As our lives get busier and the world gets faster, our workload seems to be just too much some times.
Web apps are getting faster, better, with incredible user interfaces and maybe similar or even better than stand alone local applications.

These two statements above seem to have nothing in common, but in my view they both led to the increasing number of quality web-based task management tools.

Being a fan of David Allen’s GTD methodology, I’ve always tried to apply the method using software tools that could be better than the old pen and paper.
Just a few years back, finding a task management software was a quite hard task itself, especially on a Mac.
Today, I think that choosing the “right one” for you has become a stressful experience because there are too many!

When I started using these task management tools I basically didn’t have much choice. The first ones I’ve used where:

- OmniFocus
- Things
- Remember The Milk

But as a nice intention for the new year I decided to have a deep look into many of the  alternatives on the market. First, because I did not like the fact that all the above mentioned products where basically not evolving and seemed to be frozen to a few years back (the only improvement comes from Things that is now offering a cloud based version of their tool, which has now been in beta for an unbelievable amount of time and is becoming obsolete before going out of beta..). Second, because I now feel the need to be more “social”, and these new tools out there are giving more space to your social needs and to sharing your tasks with your teams.

Although the list I’m presenting here is not exhaustive and could be increased every month (or week) when new products come to life, I believe it is a starting point for many who wish to dive into this world of getting organized and getting things done without using pen and paper.

Some of the tools I came across convinced me more than others and therefore I’ve given them extra time to test, try, install. Others did not receive the same treatment probably because the user interface did not capture my full attention and that is why I’m reporting just a few names and relative web sites with no comments.

The first three of the list are still valid tools and I’m not writing anything about them since I’ve done so already in this post: To-Do Lists and tasks management

1. Omnifocus
2. Things
3. Remember The Milk
4. HiTask: not very GTD oriented, but with a very nice UI. Tasks are generally organized with due dates and priorities. Also projects are very well organized. One of the most interesting things about HiTask is the ability to assign a time to each task and track your time with a built-in timer. You can either start and stop the timer or manually enter the amount of time you spent on each task, in order to get very nice reports on how you spend your time. Very useful for people who need time-sheets.
5. TeamBox: the version 4 has some really great improvements in the UI. If you and your team are always online, then it is a perfect tool for sharing your ideas, and commenting on each task instead of using email.
6. Doit.im: this one has really impressed me! Very GTD oriented, wonderful UI, very nice iPhone and Android versions, Mac app, very responsive customer care. Even if some other professional tools are probably better, Doit.im handles very weel shared task with your team. You can easily create several teams, assign tasks and track them over time. Contexts are also very clear and GTD-style. BTW, for now Doit.im is FREE!
7. Flow: Flow is incredibly similar to Doit.im. I don’t know which came first, but I would say one was inspired by the other one! Very clean and GTD oriented user interface with possibility to share your tasks. The only big difference with Doit.im is the price: 99$/year.
8. Producteev: very nice UI and I think excellent for collaboration and teams. You can easily comment on each task and see the task history as a Facebook page with comments from co-workers. Also available: iphone app, android app, stand alone app for mac and windows. Excellent for collaboration and sharing but I think way too expensive.
9. Do: Do is one the most simple tools I’ve seen. Not GTD oriented but with an extremely easy to use interface: just projects and tasks. That’s it. You can delegate your tasks, comment on each one and create shared notes (for meeting minutes for example). iPhone and Android apps are very clean and easy to use.
10. Basecamp: Basecamp is intended for a more professional use and for larger companies. Although I don’t think it offers a GTD style and did not capture my full attention with its UI.
11. Pagico: Pagico really impressed me at the beginning. More than a task management tool I would say it is a project management software. Maybe the only one with Gantt charts, it could help you manage complex projects with deadlines. The big bug about Pagico is that there is no web version, no iPhone version (only iPad) and sharing tasks and projects with co-workers is just not straightforward.
12. Wunderlist: very popular on the Apple app store. Very clean UI but I don’t think it can compete with many of the others.
13. GetItDone
14. ActionMethod
15. Nirvana
16. 42Task
17. SmartQ
18. Goplan
19. Vitalist
20. Podio
21. GTDAgenda

Since efficiency and productivity is almost always measured in time, optimizing our time is one of the most challenging adventures of our days.

I’ve been using several different project management applications in the last few years, but I must say that their learning curve and usability benefits is not always worth the price.

On the other hand I’ve discovered several low cost (or free) apps the are excellent companions for your time management needs.

