Hi, John. I am pretty much in tune with your objectives but very
different on how to get there. I would like to see things turn into
tasks. My most-longed-for example would be to come upon something that's
broken and needs fixing, and rather than composing an essay to myself
about what needs doing, just snap a picture and mark it to-do.But I
don't want to see MLO trying to build and maintain a thousand interfaces
to a thousand apps, nor do I want to see a thousand app building MLO
interfaces and asking for support.
One more thing I don't want is to be carrying around MLO on my phone and
have tasks with links to documents on my desktop or vice versa. Or to
see MLO trying to invent a web storage facility where you can keep all
your documents, to compete with Google's and Apple's and Microsoft's and
Amazon's web storage.
I would like to see an HTML5 interface for viewing and marking
completion of tasks directly in your cloud file (together with massive
security improvements for the cloud files)
I would like to see an API with five functions:
1. give me all the details for an item (folder/project/task) with a
specific item ID
2. give me all the details for the first item in a particular view,
whenever there is a new item in that spot
3. Add/modify/delete a specific item
4. give me all the details of a specific context
5. add/modify/delete a specific context
Then I would like to see browser apps to implement MLO functionality
using the API
But more importantly I would like to see interoperability tools like
IFTTT connect to the API. This way, I could define rules like:
When an email arrives from someone in my "customer" address group, add a
task to MLO with context #customers.
When I complete a task with the context #mailroom, send a text message
to the mailroom guy's phone asking him to come by for a pickup
When the sun goes down, close the @Yardwork context
When I tag a photo with the #to-do tag, make a task with the #photo
context (would love to embed the photo but that's a different story. )
When I arrive at a location MLO has tied to a context, if there is an
overdue task for that location, call my phone and read the task note.
For each of these things, MLO would be responsible for creating,
modifying and completing tasks and contexts and displaying customized
views of tasks. Other apps would have the responsibility of watching for
emails from a particular group, sending text messages and phone calls,
posting a notice that the sun has set, tracking tags on photos, etc. An
interoperability tool (like IFTTT - if you have not used it please check
it out) maintains the rules (recipes) and glues it together.
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid on Windows, Cloud and Android SGN2
On 10/25/2015 11:39 AM, John . Smith wrote:
Hello
Where is MLO evolving towards?
I woke up in the night thinking that the ideal "task manager"
application should be able to make "tasks" out of various things -
simply by right-clicking on them from elsewhere. e.g.
- documents (text, msWord Docs, spreadsheets, mind maps etc)
- media (Images, movies, vector diagrams, flow diagrams, etc)
- Emails & appointment & Contacts (i.e. msOutlook type data)
For this to work, it would be good if all of the above (including
individual emails) were available as individual external files in the
operating system. i.e. It should be possible to *associate* more or
less any external file with a new Task. And ideally with existing
tasks too.
Re-thinking "tasks" from the ground up...
In order to make something into "a task" (i.e. "a thing that I intend
to do"), there are various things that need to be associated with a
task. Most of these already occur within MLO. (The only exception is
Area of Focus - which is not a field as such in MLO).
HOW IT FITS IN
- Area of focus (areas of live)
- Major Project name(s?) (maybe use a dropdown list?)
- Sub-project name(s)
WHEN TO EXECUTE IT
- Due date
- Start date
- contexts (moods/mode/locations of user)
- goal (time based)
PRIORITY
- stars (do today)
- urgency
- importance
SEARCHABILITY
- text tags (as done by Evernote)
- Other users involved
MARKUP (quick visual search within a screen)
- flags
- bold
- colours
OTHER
- Dependency (other tasks that must happen first)
- Review date (when to see/revisit it)
- Recurrence data (when and how often it happens again)
Within MLO one would then have have all manner of views and reports
that the user can customize much like we currently have. (IMHO, the
major thing currently missing would seem to be decent calendar showing
Start Date and End Date for tasks, particularly if they are Goals).
But "fair is fair" and I think any MLO Task should be readily
accessible by other applications. Surely the simplest way to do this
would be for each task should be stored in as a FILE in the O/S.
Either that or all Task data is all stored in a standardised open
source database (which in some ways is what an o/s "file" is in any
case, no?)
I guess what I am really saying is that I don't like the way that MLO
and many other applications for that matter, have ring-fenced
structures. It is stupid to have to send a copy of an email to MLO in
order for it to be associated with an MLO Task. Surely it would be
better to have a *single* master copy of each email - which should be
editable and deletable globally.
An alternative is of course to have a full-on, formal API for MLO and
to allow other applications to see and edit all tasks. But that feels
painfully clunky. After all, it's hard to imagine Wouldn't it be
better to have "one file - one task" and no API required?
Likewise as MLO expends, it is surely bonkers for MLO to have to
re-invent it's own document editor in order to store text with fonts
markup, colour, layout, URLs and ultimately embedded images/movies etc.
And it also seems a bit bonkers for MLO to have to re-invent an entire
Calendar way of viewing (Day, Weekly, Monthly views plus List views).
And I don't think that just using Open Source code gets you there
either. I think what I'm arguing for is to effectively have "Open
Source Data" that is easy for other applications to edit and which
conforms to certain agreed Open standards. i.e. To have "open data" /
"open content" [??] that is open across any one user's PC / mobile
device / cloud.
The alternative seems to be that as MLO expands the reach of it's own
universe (of data that it can us) it gets more an more bloated, with
more an more stuff for users to learn their way around. AND worse, the
user has duplicate copies off stuff (e.g. emails) all over the place.
TBH, I am at the limits of my technical knowledge on this, and have no
wish for a detailed technical discussion. I am simply arguing the case
from /the user's /perspective.
To what extent do I have a point?
J
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