Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Organising your tag cloud
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 by Krissy Bradfield
One of the handiest features of RTM is the ability to categorise and label each task using tags. Tags are simply keywords that you can use to make it easier to find tasks and to organise them for later use. These tags are stored in the tag cloud, which appears on the left hand side of the Overview screen, giving you a visual depiction of all the keywords you’ve attributed to your tasks and the lists you’ve created. If you’d like to learn more about tags, be sure to have a look at the demo.
A lot of RTM users are fans of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” concept, which suggests that each task or action you enter should have a context (e.g., @work or @home), so that when you’re in a specific location you have the ability to filter your tasks by context and have these particular tasks stand out. We can use this idea of visual cues and symbols, in this case using special characters before a tag name, in RTM to help distinguish between task types.
Which brings me to this week’s Tips & Tricks entry: using visual cues to organise your tag cloud. RTM user Bern (bzpilman) has shared his tag cloud and has given us a run down of how he tags tasks. Although it looks tricky to begin with, the more you play around with it, the more organised your cloud becomes.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
A man in a cow suit?
Monday, March 30, 2009 by Krissy Bradfield
How great is this photo! I came across it while browsing through Flickr and had to share it on the blog. This young man is an Education student at Purdue University and he was involved in an info session about Web 2.0 technologies and their role in teaching and learning. Apparently the Remember The Milk group was “one of the most popular stops of the evening.”
We love to hear how our users are integrating RTM into their lives and areas of expertise. If you’ve got an interesting story or case study be sure to let us know!
(By the way – big thanks to Kevin Oshea from Purdue University for the use of the photo. If anyone knows who the man in the cow suit is – let me know!)
Posted in: Interviews & Buzz
Tips & Tricks Tuesday
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 by Krissy Bradfield
Welcome to the very first Tips & Tricks Tuesday! This is going to be a weekly spot where I’ll bring to you some of the most useful Remember The Milk tips and tricks that have been posted on the forums by our wonderful users. If you’re looking for ways to get the most out of your RTM account, stay tuned. Also, keep reading for info on how you can score a free Pro account just by sharing your own tips (or tricks). :)
I thought we'd kick things off with advanced search operators — sounds technical, but it really isn't. The “Useful searches” topic on the forum is one of the best to check out if you’re just starting with RTM. These search operators are handy, not only when you’re trying to find random bits of info, but they also work by creating a base query for the creation of a Smart List (which we’ll be looking at further in the coming weeks).
Here are some of our favourite search operators (try them by pasting the term into the search box in the upper right hand corner of the RTM website) :
Overdue tasks – dueBefore:today
Tasks due this week (including overdue tasks) – dueWithin:"1 week of today" OR dueBefore:today
Tasks due this calendar month – dueWithin:"1 month of 1st"
Tasks with no due date – due:never
Tasks that haven't been tagged – isTagged:false
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum and add a new thread and let us know how you use RTM. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
Remember The Milk with GNOME Do
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by Emily Boyd
Here’s one for users of GNOME (a desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems, for the uninitiated).
Peng Deng has created a cool Remember The Milk plugin for GNOME Do. The plugin allows you to filter your tasks (and use advanced search operators) as well as quickly create new tasks, and edit or delete existing tasks. Check out the video to see it in action:
Check out the plugin on the GNOME Do site or see Peng's blog for more details.
Feeling inspired by Peng's work and want to create your own tool or gadget for interacting with RTM? Read up on the API and start hacking. :)
Posted in: Featured Apps