Being a Mac guy, I’ve used Omnifocus and Things for a while. They are great tools but lack cloud computing and collaboration features. That’s why I went back to the nice and clean Remember The Milk web app, with excellent versions for mobile devices. Using it to its full potentials, with an intelligent tags and lists organization, I believe it is a great GTD and productivity enhancer.

One of the key features I’ve being using lately is the “time estimate” for each singe task. This is a guess you should be making for each task you create. If tasks require more the 8 hours I think you should rethink them and make them become a project instead.

Now you can start planning your day and week according to the estimated time. For instance, if you create a Today list, RTM gives you the total time required to accomplish all your tasks! From my experience, if you have a regular 9 hours working day, try never to exceed 6-7 hours of tasks time otherwise you’ll never make it! (you do need to eat or go to the toilet sometimes..)

Here is where my wonderful experience with Paymo comes in place.

Paymo is a very clean and easy to use time tracking system. You can enter projects, tasks, clients and your entire team. Then you can start tracking your time either by editing the time after you have finished your task or in real-time by using Paymo’s chronograph on the web, on your desktop as a widget, or on your mobile with the iPhone app.

At the end of your day you know how much time you have worked, on which task, on what project, for which client and you can then check if your estimsted time (in RTM for instance) was correct.

Paymo’s reporting features make it a perfect choice if you have timesheets needs, if you have to complete reports for your company with your team or if you have to calculate the amount of hours you need to invoice to your clients.

The only thing I could imagine in my wish list is a sort of integration between my time management (RTM) and my time tracking system (Paymo). In that way I could find my tasks in Paymo without having to re-enter them twice.

RTM, Paymo, any plans for open APIs on either side?

Probably I’m obsessed by this word: synchronization.
But if I’m not the only one who tries to keep all calendars, emails, to-do lists, files, contacts in sync, then I would like to share some of my considerations and some of my experience with a pretty good cocktail of tools I regularly use. Truly enough, I would love to hear similar thoughts and experiences from anyone.

First of all let me say that I’m a great fan of David Allen‘s GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology and that I love to be organized, efficient and productive. Second, I must admit that I’m also fascinated by new technologies and not very keen anymore to use paper and pen.. Oh, and I’m a Mac man.

What I would like to share are some experiences, workarounds and ideas I came up in the last years in order to try to keep my life (and work tools) in sync.

1. Files: it is since I first discovered Dropbox a couple of years ago that my file sync and disk backup has become a game. Dropbox is a wonderful application which automatically syncs your files on multiple computers. Each time you are connected to the Internet the latest changes on your computer are reflected on all other computers (including iPhone). This is also a wonderful method for backing up all your file, forgetting about it!
All your files are stored both on your computer and on remote servers. This means opening and saving files is as fast as before, plus you can access and change all your files also through a web interface if you’re not using your computer.

2. Calendars: many have tried to imitate it.. but I think there is nothing like Google calendar (read more). Clean, web 2.0 interface and hundreds of features it is really one of the greatest tools from Google. Obviously there is nothing to sync from one computer to another since it is all remotely stored. But there is some work to do in order to sync with your iPhone. Here is how to do it.

3. Tasks: if your life is (or tries to be) organized using task managers, then this is another piece of life you need to keep in sync. You cannot write down a note or to-do on your mobile device while on the go and then don’t have it on your pc!
If you are satisfied with what a web 2.0 interface can give you, then I would suggest web tools (such as Remember The Milk) that obviously don’t need any sync, since all data is remotely stored.
If you prefer stand-alone applications, you might want to try Omnifocus and Things. While OmniFocus comes with a pretty good sync process using MobileMe or any WebDAV server, Things does not: you need to have your computer and iPhone/iPad on the same wireless network and do the sync manually

4. Contacts: having a Mac, I think you basically have two options for syncing your contacts. One is using google contacts and selecting the “sync with google contacts” from iTunes or Address Book. The other option is to buy a MobileMe account! While the first option is free, the second is 79$ / year.
Syncing your address book with Google Contacts now works much better than in the past, but still I think there are some issues like duplicates or wrong first and last names in your contacts. Also the type of info you can sync is restricted to  Google contacts.
Obviously using MobileMe I did not find any of these issues: all contacts’ infos are perfectly synced (including photos) and it also works in near real-time.

