Is it worth it?
First we have to decide if Remember The Milk (RTM henceforth) is worth trying. I have some rules about new programs/systems/belongings that I used to decide this.
- anything I do, use, or buy has to improve my life
- (corollary) the net gain of something must be greater than the loss (loss could be money, time, sanity, whatever)
These sound simple, but periodically asking yourself if something actually improves your life (remembering gain vs cost) will prove it’s a question worth asking. If it takes more time and effort to manage and complete tasks with RTM versus my usual methods, RTM gets the boot. I have an additional rule for applications I don’t strictly ‘need’ – they have to give me access to my data and/or let me modify them.
I always have a sinking feeling when putting information into a program I can’t control or get my data out of – that is time lost if I ever decide to use something else, or stick with something that isn’t working well because the transition is too costly. Additionally, I always find something I’d like to do differently, or use in another way, and I like to have the option to be able to do so. It’s the best of both worlds – applications that (usually) keep improving with no effort on my part, and the option to tweak things to my personal preferences.
RTM does all of the above and more. I already keep todo lists around, and RTM has integration with many applications I already use, so I knew it was likely it would be worth the effort before I ever started – it’s a simple matter to add a gadget/addon/plugin to something I’m already using. My old systems of ‘todo’ lists were varied, involving either Google Notebook, web forms and databases, or (usually) a text document. Not the most efficient, so RTM doesn’t need to do much to improve matters.
Usage
There are a variety of ways to use RTM, and you’ll have to figure out what works best for you. I find RTM fits well enough into what I do anyway that I don’t have to think about it – I install the addons/gadgets/plugins and it’s there to be used. Below is a summary of some of the options I’ve found useful for making RTM the most efficient process it can be with the least amount of effort.
RTM Website
Most users will interact with the website – it’s a good site, so I’ve little to say aside from the expected: learn the hotkeys. Note: many of the below options use user-specific information like webcal and email addresses from the website. You can currently find these by clicking ‘Settings’ at the top right and selecting the ‘Info’ tab on the page which loads. The plugins can be found through the ‘Services’ link at the bottom.
RTM via Firefox via Twitter
I don’t like being forced to visit a site to do something simple, so the first thing I did was set up RTM’s twitter support. As I use a twitter plugin that lets me post from the location bar of Firefox, adding tasks is usually as simple as typing something like ‘d rtm some task here on some date’. This means I’ll actually use the service, because it’s just as easy, or easier, as opening up my todo file and typing the task in (though echo “task title” >> todo.txt is just as fast). I’ll probably set up a hotkey that’ll type the ‘d rtm’ prefix in for me at some point, or write something for myself with a similar functionality.
Drawback: the supported syntax will only allow you to add a task and date
RTM via Email
When you sign up for RTM, you are assigned an email address you can use to send yourself tasks. Anything in the title of the email will become the title of the task, and the body of the email will become a note on the task. This means you can send yourself tasks from a cell phone, the right-click menu of most file-explorers, upon an error in a program, or from any site that has a ‘email this’ option.
RTM via Google Reader via Email
By adding aforementioned address to your google address book under RTM, you can utilize the email function available in Google Reader to email yourself RSS items to check out later with minimal effort (thank you auto-complete). I tried abusing tags and stars for this previously, but found I rarely got back to things and the buildup meant I rarely bothered to check everything out.
RTM via webcal
This is extremely handy. RTM will give you a webcal address which you can use to add your tasks into calendars which support the webcal scheme. Most modern calendar applications should support webcal – I know both Google Calendar and Evolution (Linux) do so.
Drawback: tasks must have a time and date to show up, and you can’t edit the tasks, only view them.
RTM via Gmail in Firefox
RTM has a Gmail plugin for Firefox which will add a very well-designed column of tasks to the right of your messages. You can even set filters of sorts so email which is tagged with specific terms (like ‘todo’) is automatically added to your task inbox. The RTM plugin also, brilliantly, uses data from your address book and calendar when you’re creating a new task. Typing something like ‘email John after staff meeting’ will, if ‘John’ is in your address book and ‘staff meeting’ is in your calendar, create a task which has a link to email John and automagically enters the due date based on when ‘staff meeting’ occurs.
Drawback: RTM will only do this if certain keywords (like ‘email’ or ‘call’) are present. I would, personally, prefer a different syntax and more options versus being able to type in ‘normal’ english, but that’s just me.
RTM in Firefox Sidebar (via iGoogle)
I have the handy Google Sidebar addon installed in Firefox, and RTM provides an iGoogle widget. Perfect. Adding the widget means my task list now shows up in my sidebar with a simple ctrl+alt+i hotkey. I still get to keep my RSS feeds, inbox, notebook, and various other widgets easily accessible, too. Google owns me ’tis true, but at least I can get to most of my data (where is the API for Notebook?!).
Drawback: the iGoogle widget isn’t nearly as nice as the Gmail addon.
RTM via Google Calendar (Firefox only)
In addition to webcal, RTM provides a Google Calendar addon for Firefox which will add small icons you can use to view or add tasks. These are present even in the iGoogle calendar widget.
Advanced
RTM via SQL
This may be a bit unintuitive, but RTM uses Google Gears for offline support, and Google Gears uses SQLite, and SQLite supports most SQL statements. If you regularly synchronize your data, this can be a very easy way to use and modify that data.
Drawback: It isn’t real-time – if you don’t use caution this method may cause more problems than it solves.
RTM via API
RTM provides an Application Programmer Interface (API) which means you can write programs which interact with the RTM website for real-time operations. It’s not as easy as using the SQLite database, but it’s real-time. I don’t know of any good ready-to-go classes yet, but some are in progress and it’s not overly complex. RTM supports JSON and something they call REST, which doesn’t look very RESTful to me, but I’m quite thankful for the API regardless.
Drawback: you need a developer key (this is common) which takes quite a while to get (this isn’t so common).
Filed under: how-to, firefox, hotkeys, igoogle, remember the milk, RTM, twitter
