to-do

With life moving faster, there are many computer programs on the market that aim to help users stay on top of everything. TimeTo is a program that claims to be one of the best, but we found that it was missing some common amenities.

This freeware provides users with a customizable interface. The initial picture is a little cramped and confusing, featuring a monthly, daily, and weekly calendar, all clustered together. Fortunately, users can close the ones they do not like and leave open the calendar that best suits them. From this point, users should have a simple time dealing … Read more

Kwiry, "the remind yourself to do a search about something later" company, is closing up shop next week. According to a company blog post, the service is shutting itself down due to "economic realities."

In the meantime, users are kindly being given the next 10 days to grab all their previous searches, which can be saved as a CSV file and exported into other reminder services.

I hate to see the site go, but it was a concept that was a hard sell to casual users. Aimed at users without smartphones (or data plans), it started … Read more

Easy To-Do Pro attempts to help busy users organize their lives. By providing a simple, intuitive system for managing the day's tasks, the program may have succeeded, but it's almost too basic.

This program is about as simple to operate as its graphics look. Users with a basic knowledge of other organizational software will instantly be able to navigate it. You can enter upcoming tasks in a simple list, much the same way a to-do list on paper would be written. However, the Easy To-Do Pro system allows users to input notes for each event, assign them priority, … Read more

The iTunes App Store is glutted with to-do lists and time managers, but many are so simple they're ineffective. Appigo's Todo is the highest cost of its cohort, but is also more complete than the budget offerings. Unlike other to-do lists, you can have Todo assign a due date and priority ranking; it will winningly associate tasks with mobile numbers and Web sites. You can further synchronize your lists with your pro Remember the Milk account and with Toodledo, both Web-based task organizers. Now if only Apple would let Todo take the extra leap and let loose with … Read more

Earlier Monday one of my colleagues from Gamespot spent most of lunch gushing to me about his new favorite GTD tool. Called Toodledo, it's diminutive name does not do its to-do list prowess justice--this is one of the most deep and full-featured offerings on the market. It's also one of the easiest to get into, especially if you're using other Web services like Google Calendar, Twitter, and Jott.

At its heart Toodledo is a task organizer, so two of the most important aspects should be entering in the data as well as being able to access it … Read more

Kwiry, the memory-saving tool I wrote about back in December, has just put out a useful update for people who don't like to type. Users can now send photos to their Kwiry stream in hopes of digging up a search for it later. The company is hoping people will use this to catalog things they come across in everyday life, and bookmark them for later like people do with links on services like Delicious and Magnolia.

Kwiry's creators insist this isn't a photo-hosting service--just a tool to help people dig up more information about something they've … Read more

OK, Google watchers, you can slow down your pulse. That to-do list posting on the Google Docs blog appears to have been an innocent mix-up.

Google marketing manager Andrew Chang inadvertently published his to-do list on a blog while testing his posting software. It wasn't a hastily removed preview of a new Google online to-do list application, a possibility some raised.

"I was testing out a feature that allows you to create and edit blog posts in Docs and publish them directly to your blog," Chang said in a follow-up post afterward. "One button click later, … Read more

Microsoft Live Labs has a new "technology preview" for you to play with. It's called Listas and it's basically a social bookmarking service for keeping track of content you come across while browsing the Web, and sharing it with others. Users can make their own containers full of all sorts of links, and supplement it with text, images, and RSS feeds using a WYSIWYG editor or by just pasting in entire Web pages from their text clipboard. The service is being billed as a way to make lists, but I think its core appeal will ultimately end up as a Web clippings service.

Oddly enough, Microsoft has had their TagSpaces service kicking around since April. TagSpaces gives users a bookmarklet to tag any item they've come across while browsing, and drops it into a giant pool of tags for everyone. Listas is clearly a more advanced effort, and one designed to handle media and collaboration a little better.

Similar to other social bookmarking services, Microsoft has included a toolbar to help Listas users speed up their list creation. The toolbar borrows the idea of taking entire clips of Web content from services like Yoono, Clipmarks, and eSnips. For every little bit you grab, you can assign it to one of your pre-existing lists, or add it to a new one. There are two caveats about the toolbar though. For one, it's Internet Explorer-only. Secondly, there don't seem to be any plans to give users a Javascript bookmarklet to use like what they've done with TagSpaces (something which would add crossplatform functionality). It's also worth noting that you can accomplish the same effect of the toolbar by doing a copy and paste into a list item, which will include things like pictures, links, and embedded videos (which incidentally don't play without jettisoning you off the page).… Read more

HiTask is a(really simple collaborative task management tool for small groups. Members can create tasks, meetings, reminders, notes, and birthdays to add to their own schedule or assign to others. The entire interface is drag-and-drop, and any actions by team members will instantly be reflected on your tasks page. It's a mix of a scheduling app and to-do list tool that's dead simple to use. In testing, we were making and managing several projects in less than five minutes without reading any documentation, which bodes well if you're collaborating with non-tech-savvy people.

Assigning tasks to other users is really simple. Once you've created a task, you can just drag it over to the group member's name. You'll get a note on the task letting you know who you've assigned it to, and as soon as they're done with it you'll be notified in real time. Likewise, when a group member assigns something to you, it will show up on your schedule, along with a note of who it's from. The one thing missing from HiTask is the option to view other members' schedules, which would be helpful--especially for gauging how much is on someone's plate.

If you do need to talk, there's a built-in chat module, which is limited to one-on-one. There's no way to group chat, or share files like you get with some more advanced group collaboration tools like BaseCamp, and activeCollab, but HiTask is pretty early in development.

HiTask has both a free and premium service. The free service reaches its limit at 10 tasks, making it little more than a demo. The $15 a year service provides unlimited tasks, group members, and projects. See the screenshots after the jump.

Related: Under the Radar Office 2.0 coverage of group collaboration tools.

[via SolutionWatch]

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