Remember the Milk -- To Do Task Organizer Review

Are you one of those who grab the first thing available to jot down reminders, be that grocery list, meetings, anniversaries, movie timings, dates or whatever? Things have just got simpler and you can throw that paper scrap in the waste bin and head off to rememberthemilk.com to sign up for a free account. Remember the Milk or simply RTM lets you organize and manage your tasks, no matter how big or unrelated they seem, in a variety of ways using multiple tools at your disposal like email, mobile, chat clients and more. Although there are many task organizers available online, there’s something about Remember the Milk that endears it to us and even the Firefox blokes. Yes, Remember the Milk is one of the recommended sites on Firefox.

Easy Interface

One of the things to check out foremost in any application is the interface. No matter how many useful features it’s loaded with if you can’t use them, they are useless. Simple. RTM features are easy to grasp at first glance.

Adding a new task or reminder is pretty easy and there’s no limit to the number of tasks that can be added. What’s more, you can prioritize the tasks according to the color codes on the right and even regroup them easily by moving from one list to another by clicking the drop down menu.

The same menu can be used to set the priority level for each task as well for other options like sharing it with your contacts.

Create Notes for Tasks

Feel the need for additional info with your reminders? Just add notes to the tasks you create by clicking Add Note.

Create Multiple Lists

RTM has some standard lists, but you can create your own lists by clicking Add Lists and regroup the tasks under different lists.

The Fun Begins Now

The RTM features detailed above might seem pretty ordinary for some, and why not, these features are a given in most organizers. But as the saying goes, the desert should be saved for the last, in this case though, for the middle. One of the most enticing of Remember the milk features is that it’s integrated with emails, chat clients and even your mobile.

You can set up daily, weekly or even monthly reminders at the chosen time. What’s more, you can add tasks using your mail program as well. Isn’t that handy? Just send a mail with the task name in the subject header and it will get listed in your RTM task list in a jiffy! While we saw how easy it is to add tasks, organizing the tasks is equally simple. The date, time, tags, location and notes can be set or modified from a single pane by clicking the icons to the right.

Location

Yes, you can even add the location reminder to your tasks. This can come in handy if your mobile supports location rendering. But some advanced features relating to geo-tagging are available in the pro version, which is of course a paid feature. Still, if you don’t have much use for it, the free version of Remember the Milk packs in quite a punch.

Integrate RTM with third party apps

This is one cool feature all RTM users will fall in love with. You Remember the Milk account can be integrated with many third party services like your iPhone and iPod Touch, Android phone, Gmail, Blackberry and Windows-based phones, Twitter and many others.  The grab shows how the RTM widget looks in Gmail.

To access these handy widgets, just go to Services under the Settings tab and take your pick. The page also provides detailed instructions on how to add the RTM widget for the various services.  

Verdict

With so many thoughtful features, intuitive interface, support for numerous platforms and apps, Remember the Milk is certainly one of the best personal and business organizers available online. And the fact that the free version includes almost all the goodies available in the Pro edition, you would never ever forget to remember the milk again.

Vimlaksh G

vimlaksh@hotmail.com