chrispederick.com
Organized
- Work
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- 4 years ago on June 29, 2004
Much of the reason behind setting up the new forums was in an effort to get better organized and improve some of the processes that I use to manage my work. In addition to communication, another area that I wanted to improve was tracking what tasks I am currently working on and any feature requests that I plan on tackling in the future.
My previous method was to track all this information using email and the to-do lists for the User Agent Switcher and Web Developer extensions. Unsurprisingly, this did not scale very well and as the amount of tasks increased so did the amount of time I spent trying to keep track of all of them. I decided to look at possible software solutions.
Tasks
I first started looking for a software application that would run on my local machine, but found nothing suitable for either Mac OS X or Windows. Everything I looked at was either too simple - a basic text editor that kept track of uncategorized notes - or way too complicated - a full-blown application designed for large-scale project management. Then I noticed Tasks, Alex King’s task manager.
Tasks is described as “a powerful web-based personal task manager” and it includes features such as a hierarchical view, tracking time spent on a task, email reminders, RSS feeds, iCalendar integration, built-in security and many, many more. Of course it also includes all the standard task settings that you would expect such as priorities, due dates, completion percentage as well as easy ways to sort and search.
At first I was not sure how suitable Tasks would be for my needs and although there is a demo, it is not quite the same as using a piece of software for real. Therefore, I initially went with the cut-down, donationware version, but after using it for just a couple of weeks I was sold and happily paid the bargain price of $29.95 for the full version. While I am currently using only a fraction of it’s features I expect this to change as my needs progress and I become more familiar with the product.
Interface
One of the great advantages of a web-based solution is that you can access the information from any machine and this is incredibly useful as I work on both my iBook and my PC. However, this can also be a disadvantage as the interface needs to be very well designed in order to function in the somewhat limited environment that is the web browser. Not only this, but web-based interfaces are often designed to work best in Internet Explorer with little attention paid to other browsers. The interface of Tasks, however, is excellent and is one of it’s greatest strengths. It is clean and simple with easy to understand icons and everything works perfectly in Mozilla Firefox.
Tasks comes in a number of different incarnations:
- Tasks is the Basic Personal Organizer version
- Tasks 2.0 is the Advanced Personal Edition
- Tasks Pro adds multi-user functionality
- Use Tasks was launched today and is the hosted, monthly subscription service for Tasks or Tasks Pro
I am using the Advanced Personal Edition, but Use Tasks looks like an interesting option at $3.95 a month including free upgrades.
I am extremely pleased with Tasks - it has saved me time and helped me to get better organized. If you are looking for task manager software I highly recommend it.
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