Technically speaking…

As we have seen in previous posts Remember the Milk has reinvented task management. In previous posts I have gone through an overview of the service and taken an in depth look at a few of the features available. In this post I want to visit the topic of task notes used with RTM.

When a task is added to Remember the Milk, the user is able to specify a location, a due date, repetition, and tags associated with the task. Sometimes a task may need some more information. This is where notes come into play.

Each task entered into Remember the Milk can have its own notes. The number of notes is unlimited, however I recommend keeping this to a manageable level, three notes is the most I have found useful. An example of a task where notes could be very useful is a task such as get groceries. If a task is added for get groceries, a note (or multiple notes) can be added to provide a list of the items that are needed… milk, cereal, and other things.

Rather than adding a single task for each item that is needed at the store a note showing these items might work a little better and keep the task list clear for the items that fit best there.

Let’s get started on going through the notes process with Remember the Milk.  To add notes to a task in RTM, you must first create a (or select an existing) task to which you can add notes. Task Creation is covered in this post. To select an existing task, simply check the box next to that task in the list of avaialble tasks in RTM.

Once you have your noteworthy tasks checked and are all ready to go, look up the page at the top right of the screen, where the task details are listed.

Figure 2

With the task selected, click the Notes tab also shown above. You can add as many notes as you need to a particular task. Simply click the add notes link on the notes tab to add a new note.

Once you click the Add note link, another box will appear for you to enter the text of your note and click OK to save the note you entered. The note count is then incremented to keep track of all of the notes you have added.

To edit a note that you have entered already, click the edit link listed next to the note title on the notes tab. The Note add and Note edit dialogs look similar, below is the edit view for an existing note.

The image above shows the note text box and the edit link. The note editing text box will be the same for adding and editing notes.

Once you have finished entering the information for a particular note, click save to append the note to a task.

That is all there is to the creation of task notes in Remember the Milk. The process is very simple and could help creates fewer, more useful tasks.

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.

Many on the Internet want to keep track of what friends and acquaintances are doing, but for a increasing number of Internet users, the instant gratification of the web is bleeding into the "keep in touch" arena.

Micro blog site Twitter has been around for a while now.  The free service allows users to post what they are doing simply by asking the question "what are you doing?".  The user enters what their doing or a note to friends and clicks the update button.  The world (or vastly huge twitter community) then knows what you are doing.

The service integrates with tons of other online applications, from jott.com to the ever-popular Facebook as well as other things.

Twitter users can send SMS messages to the service from their mobile device to update as well.  (Standard text rates will apply).

You can also follow your friends on twitter, via the web interface or by adding notifications which send SMS tweets to your mobile phone when the status of someone you follow changes.

The twitter web interface is shown below:

Below the form on the twitter page, you will see a list of the latest updates posted by yourself and those you are following.

Because twitter is a free service and can be integrated with so many other online applications it has grown in popularity since its launch in March of 2006.

In addition to the web interface, you could use an SMS message to Short code 40404.  The short code is an abbreviated phone number for use in text messaging.

Can I get in on all this action?

Yep. Twitter also supports developers who wish to create their own tools to post messages to the service.  The developers at twitter have created an Application Programming Interface (API) which allows other applications to integrate with twitter and post to (or retrieve from) the micro blogging site.

Twitter has been around for a while and has been covered in some fashion by just about every tech blog, so I thought I might mention it here.  Give it a try, you might be surprised how easy it is to tell the world what you are doing.

I was recently invited to participate in a beta for FareCast. This site predicts the cost of airfare to certain cities based on current prices, past prices and forecasts the likelihood of the price going in any certain direction or maintaining constant.

The idea is to help you find the best time to purchase your tickets, not just the best time to travel.

From the little bit of browsing I have done this service looks to be a great way to look for airline tickets.

You enter the city you are leaving from and the destination along with the number of travelers and the length of your stay, then farecast goes to work to make recommendations as to when you might buy your tickets. It also provides links to multiple airline websites. When you click to purchase the tickets, you are directed to the airlines website to do so.

The site is in private beta right now and has limitations in features. I did find a graphic showing a bit about what the results look like, and have posted it below:

I am very excited about this service for booking or planning vacations in advance. Those who travel alot on business or personal trips could gain quite alot from a service like this.

Have you ever found yourself burried in voicemail messages? Whether you are out of the house for a few minutes or in an area with no cell reception, surely there have been days where you didnt get your voicemail as readily as you might have liked. I know this happens to me occasionally.

Being a VoIP user, I like getting email notifications of any voicemail messages I receive… this allows me to listen to the messages from anywhere I have Internet access and removes the need for me to check in with the VoIP provider’s site to see if there are messages for me to listen to. However, for my cellular phone there is no email convenience feature to email me when I have a new message. Or is there?

