In the past year, I've been a passionate supporter of three task management apps. OmniFocus, Things, and Remember The Milk (RTM). I've switched back and forth between them trying to decide which one works best for me. I think I'm finally ready to commit to RTM as my long term solution and here's why.

All three apps have an iPhone component and a desktop component. Although the primary RTM interface on the desktop is through the browser there are plenty of Widgets and other desktop friendly ways to access RTM on the desktop. What I really like about RTM for the desktop is its openness. In terms of the ability to dump stuff into RTM its cloud computing model really works.

With both OmniFocus and Things I have to be on the same subnet as my laptop in order for the wifi syncing between my Ipod Touch and the desktop to work. Unfortunately outside of my house this is rarely the case. With RTM I can be anywhere. That means I'm free to roam anywhere in the world with my iPod Touch and I know that when I dump a task or note into RTM it will be there on my desktop or the web interface when I come back to it. If I forget my iPod Touch (a very unlikely event) I can still dump tasks into RTM from any browser.

The second thing I really like about RTM is its openness. As you can see from my posts below I have developed my own desktop interface to RTM using the Python bindings and LaunchBar. The three things that I want to do most often, with as little fuss as possible are:


  • Add a task

  • Mark a task as complete

  • display tasks

With my LaunchBar integration I don't ever have to take my fingers off the keyboard to do any of those tasks.

When I'm using my iPod Touch, I think that the RTM client is the best and most fully featured of the bunch. Since RTM has been around as a service for longer than either Things or OmniFocus they have had more time to work on polishing their iApp. It already supports tagging and searching. Things that are coming in the other apps but are already here for RTM on the iPod today.

Because RTM has an open API there are lots of other nice interfaces for you to use that make it easy to dump tasks and notes into your inbox. Do you Twitter? Send a direct message to your RTM inbox. Do you Text? Send using the Twitter RTM gateway you can text directly to your inbox. Email? yes. You can even email a whole list of stuff to RTM as a way to quickly import a long list of tasks or packing items you have copied from somewhere else. Jott, yes. The possibilities are endless and expanding all the time.