In the last couple of weeks, we saw how to run Google Calendar & Google Docs in your Firefox sidebar. Now, let’s see how we can my favorite online task manager in a browser sidebar.

For those unaware, Remember the Milk is an excellent online task manager with awesome features. Remember the Milk (RTM) for Gmail Firefox extension made it possible to have Remember the Milk open in a sidebar right within Gmail. And I love the implementation.

But, not all of us use Gmail or have Gmail open all day to access Remember the Milk anytime. No worries though. You can have it open in the sidebar anytime by using the url for iGoogle gadget for RTM.

Just create a bookmark named something like ‘RTM in sidebar’ with the url http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/googleig/ and check the ‘load in sidebar‘ option. The iGoogle gadget version doesn’t have the full blown features of the Gmail Firefox extension but it is simple enough to quickly check tasks and add tasks.

I like this option for the rare times when I don’t have my Gmail open. I can see how this could be a great option if you don’t use Gmail or just don’t have it open all the time.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

Google Calendar has to be the second popular Google’s suite of offerings after Gmail when it comes to productivity. You can now run Google Calendar right from your sidebar if you are using Firefox (could possibly work for other browsers as well).

Mitch of Firefox Facts has gotten the url from the iGoogle - Google Calendar widget and made a bookmarklet out of it. Now adding that to your bookmarks with the ‘Open in sidebar’ option selected, you can open a stripped down version of GCalendar in your sidebar.

Here are the steps to get this done:

1. RIght click on this link and bookmark it or drag and drop to your bookmark toolbar
   Mini Google Calendar
2. Right click on the bookmark and select ‘Properties’
3. Check the ‘Load this bookmark in the sidebar’ option
4. That’s it! There is no step 4.

The same steps should work in other browsers such as Flock, Opera, Safari, etc which have the option of opening any bookmark in a sidebar.

The calendar looks like this with the calendar showing the dates and the agenda below. You can ‘Create Event’ or do a ‘Quick Add’ from the sidebar. You can also turn on/off the calendars you want to see if you have multiple calendars.

I am now addicted to Remember the Milk’s Gmail extension that gives me a collapsible sidebar integrated right within Gmail. It works for me as I am logged in most of the day in Gmail and I can manage my tasks from right there.

But, I am sure this will be really appreciated by those using Google Calendar regularly! if you are curious about Remember the Milk, it integrates into Google Calendar very well as well if you’d like some advanced task management capabilities not found in GCalendar.

I know what you are thinking. No, I don’t work for Remember the Milk. I just love it to death!

[via Firefox Facts & CyberNet News]

Christmas is almost here and I am sure a lot of us are getting read for the holidays! Here is another batch of Firefox Extensions that I came across in the last couple of weeks.

• Remember the Milk - The biggest one for me is the Remember the Milk’s extension making use of the recently released Gmail’s Greasemonkey API. Now, Remember the Milk ties right into the Gmail interface and I am just so much in love with it. Look out for a review next week.
• PriceAdvance - I just talked about how this extension helps to compare prices with other stores as you shop.
• OpenSearchFox - Have you been using OpenSearch plugin to add your favorite search engines right into the Firefox’s search bar? Now, you can add your own by right clicking on any website’s search field and adding it! You can even change the name & icon for it!
• TagSense - TagSense is for the tag lovers. This extension adds tags and relevancy figures to search results page in Google, Yahoo & Live. You can get better keyword suggestions or refine/narrow your searches plus find out each result is relevant to your search.
• Tab Preview - As the name suggests, you mouseover a tab to get a quick preview in a thumbnail. If your browser is a snap and if you are the kind who has 20 tabs open, this extension is for you. I use FaviconizeTab extension, so the preview is a great tool for me to quickly see what that tab is.
• Symbaloo - Symbaloo is a snazzy new start page that has become my browser home page. With this extension, you could easily add websites, pages, etc to Symbaloo.

Some of these extensions do work with Firefox 3 Beta 2 and some don’t. I recommend checking Mozilla add-ons page for compatibility.

I would like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and the New Year is just around the corner!

Remember the Milk is my choice online task manager. As fun as the name sounds, the application is very intuitive to use as well as very web 2.0. I have wrote about Remember the Milk here, here and here.

Remember the Milk - Reloaded

My favorite application to keep track of tasks in different lists and tags just got better with these new features.

• Improved List View - New icons & keyboard shortcuts
• Connecting your tasks - Visually connects the tasks you editing to the details box
• Friendlier due dates
• Tags - easier editing and management
• Tags visible in the list - tags are nicely displayed in the list
• Private Atom/RSS/iCalendar feeds
• Atom/RSS feeds for completed tasks
• Using Smart Lists in Searches
• New advanced search operators

Whew.. RTM team has definitely been super busy with these slew of new features. Plus, the application loads and reacts a whole lot faster as well.

If you are looking for an onine task manager to take control of your tasks at work or home, I totally recommend Remember the Milk.

I am a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) way of accomplishing tasks. In my quest for increased productivity, I have tried and used many online to-do lists, task managers, tiddlywikis and I review some of them here time to time.

