Gmail Tasks: Paper vs. iPhone

I know they were joking, but as a dour paper advocate I felt the need to respond:

Limited availability. You don't always have a pad of paper with you to write new things.

So they're saying you always have a phone with you?

Not ubiquitous. If you leave a piece of paper in one pair of jeans, you can't access it from the other jeans you're currently wearing.

On the other hand, the entry level for paper is much cheaper than the entry level for a device that uses Gmail.

Difficult to organize. Eventually turns into a giant mess on your desk.

I think if you have as many Gmail notes as you have paper notes, you'll get just as big a mess. The fact that Gmail isn't as messy is a testament to the fact that I can't doodle, can't quickly sketch out a melody to a song, or anything similar.

I tried using Gmail Tasks for about two or three weeks. I transferred all my tasks into it.

Ye Olde List o' Annoyances:

#1: I could only view one list at a time. I like having a 'big picture' view. Plus, the default-in-Gmail view was tiny. I could pop it out, but then it was in an orphan browser window -- which would sometimes disappear because it still technically tied into Gmail (e.g. adding a Labs extension to Gmail made Tasks go poof).

#2: They positioned the delete button between the "Add Task" and "Switch List" buttons. I nuked a few tasks accidentally, without evening know what I deleted.

#3: There's no undo and no history. If I wanted to hide completed tasks, I had to delete them, which meant losing them forever. If I accidentally deleted a task thanks to the positioning of the delete button, well, too bad.

#4: I couldn't select multiple tasks and move them around.

I couldn't take the annoyances.

I've since switched to a homebrew todolist solution that lets me see everything at once, switch between contexts, edit multiple items at once, and keep a full history. I complement this with a Moleskine notebook as a collection input. For stuff that has a hard due date, I use Google Calendar.

As for paper vs. iPhone -- I don't have an iPhone so I'm quite happy with paper. My notebook fits comfortably in my pocket and goes with me everywhere, and Moleskine thought through the design so its pages don't wrinkle and it stays nice and neat while remaining easy to write in. I've only used it for two weeks, but I've found it well worth its price compared to el cheapo pocket notebooks (which I used for several months, until I gave up in frustrating at having them wrinkle after living in my pocket).

I was sort of holding out hope they would buy out Remember the Milk[1]. They already have Blackberry and iPhone sync in their pro version and a gadgets that plug into Gmail and Google Calendar (and iGoogle and Google Desktop etc.). Their model for tasks is much more advanced than the Gmail one- with due dates, alerts, sharing, multiple lists, nice print outs to carry with you etc.

[1] http://www.rememberthemilk.com

Now if only they would offer sync of tasks for users of Blackberry and Windows Mobile smart phones they would be on to something.

I've just re-visited Tasks, and it is nice... but to be ubiquitous (and therefore useful enough to displace the paper I carry) it will need to be in my phone.

I like the interface. I downloaded several ToDo apps from the iPhone App store when it first went online and many suffered from the problem that they required more than one screen touch to create a new item. For example, you might press "+" and then press again to get the focus of the text entry field. (I'm sure not all were like this, but it seemed that many I tried were.) The gmail tasklist only requires a single touch. I also like that "New Task" is the top row of the task list, as opposed to being a "+" located at the bottom of the screen. YMMV.

I've been looking for a simple task app that I can use on my iphone and have in my google homepage. I'll be trying this out.

Great idea! What distinguishes this from the 'Notes' app that comes with the iPhone is that now your tasks are editable in gmail as well.

For those who don't know, go to settings->labs in gmail, and you can activate tasks. Then a tasks link will show up under your regular mail 'folder' links.

that is great, I was sad when they shut off iphone iGoolge just cause that is how i kept my task synced... now a truly supported version with a better interface should make keeping my todo list up to date much easier.

Has anyone gotten this to work using the Google Apps version of Gmail?