Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Using e-mail redirection for requests from non-technical folks
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 by Emily Boyd
This week's tip, shared by mmlambert, describes a very friendly way to enable others to contribute tasks to your Remember The Milk lists:
My wife and other family members are always asking me to do things, and unless I log it in RTM it most likely will not be done. I tried giving them the email address for my RTM inbox, but having to use a special address proved too complicated for some people.
The simple solution is to set up a filter/rule at my e-mail provider. Now any message sent to my normal email address that has a subject starting with "Please" gets forwarded to my RTM Inbox email address.
For example, if my mother sends me a message with the subject "Please buy your father a birthday present" then this will be forwarded to my RTM inbox.
Thanks for sharing this tip, mmlambert! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week. :)
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, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. 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
The future of offline: HTML5 and web standards
Friday, April 16, 2010 by Emily Boyd
We're big fans of offline web apps at Remember The Milk; when Google Gears was released in 2007, to say that we were excited would be an understatement. We spent a caffeine-fuelled weekend frantically coding to make Remember The Milk the first web app after Google Reader to work offline with Gears.
Almost three years on, it's awesome to see the progress with web standards like HTML5 that will make it possible for web apps to work offline without a browser plug-in. Considering this progress, Google is encouraging the migration to HTML5, and has announced that Gears will no longer be actively developed.
What does this mean for Remember The Milk?
Well, we'll be continuing our support for offline access with Gears in the meantime, but our plan for the future is to migrate entirely to standards-based offline support.
What's needed to make this possible?
We need browsers to provide web database APIs! Basically, these APIs allow us to create your own personal Remember The Milk database that's stored by your browser, and that remains accessible when you're offline.
The various browser makers are at different stages with their support for web database APIs — this next bit is for those of you who've been asking if it's possible to have standards-based offline support for your favourite browser. :)
Where are the browsers at?
Google Chrome and Safari are both already implementing the Web SQL Database API specification (Google Chrome in its developer preview, Safari in its stable release). We've been using the developer preview internally while experimenting with standards-based offline support, and we're really excited about the possibilities for offline access in Google Chrome.
Both Microsoft and Mozilla support the alternative Indexed Database API specification, so we're expecting an implementation of this API to be available in IE and Firefox at some stage in the future; we need to wait until that's available before we can bring offline support (without Gears) for Remember The Milk to these browsers.
We're looking forward to seeing what will be possible in browsers in the future, and bringing you standards-based offline support as soon as we can!
Posted in: New Features & Updates
Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Divide and subtract to tackle a huge list
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 by Emily Boyd
Sometimes you're faced with a monumental task like, say, moving house. There's a lot of packing to do, a lot of calls to be made, and lots of organizing to be done. This week, duckybumpkins shares a tip about how tackle a huge list of tasks without feeling overwhelmed, while getting the most out of your time:
I'm currently in the process of moving, and I love lists, so as soon as I found this site, I got cracking.
The move is for 3 months from now, so I can only start with the less important objects, such as winter clothes, too-small clothes for my two baby boys, books which my husband and I will not read until after the move, etc.
So I made a moving list, which includes all the calls I have to make, who I have to change addresses with, what belongs in our storage, what should be packed, etc.
In conjunction with my moving list, is my next day to-do list. Every day, or every couple of days, depending on how it works out, I transfer 2-3 of the moving list items to my next day list. That way, I don't constantly have to scroll down my huge moving day list (which of course has a great many things to do last minute), so I can manage my time better, and not get overwhelmed, especially when I have a chores list and others, that have everyday tasks to do.
And so I divide, and slowly work my way to eliminating the tasks ahead.
Thanks for sharing this tip, duckybumpkins! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week. :)
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, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. 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
iPhone app update: Auto-complete for Smart Add, smarter auto-syncing, bulk uncompletion, toggle auto-rotation, and more
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 by Emily Boyd
You guys chose "Improve the existing iPhone app" as your #1 mobile request in our recent mobile survey, so we're excited to announce that the latest version of the Remember The Milk app is now available on the App Store. Read on to learn what's new in version 1.3.0.
Auto-complete for Smart Add
Having trouble remembering those Smart Add shortcuts (# for tag, @ for location, etc)? No problem, we've now made it even faster to add tasks in the app with auto-completion for the Smart Add field.
When adding your task, just tap on one of the icons (due date, priority, etc) below the 'Add Task' bar. You'll then see a list of quick options you can tap, such as common due dates or tags you've created. You can also start typing to filter the options (e.g., find your tags that start with "p"), or enter something that's not in the list.
