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iGTD's Bartek Bargiel joins Cultured Code, Things 1.2 hits the streets
I have very fond memories of iGTD, and of its sole developer, Bartek Bargiel. The much-anticipated iGTD2 never really reached fruition, much to our dismay. There are a good number of people still using iGTD and iGTD2 today, even after development ceased quite some time ago, and I'd wager that anyone who used it probably has pretty nice things to say. I'd heard from Bartek a couple of times over the years, but I got caught by surprise when I heard the news today: he's joined up with Cultured Code, and worked some of my favorite features of good ol' iGTD into the latest release of Things for Mac (1.2). See what's new and brush up on your keyboard shortcuts at the Cultured Code blog. iGTD users and former users will probably recall the F-key trick; the one that grabbed whatever you had highlighted in most apps and popped it into the quick-entry window. While the OmniFocus clipper is quite capable, if this is as good as iGTD's was, it's going to be a killer feature. Bartek has also contributed Quicksilver, Launchbar and Google Quick Search Box plugins to the party. It's great to see Cultured Code catering to us keyboard geeks, and I personally just got way more into Things. If you did some donating to the development of iGTD back in the day, there's an additional surprise headed for your inbox. Cultured Code and Bartek have promised free licenses to everyone who donated to iGTD, and multiple licenses if the amount of your donations exceeds the value of a Things license. Things retails for $49.95US, so that's a pretty good return. Plus, they've set up data migration for current iGTD users to make the switch to Things. I'm checking out the latest version right now, so until I have a full review out, I'd just like to say congratulations to Bartek, and to Cultured Code!
iGTD2 showing promise
You may recall iGTD, which we covered last year. Up until some Leopard difficulties forced me to start flailing between not-quite-ready GTD applications, I was a loyal user. And yes, those Leopard difficulties could have been solved, but the author had his hands full with reincarnating iGTD -- as iGTD2. iGTD2 is in alpha right now, and not what I'd consider to be trustworthy for daily use, but it provides a peek into the thoughts behind the revamp. Whereas the original iGTD started out fairly simple and grew increasingly complex in response to user requests, iGTD2 is starting out quite robust and tries to get a grasp on what people really want out of their task managers. But, like the original, flexibility is built into the system. This time around, the authors developed a set of "principles" to guide development and make a simpler task of creating a new UI. Some of the principles are quite simple: a need for tabs, a hatred of inspector palettes, and the need for more mouse-friendliness. Some of the ideas, though, are a little more rebellious against the standards of GTD and delve into new ways of approaching task organization and, well, getting things done. Tags, focuses, nesting tasks and other UI developments allow for flexibility beyond what you'd expect from a GTD app. This kind of flexibility might be annoyingly overwhelming for new users. If you're looking for a simple UI and straightforward task manager, this probably won't be it. But if you've ever craved the ability to archive links and notes and then attach whole groups of them to projects and tasks, iGTD2 is moving in the right direction. As of this writing, the iGTD2 alpha is on its 9th build, with major changes happening almost every day. This one is worth keeping an eye on, especially as a donationware offering that will likely rival the power of some of the commercial applications in the field. The alpha is available for download and there's a forum for user input. If you're curious, check it out!
iGTD 1.4.5.5 released with new Quick Add features, multiple Dock badges, more
Yep, it's that time again boys and girls: Bartlomiej Bargiel has updated iGTD with yet another unassuming point release that heralds some great new features. While you can simply run the Check for Updates command from the application menu to see the big list o' changes, here are some of the highlights for those still on the fence or stuck at work reading this on a machine other than their own. iGTD 1.4.5.5 brings: Opening the Quick Add window to easily edit tasks you've added from other apps Multiple badges in the Dock icon for Inbox, due today and flagged item statuses Flag and task mode (pending/waiting for/maybe) buttons in the Quick Add window, with keyboard shortcuts F-key trick adds Vienna RSS support to its growing list of compatible apps for creating tasks Ability to completely disable iCal synching so users don't accidentally toggle it Of course, there are a ton of other new options and tweaks, as well as a healthy dose of bug fixes. This version of iGTD amazingly still remains free, while those details on the iGTD Pro are all we know about the upcoming commercial branches of this arguable king of GTD apps.
