Highlights of 2007 (as shown by Bob T. Monkey)
Monday, December 31, 2007 by Emily Boyd
Whew, it's been one busy year at RTM HQ. It's been so much of a blur that we had trouble remembering what we'd done this year, so we thought we'd end the year by sharing some of our favourite happenings from 2007.
Crazy about the iPhone
We fell in love at first sight with the iPhone, and just knew we had to create Remember The Milk for iPhone and iPod touch (okay, so those emails that we were receiving every day asking, "Where's RTM for the iPhone?" might have encouraged us too).
RTM and Gmail, sitting in a tree…
We only just launched it, but that doesn't stop it from being one of our faves :) Remember The Milk for Gmail combines, you guessed it, RTM and Gmail for all kinds of task management goodness. W00t!
RTM Pro!
Launching Pro accounts back in August was a pretty big step for us. We'd like to thank everyone who has upgraded their RTM account to Pro since then — we love you! :)
Thanks to you awesome folks, we can keep Bob adequately nourished (he consumes a lot of bananas, what with all the coding that we make him do). Thank you for supporting RTM!
Attack of the gadgets
From the Dashboard Widget for OS X to the Netvibes module to the Yahoo! Widget to the Deskbar module, it really was gadgets galore at RTM this year. There were also improvements to the Google gadgets, and for those looking for other quick ways to add tasks, there was Launchy, Quicksilver, and Firefox Sidebar integration too. (Special thanks to Yoel, Graeme, Sebastian, Don, Brian, John, and everyone who has developed with the API!)
Twitter and Jott your tasks
We love creating new and handy ways to work with your tasks. So, we developed Twitter integration, making it possible to add tasks and interact with RTM using Twitter (via SMS, IM, the website, and third-party apps).
Also very handy is Jott integration. Thanks to the nice folks over at the incredibly cool Jott, you can now add tasks to RTM using only your voice. It's especially useful when you're out and about, and suddenly remember something you need to add to RTM.
Syncing with your Milk
It had been highly requested ever since we started RTM. September saw the launch of MilkSync, our super cool task synchronization platform that allows RTM to talk to other software and devices. Yay!
The first application based on this sync platform was MilkSync for Windows Mobile (which also happened to be our first Pro feature).
Speaking Japanese (and more)
This year we launched the Remember The Milk Japan blog at blog.rememberthemilk.jp, and welcomed the wonderful Hiroshi Miyazaki as the official Japanese blogger for RTM. We didn't forget other languages either, with more localizations this year: Danish, Hungarian, Latvian, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), and Romanian. Thank you to all the volunteers who have helped to make RTM available in 24 languages!
Going offline with Gears
One of the really cool new technologies launched this year was Google Gears (so cool, in fact, that it was #1 on the list of the 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year).
After much caffeine, we launched offline access with Google Gears, so you can manage your tasks on a plane or anywhere that's Internet-less.
Remember the application
The application is very much the heart of RTM — we launched a bunch of improvements (including some cool Smart List functionality), overhauled our architecture making things faster, added the much-requested sorting, and announced the new version of the application, RTM reloaded in November. The website wasn't left out either, with a complete redesign, the addition of the Tips & Tricks forum, and an upgraded support system.
Adventures of a mascot
Bob T. Monkey continues to be as cheeky as ever. He had quite an action-packed year, getting up to mischief at CeBIT, speed geeking (!) at Google Developer Day, and catching up with the reddit founders.
Bob was joined this year by a new RTM mascot, Cow, who helped us to celebrate our second birthday in October. Cow is already showing impressive coding ability (for a stuffed animal).
And with that, the entire RTM team would like to wish everyone a happy and organized New Year :)
Remember The Milk for Deskbar Applet
Monday, December 31, 2007 by Emily Boyd
Here's one for users of GNOME (a desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems). Sebastian Pölsterl has created a handy Deskbar module for Remember The Milk. It supports adding new tasks; searching your incomplete tasks; and completing, postponing, deleting, moving, and changing priority of your tasks. Cool :)
Using GNOME? Check it out.
Scheduled maintenance
Monday, December 31, 2007 by Emily Boyd
Remember The Milk will be down for scheduled maintenance tomorrow (New Year's Day), starting at 5pm Sydney time (view in your timezone). The site will be down for up to two hours while we perform some upgrades and add additional hardware.
In addition to making RTM a little faster for you guys, these upgrades mean that we'll be able to scale our hardware more easily in the future (so any further upgrades should be much more seamless). We'll do our best to complete this maintenance as quickly as possible, and we'll post again here once we're done. Thanks for your patience!
Update 7:00PM Sydney time: Maintenance is complete!
Remember The Milk for Quicksilver
Friday, December 21, 2007 by Emily Boyd
If you're a Mac user, you may be familiar with the incredibly handy Quicksilver, which allows you to rapidly perform tasks on your Mac with quick keyboard shortcuts.
Brian Moore has created an awesome Quicksilver plug-in, Remember The Milk for Quicksilver, bringing RTM and Quicksilver together. You can quickly add tasks to RTM, including a due date (for example, "Call Brian at 9am tomorrow"), and choose which list to add to as well. If you'd like to be even more productive on your Mac with RTM, check it out. :)
Getting inspired and want to create cool stuff that works with RTM? Check out the API and get hacking!
