David Hughes

Notes From Afar

Tag: Email (page 1 of 1)

9 December 2008

Google Adds Tasks to Gmail

You may have seen the news that Google has added a tasks application to its Gmail email service.Well the even better news is that since they recently added Google Labs to Google Apps email I get to play with it also.

I’ve tried a number of task apps over the years and not found one that I could stick with and met my varied but rather basic needs but tasks from Google looks promising.

I like that it is in my email but can also be “popped out” to float as it’s own window.

I like that because it is web based I can access from both my iMac and my Samsung NC10 running XP.

I like that you can easily make an email a task; most of my tasks seem to arrive via email.

I really like its simplicity: tasks, sub tasks, due dates and that’s about it.

I rather hope that Google don’t develop it much further than this, but if they do they make new features configurable. I’ve been put off other task applications by the complexity or multiple stages of simply adding a task and would hate to see that happen here.

Additions I would like to see are:

  • the ability to view and edit tasks from my iPhone
  • a “quick add” function like that found in Google Calendar
  • some kind of self-contained tasks view which could be off-line via Google Gears

I love the almost constant upgrades and additions that Google makes to its services such as Gmail, Docs, Google Apps etc. particularly when you consider they are all free.

29 October 2006

All My Data Are Belong to Google?

Google’s stated mission is “to organise the world’s data” well it’s dawned on me that they are doing a jolly good job with mine…

I’ve been Google as my search engine since it was launched.

I’ve been using Gmail as my secondary email account for a year or two.

I use GoogleTalk as my main instant messenging protocol as it’s the only IM client I have been able to install and get to work through draconian corporate firewalls in my last two employers.

I’m now using Google Calendar as my electronic diary as I can add/edit/update from both home and work and iCal can sync with it – although sadly only one way. Apple really need to add a web app interface of the quality of their new web mail to iCal for .Mac users.

I’ve just started using the updated Google Reader as my RSS feed reader as I can have a single set of RSS feeds that I can read at both home and work.

Update : since I started writing this I’ve stopped using Google Reader as it was just too slow. I’m using Newsfire again on my Macs but being frustrated by the lack of syncing betwen my Macs let alone with an online, visible at work, version. I hope that Google will create or open up and API for Google Reader that will allow offline RSS readers to sync with Google Reader. I know that NetNewsWire and NewsGator will do this but I like neither the online or offline part of that equation. I may go back to Google Reader yet.

So let’s see… I’m using five, yes five, Google products. So just how much of my data is now sitting in Google’s server farms? Possibly a little too much. With the exception of the whole China censorship thing I ‘trust’ Google as a corporate entity but I’m still starting to feel a little uneasy about how much of my data is ‘out there’ in the Googleverse…

So what is the solution? Stay offline? Don’t use web apps? Use multiple providers of web apps? Be careful what data you keep online in somebody else’s application?