There's so much Google in Remember The Milk, a popular task management service, that you may wonder why Google didn't acquire it. Remember The Milk has a simple interface, can show your tasks inside Google Calendar, Gmail, iGoogle, and makes your tasks available offline thanks to Google Gears.
The integration with Gmail is available only in Firefox (through an extension) and only in the new version of Gmail. "Remember The Milk for Gmail is a Firefox extension that allows you to manage your tasks in Gmail (complete, postpone, and edit tasks), add new tasks (and connect them with your emails, contacts, and Google Calendar events), automatically add tasks for starred messages or specific labels, and much more!" So you can add events to Calendar directly from Gmail, you can flag messages for follow-up and see which tasks are connected with a certain contact. You can also create tasks every time you star or label a message and let RTM to auto-complete tasks using names from your contact list or Google Calendar events.
"It happens to be the product that inspired us when we started building RTM back in 2004 -- that's right, the one and only Gmail. We've always thought it would be incredibly cool if you could manage your tasks alongside your mail -- and have your tasks know what's on your calendar and who your contacts are too," explained RTM's blog.
And Remember The Milk fits great in the landscape by using visual elements from Gmail Chat, Google Reader, by using even small features from Gmail (like undo) and creating a section for tasks in the settings. This is definitely the service that has the best integration with Google services and it looks so good in Gmail that it should be a part of Google's mail application.
My only complaint is that it overlaps with the gchat client.
ReplyDeleteOh well, I can always turn my chat into a 'pop up'
Installed the extension a few hours ago. It is exactly as advertised! It is fast, and complete! I have been waiting for a viable todo feature for Gmail for a long time. This is much more than I expected! Kudos to the development team. Keep up the great work!!
ReplyDeleteSo, where is this tool for the ie-users? ;)
ReplyDeleteVery cool integration, is actually much easier to use than the RTM site, I think.
ReplyDeleteIt would be really great if Google integrated one day add-ons for Gmail using the Grease Monkey API but hosted and rendered by the Gmail servers directly. This way you could use it in IE and in different browsers and would encourage people to develop on top of Gmail, and non-technical users to use extensions of this way (there could be a gallery or something like that). There are security issues to evaluate, but this would take Gmail really far from competition, and would be aligned with the openess and user choice Gmail has always promoted.
I think Gmail will add the features from the most popular Greasemonkey scripts (which happen to be created by Mihai Parparita, from Google Reader team):
ReplyDelete- label colors (already added)
- saved searches (could be easily added)
- macros (Gmail added more shortcuts and the help pane)
- Reader integration (this is more difficult)
- conversation preview (that would be useful).