Smarter auto-syncing
This one was a highly requested feature. Until now, if you opened the app to just quickly add or complete a task, you either needed to wait for the auto-sync to happen (about every 5 minutes) or start a manual sync to make sure that your changes were synced with Remember The Milk.
With smarter auto-syncing, the app will wait several seconds after you've made a change, then automatically begin syncing with Remember The Milk. You'll see the little dots under the sync icon count down until the next auto-sync, so no more wondering if you have changes that need syncing!
Bulk uncompletion
Got a whole bunch of tasks to uncomplete at once? You can now uncomplete multiple tasks by tapping 'Edit' on your task list. Select the task(s) you wish to uncomplete, then tap the 'Uncomplete' button. Done!
Toggle auto-rotation
This one's for those of you who enjoy managing your tasks while lying in bed (or just like to hold your phone at an unusual angle :). You can now toggle auto-rotation of the app, locking it into either portrait or landscape mode, from the Settings screen in the app.
Localization updates
We love making the app available in as many languages as possible. This version brings localization updates for Dutch, French, Finnish, Korean and Polish. Interested in helping to make the app available in your language? We'd really appreciate any help — please check out our online translation program.
App-wide optimizations
We've been working on a bunch of app-wide optimizations, to make the app as speedy as possible. For those of you who use the notes feature heavily, we've also improved handling on initial sync for accounts with a large number of notes, and improved memory usage for large notes. W00t!
Bug fixes and enhancements
We've also taken the opportunity to include some other small enhancements and fixes in this release:
- Tapping on a location in the tasks view now opens the Maps app with that location.
- Tapping an action on the task edit screen (e.g. Complete Task/Postpone Task) now saves any unsaved changes to the task prior to dismissing the task edit screen.
- Tasks now repeat correctly after a repeating task is deleted and the 'Continue Repeating' option selected.
- Searches/Smart List criteria containing the OR NOT operators now return the correct results.
- Time estimates when the device language is not English are now interpreted correctly.
- The Smart Add bar now supports auto-correction.
- Fixed issue with a grey artefact behind/on top of the 'Add Task' field.
- Smart Add now uses the default list setting when adding tasks.
Hey, what about the iPad?
While there's nothing specific in this release for the iPad, "Develop a new iPad app" was the #3 mobile request in our recent mobile survey. You can be sure that Bob T. Monkey is taking those survey results seriously. ;)
Enjoy the updates!
We hope you like this latest app release! Want to learn more about the app in general? Check out the Remember The Milk for iPhone & iPod touch section of the site.
Posted in: New Features & Updates
Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Easy and difficult tasks
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 by Emily Boyd
There are infinite ways you could use tags in Remember The Milk to categorize your tasks, but this tip from skhalidh is a great example of something simple that can really help to make you more productive:
Tag your tasks as #easy #hard etc.
You can pick the easy tasks when you are tired and not able to do heavy lifting. And #hard tasks can be tried when you are fresh or in morning.
Thanks for sharing this tip, skhalidh! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week. :)
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, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. 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
Join the team on our quest!
Monday, April 5, 2010 by Emily Boyd
Are you nuts about tasks, and want to join a team of cool people who are equally nuts about tasks? Here at Remember The Milk, we're on a magical quest to make the world more organized and productive.
If that sounds like fun to you (there might be unicorns!), check out the newly listed positions on our jobs page and get in touch.
* Unicorns not guaranteed.
Posted in: Behind the Scenes
Two million organized people
Monday, April 5, 2010 by Emily Boyd
Well, we're a step closer in our plans for world domination quest to make the world more organized and productive. We recently passed the two million user mark, and we just wanted to thank everyone who's supported our little team along the way.
As always, we're thankful to each and every one of you who've upgraded to Pro over the last few years, and have continued to renew your Pro account since! Without your support, Remember The Milk would no longer exist (really!). Before we launched Pro accounts, this thing went a tad bit closer to sending us broke than we'd like to admit; just imagine all the milk (okay, and more important things) that would've been forgotten…
These days, we're no longer just two people and a stuffed monkey in Sydney, Australia. We have a growing little team of awesome people spread across three continents (check out our jobs page if you'd like to join us!).
We're continuing to work on cool stuff that we're hoping you'll like, and love receiving feedback and suggestions just as much as we've always done (you guys have really made sure we have a never-ending to-do list :). Bob and the rest of the team thank you for being Remember The Milk users!
Posted in: Behind the Scenes