5. E-mails: even though it is probably unnecessary to mention, email sync is very easy today using IMAP.
Configuring your accounts with IMAP you can have all your emails synced in real-time with all your clients. One suggestion: forward all your email accounts to a Gmail account. IMAP on Gmail works great with Apple Mail or any other client. In this way you will have an advanced catch-all account which you can read from your Mac, iPhone, iPad, having all in sync!

For those of you who think can keep all your activities and To-Do list in your mind, for those who still rely on paper and pencil, for everyone who does not believe that technology can improve your productivity… stop reading this article. For all the rest I hope this helps!

Given as requirement that I’m a Mac user and GTD (Getting Things Done, by David Allen) passionate, I will try to illustrate several options I have personally tested for To-Do lists and task management.

OmniFocus
OmniFocus is a complete (and maybe a bit complex) task management tool. Calling it a to-do list would be a bit reductive. It has everything you need for complete organization of your work and private life, both if you use or don’t use the GTD methodology.
Different views, contexts, tags and projects makes OmniFocus a complete way to manage your activities.
Probably the weak point is the user interface, not very clean and very crowded.
On the other hand, a very powerful feature is the sync over-the-air funcionality which makes it easy to sync tasks with more than one Mac and/or with other devices (iPhone app available for 15$).
The cost of OmniFocus is 79$ for single user license.

Things
Things is the real (and maybe unique) competitor of OmniFocus. It has most of the features of OmniFocus, but with an excellent mac-style user interface. Probably this is the most noticeable strength and it is what has brougth Things to fame.
Even if it lacks some of the features of OmniFocus it is probbaly suited for the majority of people working with task management.
The “assigning” feature is pretty intereseting, even if it is only a virtual assignment since there is no real “sharing capability”. You basically work by yourself and remind yourself someone else has a task in charge.
The real missing feature is syncing. You can only sync (between Mac an Iphone) on a wireless LAN and you have to do it manually! Things for Mac is $49 and iPhone app is $7.99

RememberTheMilk
RTM has a totally different approach: it is totally web based, hence it automatically syncs all your computers and mobile devices (support for symbian, iphone, ipod, ipad, android, blackberry..)
Even though the UI is a very clean 2.0 web app, obviously it is not as advanced as its stand-alone apps competitors.
The iPhone App though is very celan and works perfectly well.
Tabs, tags and other interesting search features make RTM a suitable task management system even for the most demanding “organizers”. Using tabs you can easily create multiple projects, create deadlines (which will will have a push notification on iphone), assign tasks to people (really sharing or sending the task).
RTM is free or $29/year for a Pro account. iPhone app is free when buying a Pro account.

As a conclusion I can say that the first two tools are for a more personal task management, with no real need for sharing tasks with a team and for those who are really focused on user interface.
Remember The Milk is a bit of a paradigm shift, moving your tasks to the cloud and using at its best all the cloud computing advantages. No need to sync: all tasks are stored remotely and you will see them up to date when you use your pc, iphone, ipad.
Also sharing tasks is as easy as sending an email to colleagues and friends, who will find the task in their RTM Inbox and can then move it to a specific folder or project.
Oh and finally, RTM can obviously be also used by PC users

I’m definitively an iPhone fan. I bought it the first day it was delivered to stores.
I also must admit it has increased my productivity and pleasure in using such a device.

BUT, although it has been around now for several years, the operating system is now in its release 4.0.1….  yet I still believe there is one huge deficiency: VOIP. While most of other smartphones provide this feature in someway, the iPhone seems to ignore the VOIP industry.
Many VOIP app developers are struggling in trying to upload their applications on the Apple store, but I believe everyone is still far from what a true VOIP phone should look like.

I’ve been using Nokia smartphones in the past few years also and I think the way Nokia handles the service is way more mature. If you have any E-series Nokia phone (and in some cases also N-series) you have the possibility to register your phone with any international VOIP provider that is using the SIP standard protocol. Basically, you can have you local land-line number on your mobile device (without any transferring charges) and make local calls from anywhere in the world. Also, you can receive calls on your local number (home or office) independently if you are travelling to Singapore or are right in your office. The service works both on wi-fi networks but with a reasonable quality also on 3G, with a few easy configuration steps.

