Saturday, January 1, 2011

Crossplatform Todo lists!

I've had this problem for a long time.  I want a simple todo-list solution that satisfies the following requirements:
  1. Shows up on my computers and my android phone
    • The Android app must be convenient
    • Either there needs to be a really convenient desktop application, or it has to integrate into a web site I already use, such as the iGoogle homepage
  2. I shouldn't have to develop it myself
  3. Streamlined synchronization.  I shouldn't have to manually sync it all the time.
  4. Features preserved in synchronization.  For example, if on my phone a todo item
  5. Preferably everything goes over SSL
  6. Automatically sorts tasks by priority
I tried a few things. 

  • I started with mnote on my phone.  This didn't get along with my desktop very easily.
  • I thought about just keeping a svn repository with a flat text file and adding a hook to do sorting by the first item on the list.  Unfortunately, this is a lot of work and doesn't play nicely with the phone
  • I thought a lot about setting up my own server with an Apache Thrift service.  Too much work.
  • I looked at several web services, but none of them seemed to really do the trick.
  • I tried astrid tasks, but the syncing wasn't very pretty with google tasks or producteev.  Producteev also seemed way overkill.
  • Then I tried Remember The Milk... WIN!
www.rememberthemilk.com.  This does all the above and more!  The downside is that it looks like I'll need to fork over some money after my trial period is over if I want to keep the android app.  It looks like it will be $25/year.  Not excited about that... but it's not too much to pay for a good service.

I'm not totally sure that everything is SSL'ed.  I know that when I work directly with the webapplication it is, but I don't think it is from the iGoogle page or the android app, but I have yet to actually confirm or deny this.

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