responsive that if it doesn’t quite work the way you want it to, chances are they’ll add your feature request sooner or later. I’d say the only thing that RTM beats Toodle on is their Google Gears support (apparently under development in Toodle, though) & their site is a little prettier. But on most things that really matter Toodledo wins hands down.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Diego and Saskia,

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Toodledo. It turns out that I recently switched to using it, too. Both it and RTM are very powerful. I prefer the simplicity of use of Toodledo, though, along with its much cleaner interface. And, like RTM, it syncs very nicely with my iPod Touch via Appigo’s ToDo application.