Vitalist - Another GTD Web App
Posted on February 18, 2007
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I received an email the other day from Robert of Vitalist Solutions suggesting that I have look at Vitalist. Vitalist is another web application aimed at helping folks “Get Things Done” the GTD way. After playing with it for just a couple hours, I think Vitalist is definitely on the right track.
The origins sound familiar:
Vitalist was born in early 2005 when we could not find any adequate web-based software that worked well with the “Getting Things Done” system of personal organization. After searching the web, we found many people who felt the same way we did. Most solutions we read about involved keeping track of several word documents or setting up an intricate folder system in an email application. We wanted a more elegant solution, so we decided to build Vitalist.
The result seems to nail it too. I’m actually impressed enough to ponder the idea of migrating from my Tracks install. Ponder… not commit…yet… I’m at the point where switching GTD apps is getting to be a major pain. I’ve been with Tracks for quite a few months now; there’d be a lot of data to move! (hey, we need a GTD data interchange format [XML of course!])
Interesting tidbit: It supports recurring actions. For instance, I can set an action for work to service pack all my dev servers on a monthly recurring schedule. Neater yet, it supports iCal, so getting stuff like this into a calendar is a breeze. Cooler? SMS alerts are also an option.
Speaking of nifty things to support, there’s Google Gadget support for pretty much all the views. Just click the little Google link to get the code and follow the simple instructions and you’re done. Maybe if we all ask nicely we could get something similar for Netvibes. To be fair though, it does offer feeds from every view, so integration with non-Google stuff should be reasonably easy. Just not interactive, of course.
[Update 2/20/07: Netvibes support just added and a new icon on the bar pictured below]
You see this bar above all views:
Cool, huh? Flexibility.
I like that it can do email/SMS reminders of next actions. Also, when viewing “actions” re-sorting is as simple as a quick drag’n'drop. Love that. Oh, and I love the way the inbox works. You can quickly dump stuff off in there to be processed later as time allows. No need to add to category/context at the time.
Long term, Robert tells me that they’re exploring some interesting ideas around a calendar view and more collaboration options (business or team flavors) . They’ve also realized that folks all use the GTD fundamentals in different ways, so they’re looking at some more customization options as well.
The free option is very serviceable. Pay $5/month to lose the right column of Google ads, gain file attachments, sharing/collab and SSL support.
What would be cool? The ability to email something into the inbox. Then users could put stuff into the inbox from anywhere they have an email client; and heck, that’s almost always faster than browsing to a web page. Just jot it, email it and catch it later when processing the Vitalist inbox. Also, perhaps some formatting options for the Notes field used for actions and reference. Even something basic like LaTeX or wiki markup would suffice just to be able to do some rudimentary text formatting. And finally, the “upgrade to premium” message on the dashboard could be a bit less obtrusive perhaps?
[Update 2/19/07: Vitalist users can now send email to the Vitalist inbox!]
There’s also a companion blog. It’s a bit young yet, but the articles there are quite useful and worth a read. The blog is how I found the (useful) knowledge base.
Final tip: While navigating around the app, pay attention to the left sidebar. Useful contextual stuff pops up there. Until I noticed it, I was a bit confused about managing projects and contexts (add/deleting). Oh, and when creating a new context, don’t preface the context name with “@”. That’ll just hose things up — Vitality will do that for you (add the “@”, not hose things up!).
Overall? I’m very impressed. There’s a lot here to like.
Tags: GTD, NetVibes, tasks, Tracks, Vitalist
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For implementing GTD you might try out this web-based application:
Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version is available too.
As with the last update, now Gtdagenda has full Someday/Maybe functionality, you can easily move your tasks and projects between “Active”, “Someday/Maybe” and “Archive”. This will clear your mind, and will boost your productivity.
Hope you like it.