During the launch of the new iOS 4 for iPhone, Apple had pushed a lot the “new” voice over IP features of its operating system. We also assisted to the live demo of the new version of Skype working in multitasking mode on iPhone 4.
Yesterday Skype has released the new version of its application on the Apple store. Finally, we can see it running on the background and you can always be online on Skype. BUT, I believe there are still some pieces missing in this VOIP puzzle:

1. Skype is not really what we may call a VOIP standard application. Even if you are now able to buy from skype a local land-line number, Skype does not use SIP standard protocol and you cannot register another number you already have with some other VOIP provider.
2. Assuming that VOIP = Skype, I think the phone itself is not yet integrated enough with skype. Multitasking is a great thing, but if you are talking on Skype and you receive a phone call, still your conversation will be dropped to let you answer to the cellular incoming call (and vice versa). Using Nokia integrated SIP VOIP feature your mobile gives a busy signal to incoming calls if you are talking on you VOIP number (and vice versa).

So what I suggest while waiting for Apple to integrate Skype fully into its iOS 4, is to try two very well made VOIP apps:

1. Fring: one of the first multi-channel IM client (also available on Symbian OS), lets you register on any VOIP provider using standard SIP protocol and lets you sign in with almost all Instant Messaging channels.
2. Nimbuzz: very similar to Fring, I have found to work a little bit better in handling incoming calls over VOIP while the app is running in the background.

In both cases, your conversation will still drop if you receive a call on your mobile number..

It might seem obvious but I found out that a lot of people don’t know you can sync your Apple iPhone with your Google calendar.
So here is a very short how-to.

In order to sync your iPhone’s calendar with your google calendar you must create a new Microsoft Exchange account under Preferences:

1. Open the Settings application on your iPhone.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account.

Now add your account settings:

1. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address.
2. Leave the Domain field blank.
3. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
4. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
5. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
6. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
7. Press Next at the top of your screen again.

If you have multiple calendars you have to visit m.google.com/sync with your iPhone’s browser and select which calendars you want see in the calendar application.
Be careful in giving appointments quickly, since it takes a few seconds to update your phone’s calendar, unless you have Push enabled.

I still have to find out why today’s sophisticated email clients don’t have a scheduling option for emails.

I have tried several excellent software apps a, with incredibly useful features but none of them seem to support deferring and scheduling emails at given date and time.
Since I’m an Apple user, I’ve find a few scripts that do the job using Apple Mail but they are not very user-friendly nor reliable.

One interesting web app I think is DeferredSender.
After an extremely easy registration process, you are bale to send emails using your preferred email client or web service (such as Gmail).
You simply write an email to Deferred Sender with a body that starts  like this:

“to john.doe@domain.com
cc john.doe2@domain.com
friday 13:00″

and then write you email message after the above heading.
DeferredSender will take care of sending the email and notifying you about delivery.

Unfortunately there is still no software application that can handle your emails.

I’ve seen some interesting prototypes but still nothing usable.
Maybe one day, a Gmail 2.0 add-on will read your email, move unwanted messages to your “not now” folder, schedule meetings in your calendar if the sender invites you to one, and highlight emails from your wife (or maybe mark them as spam ).

Until then, an interesting alternative is ActiveInbox: GTD based work-flow add-on for Gmail which lets you “handle email as a flow of actions”, as the developers say.

Its main objective is to make the zero inbox rule a reality.
This rule is part of the GTD process by David Allen, which illustrates how to bring to zero your inbox and file all your messages in the right place.

With ActiveInbox you can better focus on high priority emails, track emails that you are waiting for a reply to, file emails into projects for easy retrieval. All this with user-friendly dropdown menus right into your Gmail account.
With a simple to use add-on for Gmail you will see an extra menu on your left column, showing contexts, projects and ToDos. With one click you can see all your emails to a given person from which you are expeting a reply. Or you can check, project by project, which are your next actions.

ActiveInbox comes with a free version and a premium account for $24.95/year.

How many times did you find yourself making ten phone calls or exchanging tons of emails to organize a meeting?
I’ve been using Doodle for a while to organize my meetings with colleagues, and I must admit it helped me reducing those calls and emails quite a bit.

But I now must say there is probably a better product that will replace Doodle (at least in my business life): Tungle.me
Tungle.me is a much more complete meeting organizer. I would today call it a social schedule organizer.

Not only the user interface is much more appealing than Doodle’s, all in web 2.0 style, but also its features are really impressive.
Tungle.me gives you the possibility to “visually” choose more than one time and date for a meeting and then share it with colleagues.
Also the meeting is automatically scheduled once all participants have responded.

Tungle. me syncs with google calendar, showing the busy time slots as not available to book on Tungle.me
Each registered user has a unique public URL, very similar to a twitter account address, where everyone can “book” you according to your available time.