App for the Milk is a cross-platform Adobe Air-based desktop client version of the extremely popular online task management application Remember the Milk. One of the unique aspects of Remember the Milk is that it lends itself well to various user interface interpretations. There are already a number of different UIs for RTM, including the classic web interface, the embedded Gmail interface, the Gmail gadget interface, and the iPhone interface. Each has common elements, but differs in the details.

In other words, each new interface is a new take, and not just a copy of the web interface. This holds true for App for the Milk as well. Instead of a full-screen approach, App for the Milk takes a decidedly pared-down task list approach. Most (but not all) of what the web version can do is still available, though sometimes hidden in unlabeled buttons in the app's toolbar. In fact, there are more than a few aspects of App for the Milk's interface that seem a little rough around the edges. On the upside, it looks like App for the Milk, while not officially designated a beta version, is in active development, and the developer admits that some functionality like smart lists is still to come.

If you like having a list of your outstanding tasks handy, App for the Milk will probably be a welcome addition to your desktop. If you prefer to have the full suite of functionality, including offline availability, Remember the Milk's web interface is still your best bet.

As I mentioned last time, don't choose a tool that doesn't fit your flow. What does that mean? Here's an example: I thought I'd be clever and create a separate flow for home and work. Since I work at home, the thinking was that I'd further separate my two worlds with two systems. In one corner I had The Hit List syncing to iCal which in turn was syncing with Todo on my iPhone. In the other corner: Toodledoo in my browser (or standalone in Fluid) and on my iPhone. Guess what happened?

I wound up preferring one system over another. In this case, Toodledo (a service I'll dissect in a later post). Todo and The Hit List and even lowly iCal are great, but since the majority of my inbox items fly at me in a work context, I simply wound up using Toodledo more often. That simple cognitive shift of changing to another system wound up enough of a barrier to me to discontinue my hacked-together system. Oh, and it didn't help that my hacked system didn't work right.

The Hit List is a very powerful tool, and iCal works great with my MobileMe account. The hack to sync the two with Todo, also a terrific piece of software, only works so well. My second piece of advice this week: avoid hacked solutions unless you can fix them easily. This goes back to truly learning your system. If you can code your own apps and craft your own workflow, more power to you. If you can't, admit that you won't be able to fix things and look for a total solution elsewhere.

Case in point: so-called Kinkless GTD. Remember this one? I loved it. Add items via QuickSilver into a special, fragile OmniOutliner Pro document and all sorts of magical things happened. Unfortunately, the system was fragile as a glass kitten. Once it blew up on me once, I never got it working again, and had to unlearn a number of methods for capturing and completing tasks. That is not the way to get things done. But the toolset was beyond my capacity to fix it. So take a lesson from Star Trek and don't become dependent upon a tool you can't fathom. Or, at the least, find something with support documentation.

Next I'll show you some questions to ask when evaluating tools.

It's no secret that we install a lot of programs here at Download Squad to review. And when the review is over most of them get un-installed. For the our Mac apps, it's just a matter of dragging the application to the trash as well as the associated preference files. But some of the programs we review are utilities that run in the background so when it comes time to emptying the trash, we'll get an dialog box warning us that the file is currently in use. So we'll have to track down the file and make sure that it is no longer running before we can completely delete it. Tracking down these files is time consuming but programs like What's Keeping Me help to make it as painless as possible.

Simply put, when you're given the warning that a file can not be deleted enter the name in What's Keeping Me and it will search your computer for the file/application. Once it does you'll have 1 of 3 options to chose from: Quit, Relaunch or Kill. Since we're more interested in deleting the file, the Kill button will do just nicely freeing up the file so that it can be properly deleted.

While you can certainly use Activity Monitor to kill the offending application as well, those not familiar with it or those just wanting a more streamlined way of killing the application for deletion may find What's Keeping Me more helpful.

What's keeping me is a universal binary application and works on both PPC and Intel based Macs running OS X 10.4 or higher.

Intervals is a web service for tracking time spent on projects and related tasks. It lets you add/manage tasks among team members, budget project costs, create invoices, share project-related documents, and create a variety of reports.

The service has four business plans (ranging from $20 to $175 a month), and an individual plan that is free (though limited). The top two plans offer SSL and significantly more storage space for documents. All plans support web timers (to track how long you spend on a given project), but you can also enter time manually if you hate working to a clock.

Intervals is offering a 30-day trial on it's business plans, and they don't ask for payment info until after your trial (so they won't do the devious automatic billing without you being well aware of what you're getting in to).

With the vast number of task management applications that are available, particularly for the Mac, you'd think that every possible feature has been done in a to-do list program. But maybe that's part of the problem. These programs are so feature-rich, that they end up getting in the way of actually getting things done, which is their purpose in the first place.

Jesse Grosjean thinks so, which is why his Hog Bay Software company has released a "work in progress" (notice the absence fo the word "beta"?) version of a new app called Taskpaper. The idea of Taskpaper is to boil down the job of task management to the most basic list making functionality, and make it work with plain text files. This makes it both dead simple to use, and totally flexible, since plain text can be used wherever and however you like.

