BusinessWeek's Asia's Best Young Entrepreneurs finalists
Thursday, November 22, 2007 by Emily Boyd
We were thrilled (and more than a little surprised!) to learn this week that both Omar and I have been selected among the 25 finalists for BusinessWeek's Asia's Best Young Entrepreneurs 2007. You can check out a slideshow of finalists and vote for your favourite — we're honoured to be included!
Remember The Milk, reloaded
Thursday, November 15, 2007 by Emily Boyd
After a lot of late nights (so late, in fact, that the RTM team is now more or less nocturnal), we're super excited to be launching Remember The Milk "reloaded". This new version of RTM includes a whole bunch of features and improvements that we've developed based on all of your feedback. Read on to find out what's new!
Improved list view
First up, we've been busy tweaking away at the task list interface. For those of you with larger screens, we've created a wider view of the list to give you more space for your tasks. With handy new icons in the list, you can now quickly see which of your tasks are repeating and which have notes attached. We've also made it easier to use the keyboard shortcuts to navigate your lists with better indication of the current task (try it out — j moves down and k moves up, with i selecting tasks).
Connecting your tasks
To make it a little easier to see which task you're editing, you'll now see a line that connects the selected task to the task details on the right. This is particularly handy when you have several tasks selected or are using multi-edit mode (in which case you'll see connecting lines for all the tasks that you're editing).
Friendlier due dates
We've improved how Remember The Milk shows due dates in your lists. A new, easier-to-read format shows the due dates in different ways depending on how far away they are, e.g. 9:00am, Monday, Nov 26, and 06/10/08.
Tag management
Tags are an extremely flexible way to organize your tasks (you can even multi-edit to add tags to multiple tasks at once). If you're into tagging, you can now manage your tags to your heart's content in the Tags tab on the Settings screen. Rename, delete, and merge multiple tags into a single tag with ease. :)
Tags in your lists
Because we love tags so much, we hated seeing them buried away where nobody could see them (er, in the task details). We've now made it much easier to see the tags for tasks in your lists.
You can change your preference for this feature by going to the General tab on the Settings screen:
Private addresses for Atom/RSS/iCalendar feeds
Subscribing to your RTM feeds is a great way to keep track of your tasks — you can subscribe to the Atom/RSS feeds with your feed reader, or even show your tasks on your calendar with the iCalendar feeds.
There's just one problem though. Many feed readers and calendars, particularly those online, don't support authenticated feeds like ours (which require your RTM username and password to access them). So unless you've chosen to make a list public (removing the authentication), it hasn't been possible to subscribe to your feeds with services like Google Reader and Google Calendar.
Until now, that is. :) You can now enable private addresses for your lists by going to the General tab on the Settings screen:
With private addresses, each of your list feeds is given a very long, hard to guess URL. You can use this URL to subscribe with your feed reader or show your tasks on your Google Calendar without having to make your list public. After you've enabled this feature, you'll find the private Atom and iCalendar feed URLs available in the list details box for each list (private addresses are available for both regular and Smart Lists).
Atom/RSS feeds for completed tasks
Bonus feature! By popular demand, Atom/RSS feeds are now available for completed tasks too (the iCalendar feed already includes both completed and incomplete tasks). These feeds are pretty handy for tracking your own progress, and great for seeing when others have completed tasks in shared lists. To find the completed feed for a list, just switch to the completed view and you'll see it in the list details box.
Using Smart Lists in searches
Smart Lists are one of the most powerful features in RTM; they allow you to save search criteria as a special list (which is automatically updated as your tasks change). Smart Lists can use any of the advanced operators too.
What's that? It's not powerful enough for you?! We've got good news then. You can now include Smart Lists in your searches, meaning that you can create a Smart List that searches for a Smart List (that searches for a Smart List that searches for… well, it's all very meta).
