Living in the Clouds – Remember The Milk

This is the third app in my Living in
the Clouds series. After Gmail and Google Calendar, it is time to shift the focus towards a To-Do
List manager. Whether you are an ardent follower of David Allen’s GTD or, like
me, you have your own system of getting things done, Remember The Milk (RTM)
should be part of your toolkit.

The basic version of RTM is free of cost. There is a Pro version available
but it doesn’t add much value as such and you can get everything you need in the
free version itself. You can add tasks, tag them, share them or publish them on
the web. The Ajax based UI is pretty intuitive and straight forward without any
unnecessary bells and whistles. Adding tasks has certain level of natural
language support and one can easily add tasks from anywhere using a wide variety
of tools. RTM also offers a pretty flexible options to sort and categorize. RTM
also supports iCal, iCal (Events) and Atom feeds. Overall, it is a powerful but
simple app to manage your tasks.

As it is customary in this series, I will list the pros and cons of RTM. I
want to once again emphasize that this list of pros and cons is not exhaustive
and they are the ones I find important. If you have any other pros and cons to
share, feel free to add it in the comments section.

Pros:

Intuitive UI and light weight.
Manage tasks from web, phone, email, iGoogle, mobile, Twitter, Ilovesandy,
Jott, etc..
Get reminded by Email, SMS, Twitter Direct Message, etc..
The entire app is free of cost.
Integration with Google Calendar and Gmail (I will talk about this in one of
the future posts) adds great value. With a browser plugin, you can even convert
the mail messages into tasks.
Access through Twitter is a big plus from my view as I spend quite a lot of
time on Twitter.

Cons:

Their pro plan doesn’t add much value. You only get a mobile or iPhone
client along with a chance to use beta features. This is not all that appealing
for me. I would like to see more value addition.
Mobile interface is not all that great.
Integration with Google Calendar is a bit messy from my point of view.
This is not a con as such. I would have liked Google to swallow RTM and
offer it as an app under its PIM suite.

Next week, I will talk about Google Address book and then I will finish off
Personal Information Manager set of applications with a post about how I
integrate them in my workflow. If you have any comments or tips on RTM, feel
free to share in the comments section.

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4 responses to “Living in the Clouds – Remember The Milk”

Bill R. October 17, 2008 at 1:16 pm | Permalink

Thanks for pushing me toward RTM. Frankly, I’ve been struggling with Google Calendars and it’s just not getting it done.

Also, I agree that the PRO plan doesn’t add much…
Sty Liskit October 17, 2008 at 4:50 pm | Permalink

Yes! Remember the Milk is a great thing! Five years ago I would have found it hard to believe that To Do List Managers would be so in vogue today, but then things like Remember the Milk and Basecamp come by and blow me away. It used to be the case that you had to learn the tool. These tools are getting better at learning you.
a.groh October 18, 2008 at 4:28 am | Permalink

I looked at RTM and liked many of the features but settled on 30 Boxes because I just thought the process of creating the tasks was easier….in 30 Boxes you can accomplished in one simple text box if you desire (with tagging). I do like RTM’s integration with Google Calendar, though.