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Tasktop - Managing the Contex related to a Task
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Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Feb 15, 2008 at 07:07 AM
Tasktop is available as an Eclipse plugin (for developers) and as a standalone application.
It is based on Eclipse. Take the standalone version for testing. Please note that you have to register before you can download a trial copy. Pricing: US$ 60 for the standalone version.
Your are organizing your tasks in categories. You activate a task when you start working on it. As soon as you activate a task Tasknote shows you all files, folders and websites associated to the active task in the tree view on the left. Files, folders and websites are associated to the active task as long as you are working with it. When you deactivate the task then the tree view is emptied. When you activate another task then you see only its associated files etc.
It is difficult for me to describe the concept in words. Take a look at the online video: Follow the ‘Learn more…’ or ‘Tour and trial…’ links.
Other interesting features:
- Google Calendar or Outlook integration (incl. Sync)
- You can create new files (Word, OpenOffice, text files etc. within Tasktop.
- Tabbed interface
- You can define you standard browser (IE or FF)
- Search
Missing or not perfect at the moment (from my point of view):
- Lotus Notes integration (don’t laugh: Lotus Notes is widely used in large companies like IBM or 3M)
- Allowing several workspaces
- Using the same workspace on two different computers (saving the workspace on an USB drive works quite well on my systems)
- Hiearchical tasks
- Printing
- Reports
Take the time to explore Tasktop as it follows a new but very interesting approach. It is available as version 1.0 and the developers are indicating on their website when further releases are coming.
Tasktop is based on Mylyn developed by Mik Kersten. Mik is well-known in the Eclipse/Java community. Further, Tasktop is developed by a team of very skilled professional developers so we can expect they will be in business for some time.
Dominik
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 15, 2008 at 11:37 AM
Dominik,
Thanks for this; it looks very interesting :-)
alx
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 15, 2008 at 04:58 PM
Update: my first impression of Tasktop is quite positive albeit not enthusiastic as yet. I don’t find the ‘task-focused’ approach itself as novel as it is presented. The whole idea of ‘hoisting’ an outline is related to focusing on a specific area of information. I have my project info in UltraRecall; if I hoist on a project, I have immediate access to all my related info while igniring all the rest.
The novelty I find in Tasktop is the ‘computer-aided’ collection of related information. Rather than having to manually import related documents, links etc as I do in UltraRecall, Tasktop virtually follows me while I’m working on a task, creating links to whatever I search, open or retrieve.
I think only a mid/long-term trial can convince one of the benefits of this automated approach. It does require some discipline. If one forgets to de-activate a task while switching to something irrelevant, one is bound to end up with unrelated content in their task tree.
Tasktop is the second novel PIM kind of software, created and used by a group of professional programmers, that has surfaced in this forum recently. The other is Noah. I find both quite intriguing, offering rather unique tools to partially automate one’s organisation. Tasktop is topic-focused, while Noah is time-oriented. I wonder how easy/difficult it would be to have both.
alx
Posted by Graham Rhind
Feb 15, 2008 at 05:47 PM
Well, I quite like it - a good task management software is my holy grail. But it doesn’t have any support for recurring tasks (what IS so difficult about putting this into software? I can’t understand why Kinook, for example, are dragging their feet to improve their support for recurring tasks in Ultra Recall, and why so many other task managers get it so wrong!).
In any case, it’s a deal breaker for me, so the wait continues ...
Graham
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Feb 15, 2008 at 06:02 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>I think only a mid/long-term trial can convince one of the
>benefits of this automated approach. It does require some discipline. If one forgets
>to de-activate a task while switching to something irrelevant, one is bound to end up
>with unrelated content in their task tree.
My initial response to TopTask is similar to Alexander’s. It looks impressive, and I admire the ingenuity. However, if I had the discipline to turn on and off the switch to record my actions for any particular task, I wouldn’t need a task manager. (I mean, you should see how often I forget to turn off “magic paste” in Brainstorm, and end up with a bunch of stuff I don’t need copied into the program.) Additionally, I think there is advantage in considering which materials to include in your project database.
I did think the calendar feature was appealing - one place to see and manage all your calendars. But then, I don’t use more than one calendar. I can’t imagine doing so.
Steve Z.