iGTD Pro details, Inbox Widget released
Bartlomiej Bargiel has been hard at work on iGTD, his incredibly powerful task task manager based on David Allen's Getting Things Done philosophy, and has recently unleashed news on what he has in store for iGTD Pro. As a matter of fact, iGTD will be split into three versions: iGTD Basic (the one that will continue to be free), iGTD Home&Office and iGTD Pro, each offering increasing abilities to sync and share tasks between Macs on the network and, with the Pro version, around the world. iGTD Pro will also allow to access your data with a web tool, possible a sooped up version of iPhoneiGTD. Licensing and availability details on these new versions, however, are still under wraps. In other news, Bartlomiej has also released an iGTD Inbox Widget which offers yet another way to quickly enter tasks and even use the Quicksilver syntax assign them to contexts. I personally prefer the f-key Quick Add window, but widget junkies will likely appreciate this streamlined iGTD interface.
iPhoneiGTD: View your iGTD tasks and projects on your iPhone
I first discovered iPhoneiGTD through Leaflets, another iPhone web app launcher we found, but I didn't dig into it until now. After tinkering around, I can say that I totally love this web portal for viewing the tasks and projects I'm tracking with iGTD, in my opinion the best GTD (Getting Things Done) app available for Mac OS X.The catch with iPhoneiGTD is that you need to be synching your iGTD data via .Mac. Like the impressive Webjimbo, which allows you to view, edit and create Yojimbo items over the web via a browser (with an iPhone-optimized option coming soon), iPhoneiGTD accesses your iGTD data by tapping into your .Mac account, though users are assured that neither your .Mac login nor personal info are recorded or stored.As you can see, access is mostly limited to viewing your tasks via contexts and projects, though the plus button acts as a clever workaround for creating new tasks by allowing you to email yourself a task in the form of a subject + any notes you'd like to include. By setting up some kind of an automatic Apple Mail-to-iGTD trick like Brett Terpstra's Jott2iGTD, you could possibly turn this email function into a real automated solution if you leave Mail and iGTD running on a Mac somewhere. Otherwise, using iGTD's rich importing and keyboard shortcut abilities, you could easily process your tasks out of Mail manually once you're back on a Mac.No matter how you slice it, iPhoneiGTD is a great solution both for GTD enthusiasts and those simply wishing the iPhone had some kind of a tasks app (assuming, again, that you have a .Mac account). Like iGTD, iPhoneiGTD is provided as donationware.
Jott2iGTD: Use voicemail to add tasks to iGTD
As many of you know, iGTD is a killer task management app that can't stop bringing cool features to the table. As fewer of you might know, Brett Terpstra at the Circle Six Design blog also can't seem to stop bringing awesome tools and features to the table; he's responsible for stuff like the FlickrMate bundle that provides some powerful Flickr integration with your TextMate projects, as well as the TextMate AutoTag bundle for WordPress, offering some great tagging features that integrate well with your WordPress blog. Amazingly, Brett's at it again, and this time he's allowing you to add tasks to iGTD using only the power of your voice - with a little help from Jott and Apple Mail, of course.Jott is a service that allows you to send email and text messages by calling a private phone number. Calling this number allows you to leave a message which then gets dictated and sent to a recipient, including yourself. With the power of Brett's new Jott2iGTD utility and a customized rule you created in Apple Mail, you can leave a message with Jott that is emailed to you, which Mail processes and automatically converts into an iGTD task. Jotting (ha!) down a reminder or idea probably can't get much easier than this, though some setup and file shuffling is involved to get this all running properly.As with his other goodies, Brett amazingly provides Jott2iGTD as donationware, with a PayPal link hidden at the bottom of the page (I really think you should move it above the fold, Brett!). A changelog is provided, along with instructions to get you all set up.
iGTD 1.4.5: Again with the landslide of new features
It's official: I am developing my own version system to keep track of iGTD updates, because this 1.x.x thing is just not right. The way I see it, this new iGTD v1.4.5 should really be called v3.5, what with yet another batch of major new features being introduced. Included in this update is F-key integration with PathFinder, Yojimbo and MacJournal (so you can send items from these apps to iGTD for task tracking), a Quick Tags feature that allows you to bind tags to shortcuts like Alt + 1 - 9 and a killer new feature that integrates with an Apple Mail rule. Once set up, this rule allows you to email yourself with a subject like "todo: @work spike the water cooler" and Mail will send it on over to iGTD automatically. For anyone who works in an office and away from their Mac at home, this is a killer way to make actual use out of all those todo emails you send yourself all day.Of course, I don't even need to tell you that there are more features in this update. By now it's become par for the course that an iGTD update brings tons of other enhancements, new tricks and bug fixes, so head on over to Bartlomiej Bargiel's announcement blog post to get the full details. To get the new version, simply start up iGTD or head up to the application menu and chose Check for Updates, or simply visit the iGTD downloads page and click the Current Release link to make sure you get the most up-to-date version.
