ForumsQuestionsVery quiet here and No News


Very quiet here and No News
Author Message
John_T

Posted: Jun 08, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
Hi All;

No Blog post for May, and haven't seen any update posts here from the developers.
pawelkaleta

Posted: Jun 08, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
Yup, that's how abandonware works...
Purveyor

Posted: Jun 08, 2019
Score: 0 Reference
I've deleted all my tasks. I'm out of here.
jzamoras

Posted: Jun 08, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
my advice is backup tasks every week, just in case
M

Posted: Jun 09, 2019
Score: 0 Reference
Dammit. This makes me so made. I don't blame Jake, but I really hate when good software is killed off.
GSP1963

Posted: Jun 09, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
For what it's worth, I've been looking at task software for individuals (as opposed to teams). The two leading contenders, for me at least, are Remember the Milk and Amazing Marvin. Both are outstanding.

Remember the Milk. This is a straightforward design with no surprises. It's effective and well-built: If you're looking for software that gives you a clear presentation of your data, with a modicum of customizability, this could well be it. The developers are active and engaged with the users. For most individual users who've used and enjoyed Toodledo in the past, this would be a good choice. The RTM Pro account is $40/year.
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Amazing Marvin. I just recently found Marvin and I'm glad I did. It's the most unusual of all the apps I've looked at. The designers have created a modular app, which allows users to turn on and off components (they call them "strategies") for managing your tasks. Some of the strategies are as simple as turning on or off task notes; others are as comprehensive as blocking work out on a weekly calendar by category and displaying the tasks according to which time block you are currently in. As with Remember the Milk, the developers are engaged and constantly improving their product. If you're looking for a fresh approach to managing your tasks that may take your productivity up a notch, Marvin might be it. Marvin offers a free, one-month trial. After that it's $96/year (or $12/month).
https://amazingmarvin.com/


This message was edited Jun 09, 2019.
lonniereeder

Posted: Jun 11, 2019
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by GSP1963:
For what it's worth, I've been looking at task software for individuals (as opposed to teams). The two leading contenders, for me at least, are Remember the Milk and Amazing Marvin. Both are outstanding.

Remember the Milk. This is a straightforward design with no surprises. It's effective and well-built: If you're looking for software that gives you a clear presentation of your data, with a modicum of customizability, this could well be it. The developers are active and engaged with the users. For most individual users who've used and enjoyed Toodledo in the past, this would be a good choice. The RTM Pro account is $40/year.
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Amazing Marvin. I just recently found Marvin and I'm glad I did. It's the most unusual of all the apps I've looked at. The designers have created a modular app, which allows users to turn on and off components (they call them "strategies") for managing your tasks. Some of the strategies are as simple as turning on or off task notes; others are as comprehensive as blocking work out on a weekly calendar by category and displaying the tasks according to which time block you are currently in. As with Remember the Milk, the developers are engaged and constantly improving their product. If you're looking for a fresh approach to managing your tasks that may take your productivity up a notch, Marvin might be it. Marvin offers a free, one-month trial. After that it's $96/year (or $12/month).
https://amazingmarvin.com/


@GSP1963
I checked out Amazing Marvin, what a cool program. The cost is a little high, but that is the type of system I have been looking for and forcing Tooledo into and other apps, into being like. I am going to try the 30 days and see what happens... I might not be back, even though I have 18 months left on my Gold Subscription. Thanks for the info....


This message was edited Jun 11, 2019.
cjbg

Posted: Jun 16, 2019
Score: 3 Reference
@lonnie_reeder
I was in trial mode at Amazing Marvin for about ten days and then purchased the lifetime subscription because Marvin is a great fit for me. I sure hope that this very flexible and well thought out software will have the commercial success that it truly deserves. I think that anyone focused on their personal productivity will benefit greatly by experimenting with Marvin's work flow strategies and daily task screen options. I found that the process of learning about the strategies and thinking about how I could use them was beneficial in of itself. Now that I have access to the Amazing Marvin Facebook group I see that there is support available from users and of course from the developers who are fully engaged and very responsive.

Toodledo has served me well but it appears their future vision targets companies with many users. My own interest is individual productivity and small group collaboration which make Marvin a better fit. As to the cost of the service, I think that most anyone who spends a few hours exploring Marvin's help center and training videos will see that Amazing Marvin can earn it's subscription fee if personal productivity is the goal. The 30 day trial is a generous offer.

The import feature for Toodledo let me bring my tasks over very easily. The only confusion I had was that Marvin treated all tasks as previously scheduled so my "uncompleted" task list behind the link on the My Day screen was huge. I just needed to unschedule or reschedule these tasks to get them off the daily carryover. This initial review of tasks has an upside in that you can check to be sure that each one is set up properly to work with the strategies and smartlists that you have set up.

