ForumsTips & TricksReminders, Google and the iPod Touch
Reminders, Google and the iPod Touch
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replytoken |
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am looking to replace my Plam OS based PDA running DateBk with an iPod Touch (iPT). I like the alarm/reminder/display layout of DateBk, and have not yet been able to reproduce a system that works well on the iPT and the web (a bonus over the Palm). Now that TD is offering semi-custom reminders on its pro accounts (Thank you, Jake!), I have a potential arrangement, with several iterations, that I would like to share for feedback.
In addition to viewing my tasks in TD on the web and iPT client, I can, as I mentioned above, now send reminders for TD entries to an e-mail address. This works great for tasks, but not items that I would like to enter and see on a calendar. So, if I keep a calendar with Google and synced it with the iPT's native calendar, I can use Google to send e-mail reminders for appointments too. This,along with a dedicated mailbox or folder, would allow me to have a single place to view and manage all of my reminders. Alternately, I could have Google send my calendar reminders to TD and then manage them from within the program. While these two proposals are a bit different, they both allow me to see my calendar and task reminders in one view (or program). I know that Apple is now offering notification in OS 3.0, and that Pocket Informant is working on a unified view, but the former does not meet my needs and the latter is not yet available. Its not an ideal solution, but it does give me a great task manager (without the hassles of iCal and Google), and the advantage of a synched calendar, available on and off line, without the disadvantages of Apple's limited notification system. Alert sounds are nice, but the iPT only shows one alert at a time, and this just does not cut it for me. Any constructive comments or suggestions are welcome. --Ken |
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desgnosis |
Hi Ken,
I recently made the jump from a Palm OS PDA to an iPod Touch and Toodledo. I was running DateBk6 on my Palm PDA, and it had initially looked like Pocket Informant was the way to go, but I have since found that it doesn't sync with Toodledo exactly as I'd like, plus the sync is painfully slow (about two minutes for PI by wifi compared to only a few seconds for the Toodledo and Todo apps). I like keeping my PDA task calendar separate from my Google calendar, so I'm not sure what I'll do to sync my iPT calendar with Toodledo's calendar -- perhaps a custom iCal calendar. I'm also looking for a way to generate weekly status reports of completed tasks. I'm a sysadmin/systems engineer (Unix/Linux), and my desktop/laptop platform is Mac OS X, so I'm not afraid of scripting something to implement what I need. I've found some Perl and Ruby modules that look interesting. I'm continuing to experiment with Toodledo, adjusting my previous Palm GTD-flavored methodology a bit to fit with Toodledo, and I'll be interested to see what you and others are doing. I'll share what I discover and implement as appropriate. -Dan This message was edited Jul 05, 2009. |
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replytoken |
Dan,
I posted a bit more on this topic in this thread: http://www.toodledo.com/forums/3/849/0/tasks-vs-calender-events.html . It may give you some idea as to how to keep your calendar separate from Toodledo, but still get a unified list of reminders. Keep us posted on how you proceed. --Ken |
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desgnosis |
Thanks, Ken. Looks good.
A new version of PI came out today, so I gave it another chance. I did a wipe of the old PI data, synced, looked good. I next made some changes via my Toodledo web account and re-synced. PI returned the web changes to the state just synced -- it did *not* update to the newest state. This seems broken to me; both the Toodledo and Todo apps update properly when you make changes at the web site. Sigh. Putting PI back on the shelf. It's too bad. PI looks closest to what I was accustomed to using with DateBk6 on my Palm PDA. This message was edited Jul 08, 2009. |
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Anders |
PI seems to be syncing fine for me, but I don't use it much for tasks since it does not yet support subtasks, so I could be missing something. You might try posting in their forum: http://www.pocketinformant.com/Forums/
WebIS's support is very good, and they may be able to help you figure out what is going on. |
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replytoken |
Posted by desgnosis:
Thanks, Ken. Looks good. A new version of PI came out today, so I gave it another chance. I did a wipe of the old PI data, synced, looked good. I next made some changes via my Toodledo web account and re-synced. PI returned the web changes to the state just synced -- it did *not* update to the newest state. This seems broken to me; both the Toodledo and Todo apps update properly when you make changes at the web site. Sigh. Putting PI back on the shelf. It's too bad. PI looks closest to what I was accustomed to using with DateBk6 on my Palm PDA. I have had the same feeling towards PI since before it was released. I think Alex is a great guy who is dedicated to his product and his customers, but it is going to take some more time until I can rely on PI for daily use. My proposed solution is not perfect, but it is the best that I could manage with the tools at hand. I value software that is robust and reliable (which can sometimes be an oxymoron when dealing with the web), mostly because my time is limited, and buggy software and/or hardware can be the worst time vampires! Other than a few minor glitches, TD, and to a lesser degree, Google, have not caused me any major data losses. I am still ramping up, but so far so good. (And there is always gopingme.com if that helps fill a gap for "free form" notifications/reminders.) --Ken |
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replytoken |
An update on this topic as I have refined it a bit. I am still sending my G-Cal notifications to G-Mail, but my appointments now have a small TD modifier in their titles. I have added "!!!" to the event descriptions so that when they are forwarded to TD, they are automatically given a "Priority=3-Top" designation. I have reserved this designation, and a 30-day date window (althought the date window can be set to your preference), for TD's Hotlist status. These forwarded notifications will remain without a folder designation, but will be picked up daily by my hotlist report that will be sent to my email account at work where I spend most of my time. My TD notifications for my "native" tasks (created in TD and not appointment notifications forwarded from G-Cal) also are sent to my email account at work since they need to be sent somewhere (and I did not want to "round trip" them back into TD along side my G-Cal notifications because that would create duplicate entries).
I have also eliminated the notifications from my G-Mail account (which I kept in my original scheme) so TD is my primary place for notifications, and my email account at work is a convenient secondary location. While I am trying to reserve Priority=3-Top for G-Mail notifications that forward to TD, it is still available to me, and it automatically puts any "native" task on my Hotlist should I choose to do so. I wish that I did not have to add the "!!!" to my calendar events, but it seems a small price to pay for some integration between TD and G-Cal. As always, comments or suggestiosn are always welcomed. --Ken |
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