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Ta-da Ta-Don’t
Filed under: Asides | February 7th, 2005
My Ta-da List down again, and I’m faced with the fact that it’s a Monday and everything I need to do is on that list. I’m reminded why I distrust hosted services. I don’t want to be upsold to Basecamp, I just want a simple online service to manage my tasks. (39)
Robert Sayre | February 7th, 2005 @ 11:35 am | Reply
I did the “to-do list” tutorial on the Rails website, and I just use that on my own server. It’s slightly better than todo.txt
Geof F. Morris | February 7th, 2005 @ 11:42 am | Reply
Heh, this is why I host my own Tasks installs.
Ryan Tomayko | February 7th, 2005 @ 11:44 am | Reply
Long live todo.txt! The UI can’t be beat.
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seriocomic | February 7th, 2005 @ 11:52 am | Reply
Exactly…
This is why bloglines is the only thing that I have that is remotely hosted, and even then the OPML file is exported regularly. It’s a major reason why I can’t understand the success of Flickr - can you image the horror of one of their redundant backup systems failing after a primary failure?
I keep my remotely hosted material limited to mostly inconsequential stuff.
Matt | February 7th, 2005 @ 11:52 am | Reply
I’ve used and donated to Alex’s Tasks, but (a) the license is too restrictive for me and (b) it’s a little heavy for what I’m looking to do. When I was doing consulting I loved its time feature though, and if I was still consulting I would probably use it for that alone.
Ryan Waddell | February 7th, 2005 @ 12:06 pm | Reply
Yeah, my first thought when I saw this originally was “Why don’t I just create a todo page on my wordpress site? Then I can get to it whenever I need to, and don’t have to worry about somebody else holding the reigns on my list.
Tim | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:18 pm | Reply
Matt,
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. You are quick to point the finger at competitors’ stumblings — it would be nice if you were at least transparent about your own. Your comments on the tada list thing were down for the last half hour, and your site itself was down last night (see screen capture at flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/geodog/)
You are generally a nice person, and some of your software is very nice, but your head is a little swollen.
Matt | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:24 pm | Reply
Thanks Tim. This is a personal site and it goes down often because I test out the latest bleeding edge WordPress code on it. I would rather break things here than on thousands of other blogs. That’s obviously something I wouldn’t do on a site that served other people besides myself. A better comparison might have been an actual service I run, rather than a personal website? Actually a better comparison would have been none at all, because I wasn’t putting down their work in any way—I’m a big fan of 37s—but rather observing that their service probably isn’t the best fit for my needs so I should start thinking about alternatives. If my site isn’t a good fit for your needs, for example due to my giant head or the frequent downtime, then I would recommend the same.
Carthik | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:30 pm | Reply
Matt, how much time would it take for you to reconstruct what tadalist does?
There!
Tom | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:34 pm | Reply
Tim, his site is not a service for other people to host important information. You were not inconvenienced by his site being down (unless you were really eager to post your comment), and would not have lost anything if the downtime were permanent. Using a service like TaDaLists.com, however, is trusting an outside source to make your data available at all times. Your point is not valid.
Matt | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:41 pm | Reply
Replacing a centralized service with another centralized service doesn’t solve anything, it just shifts the problem. Ideally, like Ryan said, a thousand Tada Lists could bloom and you could run your own. If they open sourced the platform I think it could still drive people to Basecamp without having to resort to any artifical lock-in. (Maximum of 10 lists.)
A Different Tom | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:44 pm | Reply
I’d love a wordpress-esque to-do manager… DoPress doesn’t have a nice ring though…
Carthik | February 7th, 2005 @ 1:53 pm | Reply
I wasn’t talking about something that was centralized. More like a Host-it-yourself todo list manager, or a WordPress “Page”.
jeremy | February 7th, 2005 @ 2:18 pm | Reply
Just received an apology from them:
http://everything.basecamphq.com/archives/000319.php
Downtime apology
We apologize for a few minutes of downtime roughly between 2:30-2:40 pm CST. The servers are ramping back up, we’re fixing some outstanding issues, and we’re investigating the cause.
westi | February 7th, 2005 @ 2:25 pm | Reply
A wordpress alike task manager would be nice! Although what would be even more useful would be a wordpress alike mind map web based mind mapping program.
Call it MindPress (You heard it here first!). Talking wordpress analogies posts/pages would be mind maps and you would be able to have public/private maps and build up you to-do lists / notes within individual maps. A plugin based architecture could enhance the type of formatting used within mind map nodes.
bish | February 7th, 2005 @ 2:30 pm | Reply
I smell a WP To-do plugin!
Of course, someone else will have to be the chef, as I can’t ‘cook’.
Dave M. | February 7th, 2005 @ 2:48 pm | Reply
I did a quick search on SourceForge.net and found:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/todolist/
ToDolist.php
It’s a lot simpler than Mr. King’s program, but it still looks pretty nice.
There were others there, but this one looked worthy of a peek by myself tonight.
I agree with you and others here. I don’t trust hosted services. Bloglines is the only one I do trust, and I can only remember a few times that they were having problems. Of course, with AskJeeves buying them, I’m not so sure I’m going to be happy with them in the future.
If you find something good, please post about it so we all can take a peek.
