Filed under: Software, Productivity
Things brings the sync
If you love Things, you just got a whole lot more to love. The folks at Cultured Code have finally added iCal sync, and they've done a spectacular job with it (outdoing, in my opinion, OmniFocus' sync). In the preferences, you can sync just your "Today" tasks, or just your "Next Actions," or you can get crazy with it and assign calendars to different tags, projects or areas of responsibility. This allows for utterly amazing flexibility and an array of possibilities.
The major benefits of having Things synced with iCal all revolve around the tight integration that iCal and Leopard's To Dos have with the rest of OS X. Being able to refine what is actually synced means you have complete control over what you see on an iCal printout or even what you put on a public or shared calendar. To Dos can be delegated, emailed, linked, prioritized and more, and Things is picking up every external change I throw at it.
You can have a calendar that functions as an inbox and use whatever input method you like to get tasks there. The "@" symbol can be used to add tags as well. Moving a task from the inbox calendar to another calendar synchronized with Things will do exactly what you think it will ... move the task to the project or area of responsibility assigned to that calendar.
This also solves my other major problem with Things, no easy way to turn Mail.app messages into tasks. Now, with a right click to make a new To Do you can create a new task in Things that contains a link to the original message. Unfortunately, Mail.app's handling of To Dos is a little buggy in some cases, but that problem is easily taken care of by using MailTags to create the tasks.
The final reason I'm so excited about this new release is that Leopard To Dos are part of an API that all kinds of third-party programs can access, and can therefore integrate with Things now. Anxiety, Out of Mind, Today, MailTags and other little applications we've mentioned can all work in two directions with your task manager.
I'm a little obsessed with Charilaos Skiadas' GTDAlt bundle for TextMate right now (along with piles of Ruby code to extend it), but the new sync feature in Things made it extremely easy to pull my tasks in and take it for another spin. Having sworn off the "pretty" task managers and pledged my allegiance once again to all things plain text, I don't have the heart to change my system again quite yet ... but it's becoming obvious that when Things comes to fruition, it will be a force to be reckoned with. If this was holding you back (like it was me), it might be time to take a look. Things is going to be $49 after release, but you can still get in on it for $39 right now.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ZX said 10:29AM on 5-25-2008
I absolutely love this app:):):)
It's great in everything! and culturedcode is just a super cool company.
10!
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mark said 1:49PM on 5-25-2008
Hey, Brett,
I'm a Things user who's also excited about the recent update. However, certain parts of your review are vague. For example, you wrote:
"Now, with a right click to make a new To Do you can create a new task in Things that contains a link to the original message."
How? With a right-click on what? This is unclear.
You also wrote:
"Mail.app's handling of To Dos is a little buggy in some cases, but that problem is easily taken care of by using MailTags to create the tasks."
Again...how? I have and use MailTags, and I don't see any functionality in MailTags that allows one to "create tasks." But perhaps I've overlooked it. How are you creating tasks in MailTags??
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Brett Terpstra said 2:40PM on 5-25-2008
Are you using Leopard? I don't think that most of the To do features are available in Tiger. But if you *are* using Leopard, a right (or control) click in a Mail message, with or without text highlighted, will give you a contextual menu with "New To Do" as an option. The MailTags sidebar also has a button titled "New To Do." To Dos created with either of these options are automatically synced with Things. The MailTags method is more stable, and just a little faster for me.
mark said 3:10PM on 5-25-2008
Yes, I'm in Leopard. Sorry -- didn't think to mention that. :-)
Right after posting, I figured out that I had to control-click in the *body* of a Mail message. I'd been attempting to control-click a message in the list of messages.
As for MailTags, I was accessing it from Mail's Message *menu*, from which you can access most of MailTags' features -- except, apparently, to-dos. :-) Thanks to your reply, I now see the "New To-do" button in the sidebar.
Thanks again.
Brett Terpstra said 3:43PM on 5-25-2008
I was thinking about your desire to add a new To Do from the message list view and realized it's entirely possible to AppleScript the selected message into a new To Do in any calendar (preconfigured or user-selected), with the message link as the note or url. That way you could even include the message body (or summary) in the comment... Said AppleScript could be assigned to a MailActOn hotkey (or multiple keys for different contexts/calendars), triggered with something like Quicksilver or FastScripts, or made into a hotkey-triggered System Service with ThisService. Hmmm... off to write a new script :).
mark said 4:44PM on 5-25-2008
Nice! If it turns out the way you'd like, and if you care to share, let us know where we can grab a copy!
roz said 6:50PM on 5-25-2008
this is awesome - i am floored by the syncing - its instantaneous! amazing!
so is there a decent way to get these into iPhone? I see a folder under my IMAP email account but have not played much yet...
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Brett Terpstra said 6:55PM on 5-25-2008
I know :), it's the best implementation I've seen yet. The iPhone doesn't currently handle To Dos natively, but there's a web app I'm playing with that can read your To Dos from an IMAP folder and provide mobile functionality. I'll let you know if I get it working...
Saxon said 12:31AM on 5-26-2008
Nobody's mentioned this yet, I've found that if I create a Todos calendar that syncs with .Mac and set my copy of Things on multiple computers to sync with that calendar, it's a poor man's way to keep the two Things databases synced up. It's not perfect; the projects have to exist on both computers and so do the tags for it to put things in right places. But it's worked great for me so far!
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Dennis said 4:01PM on 5-27-2008
So a couple questions:
1) What do you use iCal syncing for? I mean, if you don't have a Palm or some device that syncs with iCal, and you don't use any third-party To Do interface like Anxiety, is there any real advantage to using iCal sync? Why not just manage your to do items in Things?
2) If/when an iPhone version of Things becomes available, isn't iCal sync obsolete if you have an iPhone? Wouldn't you just sync your Things database directly to your iPhone instead?
3) iCal sync is neat, I guess, and it looks like it's well done, but why is the developer adding "icing on the cake" features when basic stuff is still missing or incomplete? There's still no way to search across the entire database in Things, is there? I just find that infuriating. And dragging stuff is still crippled (still getting warning dialogs that say it'll be fixed soon). Undo/redo feels a bit flakey and sometimes is slow. I can't add notes to projects, only to actions. No support for multiple windows. No support for viewing multiple notes simultaneously. No support for styled text in notes. Limited support for copying actions from one project to another. No support for sorting actions or projects (other than manually).
It just worries me that whiz-bang features like iCal sync are taking priority over the basics, especially so late in the development. Wasn't Things supposed to be release in spring of this year? That only gives them about another 4 weeks!
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