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Google Tasks Goes Full-Screen In iGoogle
7:30AM Kevin Purdy | Google Tasks, the to-do manager that has everything but its own dedicated page, gets the next best thing with an iGoogle gadget that can go mostly full-screen. That makes doing everything beyond adding tasks easier from a desktop browser. More »
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Shoot ‘Em Down Puts A Fun Spin On Task Completion
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Keeping a to-do list doesn’t have to be all work and no play. Try out the Shoot ‘Em Down list and you can knock down your tasks Space Invaders style. More »
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11:00AM Angus Kidman | When I posted my recent account of how I got my overflowing inbox under control, one reader pointed out that I could have also automatically converted some of the remaining emails into tasks by dragging them into my task list. As it happens, I like to use my Outlook task list purely for stuff directly related to my writing career (assignments and invoices), with email as a separate, more general to-do area. Also, I’m not big on dragging and dropping, and I find the feature is often buggy anyway (as the screenshot indicates).
Of course, I’m not everybody. But Microsoft really wants everyone to use this feature: so much so that it actually removed some other options to make it work. When I first began using Outlook 2007 shortly after its commercial release, I was irked to find that it was apparently no longer possible to sort tasks by subject in regular task view, an option that had existed for several versions before. That seemed like a major omission, so I hassled Microsoft about why that change had been made. Several weeks later, I got a reply which explained that the lack of sorting was because the previous Subject field had been replaced with a new ‘Task Subject’ field:
The Task Subject field was added to Outlook as part of the work done to support treating email items as tasks. It is auto-generated by Outlook. Since a sortable ’subject’ field was already available, the decision was made not to expend the resources to make this system-generated field sortable.
Me, I’m not convinced that this is much of an excuse (honestly, how hard is it to sort something?) — but it shows that Microsoft remains unafraid to break a perfectly good system just because it thinks it knows better. You can fix this limitation by creating custom views that use the existing Subject field, but I haven’t got around to it yet — and with my own system working, I don’t imagine I well in a hurry.
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The Downside Of Converting Outlook Emails Into Tasks
11:00AM Angus Kidman | When I posted my recent account of how I got my overflowing inbox under control, one reader pointed out that I could have also automatically converted some of the remaining emails into tasks by dragging them into my task list. As it happens, I like to use my Outlook task list purely for stuff directly related to my writing career (assignments and invoices), with email as a separate, more general to-do area. Also, I’m not big on dragging and dropping, and I find the feature is often buggy anyway (as the screenshot indicates).
Of course, I’m not everybody. But Microsoft really wants everyone to use this feature: so much so that it actually removed some other options to make it work. When I first began using Outlook 2007 shortly after its commercial release, I was irked to find that it was apparently no longer possible to sort tasks by subject in regular task view, an option that had existed for several versions before. That seemed like a major omission, so I hassled Microsoft about why that change had been made. Several weeks later, I got a reply which explained that the lack of sorting was because the previous Subject field had been replaced with a new ‘Task Subject’ field:
The Task Subject field was added to Outlook as part of the work done to support treating email items as tasks. It is auto-generated by Outlook. Since a sortable ’subject’ field was already available, the decision was made not to expend the resources to make this system-generated field sortable.
Me, I’m not convinced that this is much of an excuse (honestly, how hard is it to sort something?) — but it shows that Microsoft remains unafraid to break a perfectly good system just because it thinks it knows better. You can fix this limitation by creating custom views that use the existing Subject field, but I haven’t got around to it yet — and with my own system working, I don’t imagine I well in a hurry.
More »
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Add Gmail Tasks To Your Firefox Sidebar
2:30AM Adam Pash | If you’ve gotten into Gmail’s new Task manager now that it’s available on your mobile device and iGoogle, there’s one more convenient place you may be keen on placing it: your browser’s sidebar. Every time a cool, stripped down widget becomes available, we love bookmarking it and loading said bookmark in our Firefox sidebar. We’ve done it with Google Talk, your Google Calendar agenda, and Facebook chat, for example. Luckily, as we’ve noted before, you can load any site in your Firefox sidebar in just a few simple steps: Drag Gmail Tasks to your Bookmarks toolbar. Right-click the new bookmark and select Properties. Tick the box labelled Load this bookmark in the sidebar, then click Save Changes. And that’s all it takes. Now every time you click on that bookmark, you’ll see your Gmail Tasks in your sidebar, from which you can view, create, edit, delete, and complete tasks. (As noted in the Google Operating System post, both Firefox and Opera support loading bookmarks in the sidebar. These instructions are for Firefox.) Gmail Tasks [via Google Operating System]
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