Getting even more things done | Substance of Code

When I crafted the Mobile Task Manager application this summer I didn’t expect it to have that good response in community. It was even mentioned in many blogs like Nokia Mobile Talk and even reviewed on one of my favorite Symbian sites, all about symbian.com, by Ewan Spence. Ewan pointed out good ideas how application could be improved to be even better GTD application for mobile phones.

Splash screen Task list

Last week I miraculously had few spare hours here and there and I was able to improve this app a little based on feedback written on the application page and based on Ewan’s review. Today I’m able to release the version 1.2 of the Mobile Task Manager with the following new features:

You can prioritize todo items (none, low, normal, high)
Priority shown as flags (none, green, yellow, red)
Priority can be changed from item view (left/right key)
…or straight from item list with ’0′ shortcut key
You can sort items by name, done-status or priority
Import items from text file or CSV file
FIX: pressing ’3′ causes the item below the one highlighted to open up for editing
FIX: “Delete selected” will not delete the last entry on a folder
FIX: pressing ’9′ does not work for quick note editing

Unfortunately I had to rename the JAR file in this release as it previously contained the version number so you can’t update your existing instance. From now on I’m keeping the same name (MobileGtd.jar) so future releases are going to update the existing installation. You can download the binaries (JAR/JAD files) from here.

Mobile Task Manager is still open source so if you like to check out the code you can do so in here.

http://nokiaaddict.com gerrymoth

Downloaded, installed and working great on my E55 and E71.

Great application for keeping notes. Thank You
Pingback: UPDATE: Mobile Task Manager v1.2 « nokiAAddict
Steve Evans

I’ll test this on a SE W995. My first impression is that it’s got the potential to be the best stand alone Java task manager currently available for Mobile phones.

Developments I’d like to see:
1) A Help screen which tells you which button performs which function

2) If you delete an item I’d like to see an “are you sure” prompt – this isn’t so important for a single item but you can currently delete a whole tree (and potentially a lot of data) with a single key press.

3) You haven’t yet bitten the bullet and introduced a system of organising tasks by due date but, in the absence of such a feature, would it be possible to develop an option which allows you to view all tasks marked * on a single screen (no matter which folder the item is located in).

4) There’s currently no method of moving a task, group of tasks or a folder from one location to another.
Steve Evans

By the way file import doesn’t appear to work :-(
http://e71bynokia.blogspot.com Pali Madra

The software looks promising and as Steve said it has the potential to be a stand alone software for the phones. Will be reviewing the software on my blog and spread the word.
http://e71bynokia.blogspot.com Pali Madra

I apologize for the double comments.

I wanted to know which mobile phones would this software run on. Will it run on all the mobile phones that support Java?

Thanks in advance.
http://www.substanceofcode.com Tommi Laukkanen

@Steve: I’m working on making the import/export to work flawlessly

@Pali: Yes, Mobile Task Manager runs on all phones that support Java MIDP 2.0.
http://e71bynokia.blogspot.com Pali Madra

@Tommi thank you for the quick reply.

I have just finished the post on Mobile Task Manager. I have also added a demo video of Mobile Task Manager. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iML32sMjKo. If you feel that edits are needed please let me know and I will fix them. (this is my 2 cents for the amazing piece of code)

Thanks for the great app.
http://www.substanceofcode.com Tommi Laukkanen

@Pali: Awesome video! I’m curious how did you record the video? It seems like it was recorded by using Nokia E71?
http://e71bynokia.blogspot.com Pali Madra

Thank you for adding the video to your blog.

As far as the software is concerned I used Mobiola® Web Camera 3 which can be found at http://www.warelex.com/products/webcam/. I highly recommend the software specially if you give lots of demo.

Tommi your software section is amazing man. Thank you for developing such nice applications. I will have to review all of them on my blog for all the applications deserve all the reviews specially because they are open source (and I will create the video demos for free!).

Honestly, you should be charging for some of those.

Keep up the good work.
Steve Evans

Something for the future perhaps: I noticed from the video that a few times the demonstator managed to tick tasks as completed when he was actually trying to move between tasks. This happened because the “fire” / 5 button performs different functions depending upon where the cursor is – if a folder is selected then the contents of the folder are displayed but if a task is selected then the task gets marked as complete – perhaps it would be more consistent to use the “fire” button for a single purpose so, if a a task is selected, pressing the fire button would display the note associated with that task. Perhaps the “Mark task as completed” action could then be reassigned either to a menu or to the “1″ key which currently displays full details of the task.