I stumbled across a groovy online task manager application, Voo2do, that has a web 2.0 ajaxy interface combined with a cool domain name! I wonder if they developed it to keep track of their voodoos. Voo2do’s logo, on the otherhand, isn’t for the faint hearted.

Voo2do is not your ordinary to-do list app. It is a free, mature, full featured project/time management tool and has been around since atleast early 2006. It stands out from rest of the crowd in the time management feature and uses Joel Spolsky’s Painless Software Scheduling method. In their words,

Voo2do lets you track each task with project, description, due date, priority, and time estimates. Just click and type to edit.

Let’s take a quick look at the features it has to offer.

Quick Facts about Voo2Do

• Tasks: The ajax laced web interface lets you add tasks easily without page loads and allows setting up of various properties like priority, notes, deadline, duration, etc. You can even add tasks by email.
• Projects: Tasks can be organized by Projects. Projects can be inactivated. A nice feature in creating a new project is that it lets you copy tasks in an existing project. This is nice if you work on projects that have similar tasks and will save time in having to recreate all the tasks every time you start a new project. A Huge time saver!

• Contexts: Contexts let’s you group projects by, obviously context. Your context could be like projects for home, work, own business, etc., so you can focus on just the tasks at hand rather than seeing all your tasks together.
• Collaboration: Voo2do let’s you create Collaborative Contexts where you can track tasks assigned to your teammates but it is still in its infancy. It lacks the ability to actually share tasks with another Voo2do user.
• Notes: You can add notes for your tasks, if you’d like.
• Public Task List: You can make a project or context public and you can password protect it, if needed. You’ll get a URL like http://voo2do/pub/NAME - where NAME is what you enter and attach a note for the viewer so they know what you have published.
• Time Management: This is one feature I haven’t seen in many online task management tools. Voo2do lets you assign duration for a task and let’s you track time spent on each task and the remaining time. It sports a cool timer with the task so you can start and pause the time as you work on a task!
  This feature could be vital for a freelancer to keep track of their time spent on various projects they are working on for various clients.
• Dashboard: Dashboard view, in my opinion, is a very crucial part of a task manager. At the start of a day you can take it all in a quick, easily-digestible form from the Dashboard based on the context. It lets you collapse the context you don’t want to see. It also sports a history view to look at past completed tasks.

Opinion

Voo2do is a capable online task manager. As I dug through their site and blog while writing this post, I found that there hasn’t been much activity in their blog since early this year. Their last post was in March’07 and I am not sure if it’s just the blog that has been idle or the development itself.

I wonder if the creator, Shimon Rura, has discontinued development for this cool app. He developed it for his own use and has made it free for anyone to use.

I have emailed Shimon and waiting for reply as I post this and will update the post as soon as I hear from the creator. With the online task management field crowded with so many other players, the future of this app will definitely be crucial if I was to start using it.

As is, Voo2do is a well designed, easy to use task management application that stays away from endless lists and lets you group and view tasks by contexts and projects.

Voo2do is a strong candidate and I would definitely recommend to someone looking for some of the unique features it has to offer. For the rest of you, Remember the Milk (RTM) is a great alternative that I am very fond of. Browse through the archives or search for it to find my posts about RTM.

I would love to hear about other GTD tools that you know of, or use. I am sure other readers would too.

One of the features I missed in Remember the Milk (RTM) has been added. Remember the Milk (RTM) is a very cool and efficient online task manager. I have a love for GTD (Getting Things Done) tools and RTM is my favorite.

Now, you can sort your tasks in RTM by

• Priority
• Task Name
• Due Date

If you read my recent post on Launchy and liked it, you will love this great tip on how to use Launchy to add tasks directly to RTM through Twitter.

Lifehacker has a similar tip on using Launchy & Twitter here.

I learnt a new word today from CNN this morning. I don’t think I’ll remember it even right after I finish writing this post but may be it’ll be useful to you if you find a time machine to go back to your spelling bee competition again.

Paraskevidekatriaphobics - Fear of Friday the 13th.

Argh, Another Poll?

I think polls are cool if you don’t over do it. I know 165 of you are reading this in your feed reader and I hope you enjoy the content here. Plus, I have the same love for those of you who take the time to visit the site and comment. I appreciate your time and I don’t intend to waste any of it.

When I come across something that is worth sharing often times I am just shooting in the dark. This thought actually was sparked by a comment by my friend Kyle of Kyle’s Cove when he said ‘If you keep drilling me Remember the Milk, I might have to try it’ or pretty close to that.

I keep talking about Remember the Milk (RTM), an online task management application but I have no idea if you even use it or for that matter even use any online task management application. Well, now I know Kyle doesn’t use RTM.

So, we are going to sport a short poll every week to find out what you like and what you don’t. This will tell me either that you’d rather shoot yourself in the foot than to read about RTM here or to alternate every post with something about RTM. Just kidding, but I’ll be able to better tune in to your taste which is good for both of us.

If you’d like to elaborate, you can always comment to this post. I’ll close the poll and publish the results with a new poll next Friday.