Remember the milk and just about everything else
How many of you out there have forgotten something… recently forgetting where you parked at the mall, forgetting to grab the keys on your way out the door, and things like that, we all have forgotten some things, probably both large and small, in our lives.
Well there is a web service, launched in 2005, that aims to help users remember pretty much anything. The service is called Remember the Milk and aims to provide an easy to use, fully customized task service complete with an email address and reminders via email and SMS.
Once you have created a user account and logged into the software the applications dashboard is displayed, listing an overview of the things you have set to be done today, tomorrow and the tasks that are overdue.
The overview is a snapshot of what is immediately upcoming and can be skipped for subsequent logins by clicking the always skip this page link on the right of the overview screen.
If you prefer to see the dashboard simply click the blue button labeled Continue to Tasks also in the right column. This will take you to your task lists, which by default are Inbox and Sent. These two lists cannot be deleted, but an unlimited number of lists and smart lists can be added and maintained.
One way to add a task to Remember the Milk, is to login to the web site and use the add task link which places the task on your Inbox list. Your Remember the Milk account also has an email address which you can use to email tasks to yourself, but for now, I am going to focus on the web application.
Clicking Add Task will display a single line text box at the top of the list you are currently viewing, click in this text box and enter the name of your task Tabbing out of the text box will add the entered item to your list and select the item.
As you can see from the image below, I have added a test task and it is selected, the available properties for the task are shown on the right. These options are customizable on a per task basis.
To specify a due date for the selected task, I would simply click next to the word Due: and type in the date. You can also press the D key on the keyboard with a task selected to be taken to the Due entry box.
Options for tasks
The options listed for each task when it is selected provide a great deal of the power behind remember the milk.
The available options for tasks are:
- List – this simply shows the list that the task lives on
- Due – allows you to set and view the Due date for the selected task
- Repeat – indicates if the selected task repeats
- Time estimate – the amount of time you think the task will require
- Tags – any tags you assign to the task
- Location – a location you have created for tasks
- URL – the web site link for the task
- Postponed – the number of times the task has been postponed
- Shared with – other Remember the Milk users who this task is shared with
- Notes – the number of notes attached to the task
Most of the options for a task can be updated by clicking on the area within the task menu. The only ones that cannot are:
List – which is edited using the More Actions drop down box
Notes – which is edited using the notes tab at the top of the task options list
Postponed – this count is incremented each time the postpone button is clicked for a task
Shared with – this is edited to show other Remember the Milk users with whom you have shared this task
The menu on the right of the screen shows the task options tab and the notes tab (shown below). These tabs store information about each task and will change as you select new tasks. To help with readability a line has been added from the selected task to the task options area helping inform a user which task they are seeing options for.
The items shown below the notes half of the above image are shown below either tab (tasks or notes). They provide general information about the number of tasks selected, and a key to help further define options for making productive use of Remember the Milk.
So what about all these lists?
When using Remember the Milk, you can create as many lists as you need. There are two types of list, standard and smart. A standard list is similar to your Inbox and Sent default lists and will contain only items that you directly assign to the list. A smart list is something altogether different. When you use options for your tasks you can create a list that will display any tasks that meet the criteria you have defined.
For example, suppose you wanted to view all of your tasks that involved making calls separately from other tasks. You could tag each of these tasks Calls as they are added to one of your lists.
Note: You can also select multiple tasks and then press m on the keyboard to enter multi edit mode, allowing you to assign the same tag (or other options) to all the selected tasks at the same time.
Once you have a task or tasks selected, click next to the Tags option and enter Calls then tab or click off of the field (or task). You will see the Calls tag appear next to the task or tasks which you assigned Calls as a tag.
To create a list of all tasks with the Calls tag, you have two options:
1. Create a hard list called Calls and move all of your tasks with the calls tag to that list
or
2. Create a smart list based on the Calls tag
To create a smart list click in the search dialog (shown below) and enter the keyword you are searching against and press enter to see a temporary tab containing search results.
After reviewing the temporary tab of search results, you can close the tab if it is not needed any more or click the save tab which will appear on the right hand side of the page when a search is performed. There you can enter a name for the list, like Calls and click save. This will create a smart list that meets the criteria you searched for.
This should get you on your way and get you started with Remember the Milk. In a future article I will go through other menus and more features offered.
