Tracks - Another GTD Tool
Posted on November 1, 2006
4 Comments
As usual, I’m still investigating “task management” applications. Lately I’ve been looking at things that have more of a “Getting Things Done” (GTD) angle to them. For instance, a bit over a week ago I checked out TaskFreak. It had a lot to like, but not quite enough to convert me. Last night I found Tracks and I’m teetering on the edge — at first glance, this one seems almost perfect.
Like TaskFreak, Tracks handles a variety of ways to organize tasks. You have your “contexts” and you have your projects; Of course, you can list tasks by either. Re-assigning/moving a task is simple as well. Here’s the paragraph that initially hooked me in from the Tracks home page:
The main page shows all your actions sorted by context, but you can also view pages showing just the actions in one context (for when you want to focus on your office tasks, email or errands), or just the actions in one project. You can add as many contexts and projects as you like, and drag them around on the page to change the sort order, so that your more commonly used contexts and projects are at the top of the page. Projects can have attached notes, as can individual actions.
This is why my current favorite, Zoho Planner, is losing a bit of ground as I continue to read and grok the whole GTD thing. It’s not aimed at the GTD crowd, so doesn’t offer quite as much flexibility. One of the main things that has kept me there recently is the ability to have notes associated with a project (as opposed to only with a task). TaskFreak didn’t seem to have that, but Tracks does. Uh oh.
Tracks is a Ruby on Rails app. Similar to TaskFreak, you’re most likely looking at hosting it yourself, either via an install on your PC or at your web host if your blessed with one that offers/allows Ruby on Rails. (there are lots of install related articles at the Tracks site). Zenlist offers hosting (free!) but appears to not always be up. I did a lot of my initial experimenting there last night and was pleased with the response. Tonight it’s only offering “500 - Internal Server Error.” Alas, but hey - we’re talking free here, so I’m certainly not going to pitch a snit. My current web host offers RoR, so I think I’ll be installing this for myself soon. (Dreamhost users, check this thread (and read the comments too)).
Perhaps more to come in the near future as I experiment with this one…
Tags: GTD, lifehack, RoR, TaskFreak, Tracks, zoho-planner
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4 Responses to “Tracks - Another GTD Tool”
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Glad you’ve discovered Tracks! I’m an avid user and contributing developer. If you have ideas about how the product could be improved, please do get involved in the community and help us make Tracks even better.
Cheers,
Luke
Thanks for stopping by, Luke. I’m just getting rolling, but I appreciate the offer to get involved. Be very scared… I might take you up on it!
If you loved tracks, you might want to give a try to http://www.taskwriter.com also