Right at the top of the page, you'll see a quote from The David: "For the most part, the applications that are specifically designed for project organizing are way too complex, with too much horsepower to really be functional for 98 percent of what most people need to manage."

It seems Taskpaper might well be onto something here. If you're looking for something similar to Taskpaper, but web based, there's always Backpack by 37 Signals.

SimpleGTD is another in long list of online task management tools that attempt to adhere to David Allen's Getting Things Done system. On the surface, it's incredibly appealing; the makers of SimpleGTD have used Ruby on Rails to create a system that is stripped of the extraneous gunk that seems to litter other GTD tools, and instead present an incredibly bare-bones GTD environment. For those of you who prefer text files or paper lists, this may well appeal to you.

However the true value of using an application (be it a web application or a local one) to manage your tasks, particularly when following the principles of GTD, is the ability to see your tasks grouped by either context or by project. In other words, while you want one list to tell me what you can be working on right now based on the context you're in, you need another list showing you everything that needs to get done for a particular project.

SimpleGTD does not offer this project-based list, and it's a real shame. Without the ability to see this alternate view of your tasks, it's hard to recommend this tool for any serious GTDers. Otherwise, it's a very slick implementation.

SimpleGTD is free to use, but the makers suggest that regular users make a small $2 donation.

While many other task management applications have found ways to incorporate the ideas put forth by the Getting Things Done methodology that David Allen developed, it seems that very few have been built from the ground up as GTD applications. There are certainly a few web applications that can make that claim, but in terms of "offline" applications, the pickings are pretty slim.

One such application, however, is ThinkingRock. Written in Java, ThinkingRock boasts versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

In ThinkingRock, you work in specific modes that relate to the various levels of the GTD workflow. For example, rather than entering a task and setting the project it relates to and the context at that moment, you can simply use a collection view to do a brain dump of all of the tasks and ideas that are bouncing around in your mind.

Sciral Consistency is a quirky cross-platform task manager that differs greatly from most task managers. In fact, if you've ever used Joe's Goals (thanks Ian!), the interface in Sciral Consistency will look at least somewhat familiar. The idea is that you list off tasks that you need to perform on a regular basis, then use the application to track how well you are meeting your obligations.

It's hard to discuss Sciral Consistency without drawing comparisons to my beloved Joe's Goals, but I'll try. In fact, they are extremely similar in concept, but the execution is quite different.

Tasks is YAOTMP (yet another online task management product) but when I think back it may be that it was one of the first. It's a very well designed and functional task management program that appears to have all the features you could ask for:

• Tagging
• Hierarchical organization of tasks
• Mobile interface
  
• Prioritize
• Email reminders
• Task templates
• Ability to create tasks from e-mails
• Favorite tasks
• iCalendar and RSS support
• Notes
• File Uploads
• Multiple Task Edit
• Themes
• Auto-check for updates to both software and documentation

Tasks is not hosted; it is software that you download and install on your own web server. In my mind this is good and bad; the good is that you can control where you put it, so that you can ensure it ends up on a fast host that is not too popular. The bad is that you're responsible to maintain your installation yourself, which is something I'm less and less inclined to do these days. I personally don't want to be messing with the nuts and bolts of my task management system, I just want it to work. But clearly many people do want that level of control.

Tasks costs $29.95 USD to purchase, although there is a free trial available for 21 days via a hosted account. If you decide to continue using Tasks, they will send you your data along with the install files upon purchase. There is also a hosted version of Tasks called UseTasks, which costs $3.95 USD per month for the Personal edition.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to install and try Tasks, so if you have please drop us a note in the comments and let us know what your experience has been like.

Lifehacker brings us a nugget from Davo, one of their avid readers, called What To Do Next. The idea behind the little application is extremely simple; it's written in javascript, and therefore will run on any platform. All it does is act as a front-end to a list of tasks that you would like to accomplish. Clicking on the button for one of the tasks starts a ten minute countdown timer (the time is configurable), after which an alarm sounds. The idea here is that ten minutes is short enough to feel approachable, so you may find that you can get started on a task that otherwise felt too large to tackle. Once the alarm goes off, if you're feeling like you're making good progress, just continue. But if you feel stuck or like you're spinning your wheels, the alarm is your escape - just choose a different task from your list and get to work.

I really enjoy the idea behind this application, but don't need yet another task manager to maintain. But that's okay, since really all I need is a 10 minute countdown timer and the resolve to actually tackle some of the items on my ever-growing task list in Outlook. But downloading and installing What To Do Next takes mere seconds, and if you don't have a to-do list, or aren't particularly fond of the one you're using, this might be a nice alternative.

Note that the source file containing the actual list of tasks is well laid-out and easy to follow, but if you're averse to editing text configuration files, you might want to give this one a pass.