It’s no wonder the majority of Lifehacker readers voted Remember the Milk the best web-based task manager out there. Remember the Milk‘s got all the best features modern webapps have to offer: email/SMS/IM integration, tagging, advanced search, keyboard shortcuts and even offline access with Google Gears. Chances are you work across several computers and need a single, always-accessible place to consolidate your work, personal, school, and family to-do’s. Remember the Milk is a great way to do just that. Let’s take a closer look at Remember the Milk’s basic and more advanced features.
In a recent survey by an IT consulting firm, respondents claim that email boosts productivity whereas instant messaging poses threats to security and GTD.
Firefox with Greasemonkey or Stylish: Take advantage of every pixel of Google Maps screen real estate with the Google Maps Max Greasemonkey script/Stylish user style. GMaps Max wipes out the top header whitespace and displays your map full screen, with an optional driving directions sidebar. The Maps Max script also removes the Google copyright symbol and increases the inset map window four times. Check out some side-by-side comparison screenshots.
Wired columnist Clive Thompson says that Google, his PDA, and other tech all enable him to stop remembering things like phone numbers, birthdays, and events. Looks like it’s a common phenomena among those of us who “grew up” with tech tools:
This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birthdate, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.
Just this week an internet connectivity outage made me uncomfortably aware of how much “being on the grid” is tied to my ability to function—including recall important info. How about you? Your memory gone to pot since Google? Tell us about it in the comments.
Your Outboard Brain Knows All [Wired via 43 Folders]Tired of the iPhone locking arms race? Wired lists nine unlocked, open source phones open to all kinds of third-party productivity programming.
Auto-complete can save a lot of time in addressing emails, but sending a tossed-off “Can’t wait for this day to end” to your boss Rick instead of your friend Rick … well, that’s trouble. Rob Griffiths at Macworld offers his simple solution for avoiding this in OS X’s Mail, but it’s valid for nearly any email client:
In my case, I created two new groups in Address Book (File -> New Group, or click the plus sign in the lower left corner). I named one da boss (because, well, he is) and the other wrx (which is the brand of car my friend Jason owns) … I then dragged Jason Snell’s contact record into da boss group, and my friend Jason’s card into the wrx group.
Tips on other methods to keep contacts separate are welcome in the comments.
Avoid misdirected Mail messages [Macworld]