Matt | February 7th, 2005 @ 3:55 pm | Reply
Jeremy, it’s good that they’re being open about things, but I still can’t access my account.
Roy Schestowitz | February 7th, 2005 @ 4:27 pm | Reply
Matt, aren’t you a Palm user? I can’t imagine the ‘nightmare’ of having to log on a minute before going to bed just to add a small item.
Matt | February 7th, 2005 @ 4:29 pm | Reply
Not really a Palm user anymore, it’s too big for my pocket. Maybe if I ever get a Treo 650 and trash my cell.
Tim | February 7th, 2005 @ 9:38 pm | Reply
Matt,
Fair enough to make a distinction between a personal site and a Free service, but my point that you are quick to point out the shortcomings of others remains.
Love your site, wouldn’t miss it for the world, swollen head and all :-).
Roland | February 8th, 2005 @ 12:09 am | Reply
I use ToDoList from http://www.abstractspoon.com. It’s a freeware with C++ source code and the author listen to his users. It’s hosted at CodeProject.net too. Data is available as XML. You can assign priorities, track time spent, break a task in sub-tasks,… very very nice.
paul haine | February 8th, 2005 @ 4:31 am | Reply
I have an idea for a simple to-do list that you can access wherever you are in the world. I’m going to call it a “notebook”. You’ll interface with it via the means of a “pen” or a “pencil”. What you do is, you carry this “notebook” around with you - say, in your back pocket, or in your jacket, or in your bag (it’s entirely up to you) - then, when you want to add something to your to-do list, you take the “notebook” out and you “write” in what you want. When the task is done, you can either “scribble” it out, or if you’ve used a pencil, you can “rub” it out with a “rubber”.
I’ve been beta testing a “notebook” recently, and initial trials have proven very promising. It remains unaffected by network outages, power cuts, hard disk (and other hardware) failures - it’s really quite resiliant.
Just as soon as I’ve implemented the social networking/sharing/tagging features that everything seems to be obliged to have these days, I’ll make a 1.0 release.
Randy | February 8th, 2005 @ 5:42 am | Reply
You need a Hipster PDA, Matt
http://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/2004/09/introducing_the.html
Jason Fried | February 8th, 2005 @ 7:49 am | Reply
Sorry about the brief couple-minutes downtime. It happens (although it’s extremely rare).
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Jasmeet | February 8th, 2005 @ 11:24 pm | Reply
Matt, if you have an aggregator, you could just add your Tadalist Feed to it. This way you’d always have the list with you =)
Roy Schestowitz | February 9th, 2005 @ 3:30 am | Reply
Stop carrying your wallet then.
paul haine | February 9th, 2005 @ 8:37 am | Reply
Or get bigger pockets.
Matt | February 9th, 2005 @ 8:58 am | Reply
My wallet is in my back pocket, and I keep almost nothing in it so it isn’t too bad. Usually my side pocket has keys and my cell phone.
jess | February 9th, 2005 @ 12:47 pm | Reply
Bahaha omg @ Tim’s first comment.
I love you and your swollen head! :p
HI MATT SOME PEOPLE ARE WAITING FOR AN UPDATE ON YOUR PHOTOLOG.
courtney | February 9th, 2005 @ 9:46 pm | Reply
I’ve gone lo-fi and haven’t looked back. I haven’t used any kind of digital orginization tools in months. I have come to terms with the temporary nature of digital storage. Nothing beats pen and paper.
Alex Aguilar | February 10th, 2005 @ 6:17 am | Reply
I use a mix of a local install of Wordpress and Basecamp to manage my tasks.
I’m going to check out Tracks
http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/archives/2005/01/06/tracks-a-getting-things-done-implementation/
since I want to dip into the ruby/rails waters
Roy Schestowitz | February 11th, 2005 @ 2:35 am | Reply
Matt - at least consider Horde (which is free). You have the advantage of having a Web host, so why not use it? See the screenshot at: http://www.schestowitz.com/temp/horde.jpg
robert | February 11th, 2005 @ 7:20 am | Reply
I recommend one of two things
1 - far fetched and stupid:
use the A9 toolbar’s “diary” feature.
2 - pedantic:
re-invent the hipster pda!
http://www.43folders.com/2005/02/hipster_pda.html
Agreed with the Palm statement — what a waste. Maybe a Treo would get me back onto the PDA thing but otherwise it’s too much, even for scheduling meetings. All that fiddling.
Dave M. | February 11th, 2005 @ 9:31 pm | Reply
I have had problems with my Hipster PDA.
* The display is near to impossible to read, the characters are all scribbly and fuzzy.
* The input interface is slow and awkward.
* The backlight on the display must be burnt out, because I can’t see a thing in the dark.
* I have lost about 25 stylists in the last 10 days!
I think I’ll stick with a web based interface.
markku | February 11th, 2005 @ 10:59 pm | Reply
Matt, sometimes the simplest solution can be effective. I use post-it notes and attach them to to my cellphone, sometimes I even wrap it with a rubber band so every time I touch my phone I’d get this feeling there’s a task I should be accomplishing at that very moment. But of course you can also use your phone’s tasks/notes/reminders feature. =)
Christine | February 14th, 2005 @ 9:57 pm | Reply
That’s why I run an install of WP just for my to-do list. I’ve tested Alex’s software and really liked it, but had my own system set up already.