iGTD 1.4.4 update brings, uh, way too many new features
Something tells me the crew who writes iGTD (fortunately) never really grasped how application version systems work (for the record: I say this with the warmest of intentions; iGTD is the first GTD-based app that I really 'get' and use). Typically, a company releases a 1.0, follows up with a few 1.x.x updates to fix bugs and quirks, and maybe a few 1.x releases that add a new feature or two. But as anyone who has been following the last few minor updates can tell, the new features brought with each 1.x.x release are really worthy of major 2.x and 3.x releases. This morning I woke to just such an update (v1.4.4) that brings a landslide of new and handy feature updates, including: F-key integration with Journler, endo RSS news reader, VoodooPad Pro, EagleFiler and WebnoteHappy exporting smart folders added ('To complete' tab) Don't forget! feature - use the Tasks menu option to display a sticky reminder about a task... click it to jump to the task Send to stickies feature - use the Tasks menu option to display selected tasks as Apple Sticky note E-mail feature - use the Tasks menu option to e-mail selected tasks via Apple Mail MailTags 2.0. enhancement: flagged e-mails are imported as flagged tasks MailTags 2.0. enhancement: a prefs setting to use the MT e-mail notes as a name for task in iGTD last selected smart folder is saved and restored between launches integration with Services menu (logout/login required): select a text in any app, go to app menu / Services submenu and use the 'iGTD/Put into iGTD inbox option' new mode for search panel: 'Search by project name or note' and much, much more This update also includes a large batch of bug fixes, as well as enhancements to adding new items to lists that are sorted by various methods. Amazingly, iGTD is still donationware, and this new version should be available by choosing Check for Updates from the application menu, or simply by heading over to the iGTD site.
MailTags and iGTD unite features in the name of productivity and discounts
A recent update to iGTD brought some significant enhancements, one of which is very, very rich integration with Scott Morrison's MailTags 2.0. With v1.4.3, iGTD can process most of the MailTags 2 information attached to an Apple Mail message. For example: keywords in MailTags prefixed with @ will get translated into contexts, while your other tags will simply become regular tags in iGTD. Same with projects, deadlines, priorities and even notes added to Apple Mail messages with MailTags: they'll all effortlessly transfer over into iGTD when importing messages with an F-key. If this is all getting your productivity and GTD gears turning but you haven't purchased MailTags yet, Scott Morrison and Bartlomiej Bargiel (iGTD's developer) have just offered a partner promotion that should do the trick: for a limited time, when users donate to iGTD, they can contact the author and receive a $5 coupon off the $29.95 retail price of MailTags 2.0. I say 'limited time' because, as of this writing, they have 35 coupons left, though Scott said he's definitely willing to whip up more coupons depending on how much interest spawns from this promotion (I know, I know: I warned them about the TUAW effect, so we'll see). As an extremely happy and paid user of MailTags and a budding GTD user for whom iGTD finally made sense, this sounds like a great deal for anyone looking to get more productive with their email. MailTags and iGTD: two great tastes that taste great together.
iGTD - yet another powerful, integrated GTD app
I know, I know - we've been blogging so many GTD apps lately that you probably needed to create a new task list just to look through them and make a decision. iGTD, however, packs one heckuva punch, so I thought it would be worth mentioning. While it includes all the typical features one probably expects from a GTD implementation these days, iGTD brings a lot of power to the table with features like Address Book integration, drag and drop task creation from files, URLs and Mail.app messages, task tagging, 'maybe' tasks, flagging, a unique 'wait for' task class, keyboard shortcuts, Quicksilver integration, phone/PDA syncing, a menubar helper, searching... and even more.With all these features, iGTD is amazingly donationware, and I highly recommend showing the developer some love after all this work.