There is a solution out there that doesnt cost anything for its basic service. The website is called GotVoice and allows you to setup your cellular phone or traditional home phone to have its voicemail retrieved and emailed to you. You can play the message right from the email. Unified messaging for non-IP telephony.

The service works by collecting information about your phone when you set up your account. You tell GotVoice your phone number and voicemail pin number, and it calls your phone based on a schedule you configure and retrieve’s messages. Then it emails them to you.

You can sign up for plus service, which emails the voicemail message(s) as email attachments in MP3 format, and allows more checks per day (10 checks per day, up from 3 with the free service) or Premium service, which will deliver voicemail in an RSS feed and allow playback from Itunes (or an RSS Reader) and carries 24 checks per day.

The basic service allows you to listen to voicemail from your account, you click on a link in the email and the GotVoice web player pops up and plays new messages.

The service is secured by user supplied login/password that is stored in a database, configured and set by the user.

Also, with the free service you will get ads on the account screen and in the emails received denoting messages.

Basic service is free, Plus service is 4.95/month and Premium service is 9.95/month. From the limited use I have had with the service it seems pretty cool. We will see how it goes for a few days, sounds like a cool idea though.

I was sifting through subscriptions in my newsreader (not Outlook 2007) and came across an article reminding me that Office 2007 will allow you to blog from Word and publish directly to your site.

Fortunately Word Press is one of the blogs supported by this feature.

To set up word blogging you need to download and install Office 2007 beta 2 from http://www.microsoft.com. Then open Word 2007 and click on the Office menu at the very top left of the window (see image below).

The thing in the image that looks like the office logo… that is a menu for general purposes. Print, Open, New, and Publish are in there.

Once you click there, select Publish and from there choose Blog

You will then be prompted to configure your blog settings, Username, password, URL and blog type. Once this is done and saved, the word interface will change to add a space for post title and a publish button.

Note: When you choose a blog host of Other, the screen above will appear empty so you can fill in custom settings. The help me fill out this section link will provide a good deal of information for correctly entering the API and the URL for your blog. Word press uses MetaWebLog and http://www.yoursite.com/<wordpress>/xmlrpc.php

Another cool feature… Spell checker. Your blog posts will be checked as you type just like any other word document, which eliminates the need to copy the word document into the blog post screen.

I have used this feature once, for this post, but will make use of it as the posts here grow. It is a step in the right direction, we will see If additional features are added for RTM.

Note: Uploading pictures doesn’t work as of yet, could be a word press setting preventing this, but I will keep trying. And the date on word posted items is way wrong. I got 12-31-1969 for this originally and edited it on the site to correct.. not huge, but in need of work.

Have you ever been to a website and wanted to share it with your friends?

Sure, we have all been there and have all probably emailed the sites we like to dozens of other people in an attempt to pass the sites along. What about surfing the Internet from home and then visiting someone else’s house wishing you could remember the site about the chicken recipie you were on last Saturday so you could share it with Aunt Mary to whom you forgot to email it.

What if there were a way to share bookmarks as you add them?  Then while adding websites to this bookmark list you could categorize the sites you add making them easier for others (or yourself) to find again from any Internet connection…

Other sites have mentioned this idea before, it is called del.ici.ous and is now owned by Yahoo!

The premise with del.ici.ous is that you will import or add bookmarks to the service as you browse the net, tagging each site with helpful keywords as you go.  The links are shared with the rest of the del.ici.ous community based on these tags and or based on your username.

The service works with a member registration (which is free) then you import your existing bookmarks (or start from scratch).  If you use firefox (which you should) there is an extension for delicious that allows you to tag pages in a single click.

When you are browsing the web you can click a link or the toolbar button (in FF) to tag the page.  This will open a new window asking you to make any notes or comments about the link and add tags.  The tags help categorize the pages to make them easier to find.

When the link is added to your list it will tell you also how many other del.ici.ous users have marked that page.  For example, I marked the firefox start page to allow me to return to home without getting extra tabs popped open, and when I added it, 59 other users had also marked the page.

Another cool feature of del.ici.ous is share by username, this is called your network.  You can add your friends and family to your del.ici.ous network by entering their username into the box on the network page.  When you click add, it will refresh the page with that persons list of bookmarks (assuming they are signed up to use the service).

The biggest piece of this thing is the ability to instantly share bookmarks with anyone and everyone, not to mention use your bookmarks from any PC on the Internet and only having to mark the page one time.

The service is free to use and seems to work quite well… please visit www.delicious.com for more information and to sign up for a trial