Appigo Todo and Toodledo… a dynamic duo!

I recently purchased both Appigo's "Todo" iPhone app (for $9.99) and Toodledo's Pro account (for $14.95/yr) which offers advanced features over the free account that were important to me. However, the free account itself is pretty spectacular, in the sense that every other web-based backend that works with an iPhone app charge you a yearly fee, and generally over $24.99/yr (which is what Remember The Milk charges for the account that works with its iPhone app or Appigo's Todo)! You, personally, may never need anything more than the free account from Toodledo, but I like what the Pro account offers in conjunction with what Appigo's Todo application offers with such grace and ease in their iPhone app. The most important to me being subtasks to create "projects" and "checklists", both which *require* sub-tasks (in all honesty, Toodledo can still handle this in the free version, but the subtasks show up as regular tasks. For you, it may not matter, but I like seeing where they are associated and also be able to hide them to remove the clutter). To demonstrate this, I suggest that you visit Appigo's site and watch some of the screencasts. It helped me better understand what the capabilities are, and is partially what sold me on this iPhone app over others. I also first downloaded the Appigo Todo Lite app, which is free, signed up for the free account at Toodledo and upgraded to the free 7 day trial of the Toodledo Pro account to check it all out together. The Todo Lite app only allows 10 tasks total, but it was enough for me to see the benefits over other solutions out there. By the way, checklists and projects seem to be considered 1 task for the limitation, but there is also a limit of about 5 subtasks for these in the lite version (NOT in the full version).

I suppose I should give a little background on my situation regarding task management so you can better understand what I was looking for in a system. I've read the book "Getting Things Done" (GTD), by David Allen, and think it has a lot of value. I never felt that it was 100% for me, and that it honestly felt like way too much work for my life (still VERY much worth reading to garner the wisdom it has and take away what makes sense for you). Maybe I'm just not that important, or have enough going on in my life to need its extensive system… but I'm also not the only one that feels this way. There are a LOT of great principles and ideas in GTD, so I took some of those and tried to create my own system. I also tried to incorporate some of Covey's principals as well. I tried to use the GTD plug-in for Outlook, but even that was way too complex, even when I pared it down to simply filing mail around from the inbox. Also, the "Tasks" system in Outlook is kind of lame, and trying to incorporate this into a mobile device is even worse. On top of all this, Outlook is confined to a single desktop where it is installed (without creating some convoluted sync strategy).

So, some of the features I was looking for pertained to the idea of being able to access my lists from ANYWHERE! This basically dictated a web-based backend that also synced with an iPhone app for offline use. Another requirement was the ability to create "projects", those being tasks with multiple sub steps/tasks in order to complete that major task/goal. GTD talks about the importance of "contexts", those being situations or places you might be in where certain tasks apply. For instance, "Fill car with gas" would have a context of @car, because you need to perform the action with your car. You get the idea. I use these to some degree, but not to the extent of what David Allen suggests… just what makes sense to my life and workflow (and trying to keep things as simple as possible). David Allen also talks about the importance of emptying your mind of the clutter/stuff that you have to remember to do. He talks about getting these into your "inbox" (real or virtual) to be dealt with and organized later. Then there is the mantra of, "getting IN to empty", which refers to the process of clearing out, or catagorizing your tasks into the correct buckets from, your inbox daily so that too is not a burden on your mind. -To add more later--

Toodledo offers all of this, and they even have an app for the iPhone for only $2.99 (on sale at the time of writing this). I thought about getting the Toodledo iphone app, but I thought Appigo's Todo app offered more, plus Todo allows me to attach to Toodledo's OR Remember The Milk's web backend. Also, there was no lite version of the Toodledo app for the iPhone to allow me to try it out. Just a couple screenshots and a short description. Basically, Toodledo's focus didn't seem to be on the iPhone app, which is perfectly fine, and Appigo seems completely focused on making the Todo iPhone app better. I think the screencasts alone speak volumes about the company.

Toodledo also offers a referral program to help out with the cost of the Pro account. Their program essentially is: if someone uses your referral link to sign up for a Pro account, they extend your Pro account's expiration 3 months... EACH time they renew! What this means is, if you get 4 people to follow your referral link and purchase AND maintain a Pro account, you would never have to pay to renew your Pro account and have it forever. So, if you are interested in signing up for a Toodledo Pro account, or any account, and found my review to be helpful, I sure would appreciate you using any of the links on this page because they are my referral link. ;-)

Some of the competition that I looked at and tried:

• Remember The Milk (RTM) - The RTM iPhone app was actually pretty solid, but I really didn't like the web interface of it at ALL, and I spend a LOT of time at a desktop computer where I need to access and edit my tasks. Not only that, but I didn't like the idea of having to pay $25/yr to be able to use my iPhone app and sync between. Toodledo offers a free account that syncs with Appigo's Todo, so I could always stop paying for Pro on Toodledo and still be able to have a synchronized solution.
  
• Nozbe - Nozbe offers a free iPhone application, and it looked to have some decent components to it, BUT... their web site account will cost you OVER $60 a year!! No thanks!
  
• OmniFocus - OmniFocus is a full featured app and elegant, but there is no web backend... AND, they only have a Mac client (not PC) that will sync with the iPhone app over wifi (note, NOT wirelessly over cellular... you have to be on the SAME subnet as the Mac where OmniFocus is running). This also means that the synchronization is not "automatic", whereas I was able to setup the Appigo Todo app to sync every time it starts up automatically. This is still not perfect (would need sync at startup and shutdown), but it certainly helps. And there is a sync button always present so I can sync without navigating to do so.
  
• Things - This, to me, is very similar to OmniFocus. I think it looks great a feature rich, but once again you have a Mac only backend that only syncs over wifi when you are on the same network as your Mac. No thanks. Too bad too.
  
• Pocket Informant - I used to use, and love, Pocket Informant on my Windows Mobile phones. Back then I thought it was great and pulled everything together. So when I saw that it was available for the iPhone AND could sync with Toodledo, I was excited. But when I installed the lite version and tried it out, I was sorely dissappointed. It felt WAY too busy and cluttered to me now (having used the iPhone built in calendar app, etc) and it also did not utilize the built-in iPhone apps (like calendar and contacts, etc). So it only lasted about a day on my iPhone before I gave up on it.
  
• EasyTask Manager - EasyTask Manager was a free iPhone app, so it made it onto my device quickly. However, it did not sync with a backend web site, and it wasn't incredibly elegant. It wasn't bad, but just not good enough. Unlike OmniFocus and Things, at least it has a desktop client for BOTH the Mac or PC to sync with. However, the client is kind of ugly, and don't make me repeat the wifi sync option. ;-)
  

So, if you are looking for a task management solution, I can highly recommend the combination of Appigo's Todo iPhone app and Toodledo web application. Being able to quickly empty those thoughts so I can organize them later is invaluable to me, as well as not being limited on where and when I can access my system.

-- Post From My iPhone via Blogpress