Amazing Marvin is missing a few features that I have used such as push notifications and collaboration but these are on the list of planned features so I am content to work around these limitations to get the overall benefit of Marvin today.
greginfla_

Posted: Jun 21, 2019
Score: 0 Reference
Amazing Marvin .... not sure. The user interface is a little quirky. Also makes me a little nervous being a two-person development team. I guess is what reminds me of where Toodledo started.
cjbg

Posted: Jun 21, 2019
Score: 0 Reference
@greginfla
I know what you mean about the Marvin user interface...wasn't always intuitive to me at first but I'm used to it now. I think it's fairly consistent which helps and the developers are very responsive to suggestions and feedback based on what I've seen on the Facebook group for members.
The relative youth of the software and small size of the development team is certainly a consideration. The thing that overrode that concern in my case was the power of the software in terms of feature set and how one can configure it to personal workflow, needs and preferences. I'm betting the Marvin succeeds on it's merits so I won't have to switch again but there is a flat file export feature to .csv if it came to that.
greginfla_

Posted: Jun 21, 2019
Score: 0 Reference
Cjbg, Since you sound very familiar with the product can I ask you a few questions and if you want to take this discussion private that’s fine too.

Does amazing Marvin followed the getting things done methods?

Are labels in amazing Marvin the same thing as tags? What’s the limits with labels?

Grid view?

Collaboration?

Workspaces? (Sharing someone eles work screen)

Custom fields?

How are sub tasks associated?

I’ve been playing with amazing Marvin on my iPhone with the mobile website. I need to try it out on my desktop. Because I don’t find it too intuitive on the phone; and it seems to have some formatting issues.

It just saddens the status of toodledo. Well it was always clunky/ugly it was so functional. I’m going to miss it.
cjbg

Posted: Jun 22, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
greginfla,
The phone app is early stage. I find it good for quick reference and marking items complete but I do most work with a browser or the installed app on a computer. I'm keeping a few tasks in toodledo for the push reminders via text and email which are not yet implemented in Marvin.

Marvin lets you customize your workflow by turning "strategies" on and off and then configuring them to do what you want. If you look on the Strategies page from the main menu (top right corner of the main screen) and scroll down through the strategies, you will see that many of them are tagged with GTD. The flexibility in work flow design is the best I've seen and what got me hooked.

Labels in Marvin are very flexible and work with search filters including the built-in RPN used to create complex filters. Smart Lists with advanced filters can be configured to populate your customized work flow. There is also the ability to customize the sidebar.

Table view, collaboration and custom fields are on the product roadmap in the long term 1 year plus section: https://community.amazingmarvin.com/roadmap

Sub tasks of a Task seem to be just a child of the parent task and are useful when one needs just a checklist of task components that can be marked off as completed. More complex relationships are handled either by setting dependency of one task on another or with projects and sub projects which can be multiple layers deep. Projects and sub projects are made up of tasks and sub tasks. Projects in Marvin fall short of a fully featured project management system at this time. Those needing collaboration and project tracking may find something like Clickup.com a better fit. I think Marvin's strength is addressing personal productivity for those who want workflow customization.
jsmail63-reg

Posted: Jun 27, 2019
Score: 4 Reference
I've started using ToDoIst ($36/yr) after spending a bunch of time reviewing all the major alternatives to Toodledo including RTM and others. I still prefer Toodledo overall, but have completely lost confidence that there is going to be any real development done - especially anything for personal (vs. business users). It's just staggering how the new owners promised frequent communication and to listen to the user community but have all but vanished aside from the recent update talking mostly about what they are going to be doing for business users..

It appears that the new owners believe their best opportunity to grow the company is to target business users. Hard to fathom how business users are going to entrust their productivity and critical data to what appears to be a very small company (< 5 employees if I'm not mistaken) that so far have not consistently shown that they can even support the existing (personal) user base. I wish them the best of luck, but it doesn't take a huge leap to see where that business strategy/plan is heading. Not intended to be anything personal and I don't know much about the new owners as individuals, but if you can't adequately support a loyal, die-hard community of long-time users, how are you going to get NEW users - especially those who are likely to have much more demanding expectations as their business success depends on a rock solid tool with great support? Maybe reconsidering what the real business opportunity is (retain the customers you already have, and grow the personal user base) would be worth some strong consideration..

BTW, one REALLY nice feature of ToDoIst is to have a usable and reasonably "modern" mobile app. That alone makes it worth the trade-off on other things I used to love about Toodledo that ToDoIst either doesn't do as well, or at all..
Ob-La-Di+ruben

Posted: Jun 30, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
People say that Toodle team has gone silent? Is Anant still regularly answering posts here anymore? (I only saw one post from him from back on May20 when trying to look around)
Anant G.

Posted: Jul 01, 2019
Score: 1 Reference
Posted by rubenB:
People say that Toodle team has gone silent? Is Anant still regularly answering posts here anymore? (I only saw one post from him from back on May20 when trying to look around)


I am still here and will try to be more active here from now on.
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