RTM + Gmail = task management goodness
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 by Emily Boyd
It's no secret that we're big Google fans here at Remember The Milk: we provide task management in Google Calendar, have an iGoogle Gadget, send reminders via Google Talk, show task locations with Google Maps, and provide offline access with Google Gears.
However, integration with one Google product has eluded us. It happens to be the product that inspired us when we started building RTM back in 2004 — that's right, the one and only Gmail. We've always thought it would be incredibly cool if you could manage your tasks alongside your mail — and have your tasks know what's on your calendar and who your contacts are too.
Gmail has never had an official API that would support this, but the recent updates to Gmail also saw the launch of the experimental Gmail/Greasemonkey API. Now that it's semi-officially supported by Gmail, we've decided to release something that we've been playing around with for a while at RTM HQ, so that everyone can enjoy it :)
Introducing Remember The Milk for Gmail
Yup, that's RTM in there! Remember The Milk for Gmail is a Firefox extension that lets you do all kinds of crazy cool things with your tasks (and interacts with your mail, contacts, and calendar too). Read on to learn more…
Manage your tasks
Once installed, you'll see a tasks pane on the right in Gmail. You can customise which tasks are shown (with options to filter based on list, Smart List, tag, location, or advanced search criteria) and decide how to sort and group your tasks. Adding new tasks is easy. Just enter your task in the box provided — feel free to include when it's due and any tags, too.
You can add tasks like:
Pick up the milk
Call Lizzie at 9am tomorrow
Return library books in 2 weeks
Finish report, tag with work
To complete, postpone, delete, or view and edit a task's details, just move your mouse over a task in the list.
If you change your mind, don't worry — you can undo too.
Connect tasks with your mail
Say you have an email that requires a follow up, or contains a task that you need to remember — you might star this message, or maybe label it with "To Do". RTM can automatically create a task when you star a message, or label a message with a specific label.
You can change your preferences for these features by going to the Settings screen in Gmail, then clicking on Tasks.
You can also create a task from an email by selecting Create task from the More Actions dropdown.
When you're ready to reply or follow up on the email, mouse over the task details. You'll see an icon linking to the original email — click on it to reply. Once you've sent the email, the task will be automatically completed.
Now you'll never forget to reply to Aunt Sally, or follow up with your boss about that report she emailed to you.
Connect tasks with Google Calendar events
No need to check your calendar when setting due dates! Remember The Milk talks to Google Calendar when it detects that you're adding a task related to an event in your calendar, and automagically figures out when your task is due.
You can add tasks like:
Organize flowers 2 days before Mother's Day
Call Jimmy on Thanksgiving
Write up minutes after team meeting
Send thank you notes 1 month after my wedding
Connect tasks with your contacts
Need to remember to call or email someone? When you add tasks that start with special action keywords, followed by a person's name, RTM will automagically link up the task with the Gmail contact who it's associated with.
You can add tasks like:
Call Nathan about report tomorrow
Email Caitlin today
Ask Alice about trip to Spain
Follow up with Jason in 2 months
You'll see that your contact is linked with the task in the task details. If your task is to email your contact, just click on Email contact here to compose an email to them. Once you've sent the email, the task will be automatically completed.
Now, what if you wanted to see all tasks linked with a contact? No problem! On the Contacts screen in Gmail, just select the contact(s) you'd like to see. All the tasks linked with the contact will be displayed on the right.
See it all in action
So you want to see how it works? Good thing that Bob T. Monkey made this video demo for us:
Ready to get it now?
Sweet! You'll need to have both Firefox and the new version of Gmail. Google is still rolling out the new version of Gmail — you have the new version if you see an "Older version" link at the top right in Gmail.
reddit meets a monkey
Monday, December 17, 2007 by Emily Boyd
When we heard that the founders of one of our fave sites, reddit, happened to be in Sydney, we jumped at the chance to meet up with them. We've spent many an hour procrastinating on reddit (particularly visiting links from the programming community), so it was awesome to meet the guys in person.
We had a lot of fun trading start-up stories; Steve and Alexis also confessed that they were hoping to see some kangaroos while they're in Australia. I'm betting that they didn't expect to meet a monkey:
Bob T. Monkey with his new reddit friends, Steve and Alexis.
Three new languages available
Thursday, December 6, 2007 by Emily Boyd
Remember The Milk is now available in Danish, Portuguese (Portugal), and Romanian, bringing the total number of available languages to 24 (yay!). Thank you to all of the awesome translation volunteers around the world who have helped to make this possible!
If you'd like to use RTM in one of the new languages, you can change your language preference on the Settings screen in your account. RTM understands due dates and input in these languages — so you can enter Monday, mandag, segunda, or luni.
Your language not available yet?
We'd love to make RTM available in as many of the world's languages as possible. If you have some spare time and would like to help make RTM available in your language, please sign up for our online translation program (any amount of help is appreciated!).
Remember The Milk featured in new book
Thursday, December 6, 2007 by Emily Boyd
We were thrilled to see Remember The Milk included in a new Japanese book, シゴトはネットで片づける!, which is all about using Web 2.0 tools for GTD.
Unfortunately I can't tell you what it says because my Japanese skills are a little lacking, but author of RTM Japan blog Hiroshi assures us that it says nice things and provides a handy guide to getting started with RTM.
If you speak Japanese, check it out!
