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Winnowing the glut of todo list applications
MetaFilter post on all the todo lists out there:
Nowadays, if you're of a mood to be all Web 2.0 about it, to-do lists have gone past the paper and pen with web applications such as Remember the Milk, Hiveminder, Toodledoo, Todoist, Ta-Da Lists, do.Oh, Nozbe, Treedoolist, Vitalist, Web To Do, SimpleGTD, Sandy, Tracks, gootodo, Zirrus, OnMyList, TaskToy, Gubb, Nutshell, Joe's Goals, Tedium, MyTickerFile, voo2do, and 30boxes — even plain old text files have gotten spiffied up with Unix shell scripts to generate graphs and reports and projects.
How to find the right one? Just remember the four requirements of a bit-literate todo list:
1. Each todo is associated with a particular day.
2. Users can create new todos via e-mail, either for today or a day in the future.
3. Each todo has a priority ranking within its day.
4. Each todo can contain a detail field as well as a summary, much the same way an e-mail can contain a message body as well as a Subject line.
...and of course all of this should be accomplished within a user interface that's as simple as possible.
I know that Gootodo satisfies all four (but I'm biased, of course) - anyone know any others that do?
5. Can be included on my iGoogle home page.
I believe Hiveminder fulfills all of these.
Todos in Hiveminder have "start dates" (aka "hide until" dates) in addition to due dates. This associates a todo item with a particular day.
Todos can be created via emailing a special address. (They can also be added via IM.)
Todos have priorities.
Todos have summary and detail fields (plus a change log which updates whenever these, or the start or due dates, are altered).
Hiveminder can also appear on the iGoogle page via a Google Gadget.
Additionally, todos can be assigned/delegated to other Hiveminder users. And todos can depend on other todos, so a todo like "bake pie" will stay hidden until after "make pie crust" is complete.
Bonus: Hiveminder is free (so far).
(No, I do not work for them, I am just a satisfied user.)
I would also love permissions of varying degrees (i.e. my coworkers can see what's on my list but not add anything, but my boss can.). And rss. And tagging so I can filter by subject. And perhaps a way to show something's percentage of completion....
Hi, I would like to add:
5. Syncs to a mobile device
I am not constantly behind a computer (like in when 'running' errands).
What I did is that I managed to get (almost) all points in Entourage. It is pretty easy if you make a filter that understands "todo 5 Do the Laundry" as: Create a todo with date is today + 5 with subject "Do the Laundry". Then you can email yourself from anywhere and as soon as you sync your mail in Entourage your todo is pushed in the todo list.
Also easy to make is a script that with one key command makes a todo out of an email. (it even preserves a link to the original mail).
I think a priority ranking is not needed actually :-)
The ability to mark items as done, preferably "crossed out" because it's so satisfying to see!