What's this actually mean? Say I have a Smart List called "Quick Tasks" (timeEstimate:"< 21 min") and another called "Long Tasks" (timeEstimate:"> 20 min"). I also have an "Urgent" Smart List that includes tasks that are high priority, overdue, or due very soon (priority:1 OR dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"2 days of today").
It's now possible to mix and match these Smart Lists. Looking for quick and urgent tasks? Try searching for:
list:"Quick Tasks" AND list:"Urgent"
Have some more time for those urgent tasks? Search for:
list:"Long Tasks" AND list:"Urgent"
You can combine as many Smart Lists as you need in a search (and of course, include any other advanced search operators too). If you're looking for some cool search ideas, check out this blog post.
New advanced search operators
You can never have too many advanced search operators, right? Of course not! Introducing hasNotes for notes searching, and to, from, and isReceived, which make it easier to find tasks that you've sent or received from particular RTM users, e.g. to:bobtmonkey. See the operators listing for more details. Update: Oops, forgot one — tagContains is now supported too.
But that's not all…
Whew! Almost at the end. In addition to the new features and changes described in this post, we've fixed a bunch of little annoyances and have also spent some time optimizing RTM to make things run even faster. We hope you enjoy Remember The Milk reloaded!
Jott your tasks
Friday, November 9, 2007 by Emily Boyd
I don't know about you, but I always remember things that I need to do at the most inopportune times. For instance, ever been out and about and suddenly remembered that you'd promised to feed your neighbour's beloved cat/dog/monkey while they're away? By the time you get home though, you've forgotten all about it, and poor Fluffy/Rover/Bob goes hungry :(
Hang on a minute. Imagine if, at that exact moment when you remembered your promise, you could make a quick phone call and say "Feed neighbour's pet in 3 hours", and have that task magically added to RTM so you don't forget it later? Fluffy/Rover/Bob would love you!
Well, you don't have to imagine any longer! Thanks to the awesome folks at Jott, you can now add tasks to RTM using just your voice (and a phone, of course).
Getting started with Jott
If you're not already a member, sign up for Jott (it's currently available for US and Canadian subscribers). On the 'Jott Links' page, click 'Add' next to Remember The Milk and follow the instructions to set up your Jott account with RTM.
Adding tasks with Jott
Once you're all set up, it's simple to add a task with Jott. Just follow these easy steps:
- Call 1-866-JOTT-123
- When asked who you would like to Jott, say 'Remember The Milk'
- After the beep, say your task name and (optionally) when it's due and what it's tagged with. You can say things like:
Pick up the milk
Call Jimmy at 5pm tomorrow
Return library books in 2 weeks
Finish report, tag with work
That's it! Your task will appear in your RTM Inbox or the list that you've chosen in your Jott settings.
Jott is an incredibly cool service, and we're really excited about this new feature. Check out Jott and start adding your tasks by voice :)
New for Pro: Introducing Remember The Milk for iPhone & iPod touch
Friday, November 2, 2007 by Emily Boyd
It's been an extremely popular request, and today we're excited to announce the availability of a special version of Remember The Milk that's optimized for the iPhone and iPod touch. It joins MilkSync as the second feature available exclusively for those special people who have Pro accounts (don't have one yet? Upgrade today :)
Like the original RTM mobile version, the iPhone and iPod touch version allows you to manage your tasks wherever you are and is packed full of features:
- View upcoming tasks (due today, tomorrow, and this week)
- View tasks by list (including Smart Lists), tag or location
- Add new tasks and notes
- Complete tasks with the touch of a button
- Edit existing tasks and notes
- Search tasks (supports advanced search operators)
- View handy settings (such as your Inbox email address)
Click the thumbnails below to see full-size screenshots:
Ready to use RTM on your iPhone or iPod touch?
Got an iPhone or iPod touch? Try out the optimized version by visiting:
If you don't have a Pro account yet, you'll be able to try the optimized version free for 15 days (just login at the above URL with your iPhone or iPod touch to start the trial).
You can also find more information on the RTM for iPhone and iPod touch page. Enjoy!