[START OF AUDIO] Steve Dotto here.
Today’s topic is going to be task list managers.
Now this is one crowded app space.
There are probably more task manager apps than any other app.
Now some of them are part of big ecosystems that fit in with Time and Contact and all
those other managers, and others are just simple task managers.
Now what I was looking for in a task manager was cross-platform compatibility.
I wanted a manger that I could use on my computer, on my desktop computer be it Windows or Mac,
that would also give me this flexibility to have those lists and to share those lists
with my different mobility devices, my iPad, my iPhone, my Android phone, any type of other
mobility device that I wanted.
And again, there are lots to choose from.
One that’s really highly rated is one called Wunderlist.
I imagine it’s ‘vunder’ not ‘wunder’ but ‘vunderlist.’
It is from WunderKinder, a company that’s developed this very simple, free app.
The key feature of this app is it is available everywhere we are.
It’s available in Mackintosh, Windows, Linux, iPhones, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows
phone, and of course, on the web as a web browser.
Installed it.
Like it.
Think it’s really elegant and simple and that’s what we’re really looking for in
a task list manager.
So let’s take a quick look at the app itself.
Now when you first install Wunderlist, they ask you for an email address and a password.
That effectively creates your account.
They don’t ask for a whole bunch of extra information like address, credit card, any
of that stuff.
The account is quick and easy to create.
Now looking at your actual list manager, we see we’ve got all our different tasks here
in white.
We can add new tasks by clicking at the top and typing in the new task.
We have the ability to apply a time stamp when it’s due so that we know exactly when
the due date is so that we can search down here on the bottom on tasks that are due today,
tomorrow, the next seven days, etc.
We also have the ability to add text to any task, to add notes about the task, and then
there are a few sharing options for our tasks.
Up in the very top as you create each task, you can ask it to be printed.
You can email all of your different tasks.
If you just click on that, it takes all of the tasks that are in whatever list you’re
in–here I’m in my Inbox which is kind of a catch all for all of my tasks–and it
creates an email with all of my to-dos in it which I think is very useful.
They also have this ability here to share with Cloud app.
What this does is it actually creates a URL that is unique so you can there share your
list with others, either by them just clicking on the URL or you could say, embed this URL
in Twitter so others could see the task.
Now once it’s uploaded, it’s not editable by anybody including yourself.
It’s just a kind of published list.
People can then see it.
It lives on the internet for thirty days and then it’s gone.
So it’s not really a project management tool at that point but instead just a very
quick and effective way to share a list, to share a task with a group of people by whatever
way you want, by email, by sharing it on Twitter, by those sorts of things.
So we’ve got this window here which has all of our different tasks.
Now when you first install it, give you a whole series of tasks which are basically
just a little tutorial of how to use the software but you add structure by having all of your
tasks and then creating lists against those tasks.
We go here into the right hand side, click ‘Add list’, and you can add a new list.
I’m creating a vacation task list here because I’m heading off on holiday in a few days.
So I’ve created a shopping list.
I can now go in and I can create all of my different shopping
items that I need.
Now of course this is only valuable if I can get to these task when I need and that’s
really what I was looking for in a task manager, something really cross-platform, something
that I could use on my other devices and access the same list, see my tasks so that I can
do them when I’m in the field and I only have my mobility devices in my hand.
Let me show you how that works.
I have fire up my iPad and installed the HD version of Wunderlist on the iPad, beautiful,
clear resolution on the iPad screen and we can see the exact same list.
It syncs automatically between my different lists on my computer and on my iPad.
It would be the same on my iPhone, my Blackberry, or my Android phone.
If I go in and take a look at the list, there’s the vacation list that I just created.
I can quickly gain access the note that I’ve just created.
If I’m out now shopping, I can take a look and I can see the list of different things
that I need to purchase and I can check them off and I can take care of my list while I’m
in the field.
Of course, if I want to add new tasks in the field, I can add them while I’m traveling
about and then they will be reflected back through here on the desktop version next time
I sit down at my computer.
You know increasingly in the Apple world, we’re dividing these different vertical
tasks into their own apps.
Apple really started that process by having Apple Mail and the Calendar app separate as
opposed to as in the Windows world where in Outlook, we looked at adding them all together.
The idea of having all of your apps separate has a lot of appeal.
We give up something in some of the flexibility and productivity within the app itself but
what we gain is really easy access to the same data on different devices, in this particular
case, having the exact same account on a Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows
phone, you name it.
You can set up your lists, your tasks, and you can access them from whatever device you
happen to be using and I think that is a really nice way to approach it.
There are certainly going to be more robust and bigger apps available to us that do more
things but for simple task management, this might just be the ticket.
I hope this video has been useful.
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Also drop by our website at DottoTech.com.
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I’m Steve Dotto.
Thanks for your time today.
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Steve Dotto0Wunderlist0September 3, 2012