Long live the King!
Okay. That is a much-exaggerated headline. (I’ve been watching Edward the Seventh on Netflix so you’ll have to forgive the royalist hyperbole. And, may I say—just as an aside—that I had no idea Queen Victoria was such a shrew!)
Anyway, today’s post is about a Friday Find that pleases me immensely.
Once upon a time, before Blackberrys and iPhones, I had a Palm Pilot. (I still have it. I just don’t use it much. Its battery life is practically non-existent at this point, and I haven’t gotten around to finding a replacement.)
I loved the Palm.
Best calendar, address book and task list I’ve yet seen. Entry by handwriting instead of tiny, thumb-driven keyboard.
A lovely instrument. (I must see about that battery.)
Of particular use to me was the task list. It was so easy to categorize items, to schedule them as single or recurring tasks, to make them provide audible and insistent reminders,and, most importantly, to reschedule without having to enter them anew.
Nothing since the Palm has measured up. (We will not even discuss the Blackberry’s feeble ToDo list.)
Until now.
There’s a free, web-based app that comes very close.
It’s totally email based. I can send an email to remind me to write a blog post to tomorrow@followupthen, and I will get a reminder emailed to me tomorrow. I can specify a particular date and/or time. I can choose a specific interval—say, 3 hours or 4 days or 2 weeks. I can create a recurring reminder—every Tuesday, every week, every month. I can create a task which will nag me every 24 hours until I mark it complete.
In addition, I can forward emails I’ve received and get them back at a more appropriate time for follow up. I can blind copy emails I send and be reminded to check with others.
It is the closest I’ve yet found to the—for me—nearly perfect task list functionality of my late, lamented Palm.
The only things it’s missing are the ability to organize upcoming tasks by category, the audible alerts, and an easy way to print the whole list.
The only risks to it seem to be that of any web-based app. The creators could decide to start charging for the base service instead of the premium, or they could suddenly stop supporting it. With software that you purchase or are otherwise allowed to own, you can use it forever—or until your computer dies and you are forced to upgrade to an incompatible operating system. (Anyone knowing where I can get a legal copy of Windows XP against future need will get cake, by the way.)
Meanwhile, registration is easy. Just head over to FollowUpThen and sign up. Then you can email yourself a little reminder to thank me later.
