Google Finally Puts Tasks On The iPhone

I noticed you can now get your Google Tasks on the iPhone with a very pleasing user interface. Even though its web based, it has pretty much everything you could possibly want from a simple and easy to use task management system.

The simplicity of this product is amazing. You can create and manage separate tasks lists, and create or remove tasks from the iPhone.

Couple of drawback I can see right off the bat:

• Can't move a task from one list to another


• Can't set a default list to show


• Tasks aren't ranked


• Can't see a list of all active tasks, if you have more than one list

But for basic task management, this is a good first stab. I know Google will release more features as it carefully tracks usage.

Here are a few screen shot from my iPhone

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Gmail Adds Tasks But Still Has A Ways To Go

Google Labs introduced Tasks as an add-on to their Gmail product yesterday. I've spent the past week looking for a good task manager, specifically one that works on the iPhone, and on the Web. So it was a timely surprise to see they added this feature.

The official Gmail blog gives some instruction on how to turn tasks on, and where you can find the task list. I'm not sure I like the list opening up in the same location as the Chat. That's part of the reason I don't use the Gmail web based chat tool. It's clunky.

However, the coolest part of tasks is I can select one or more email, and under the More Actions drop down, choose to create a task. Even Outlook doesn't support this nativley.

Here are a couple of other features of note:

• You can pop out the task window and move it around on your desktop. This should eliminate neededing to keep the Gmail screen focused in your browser.


• You can create different lists. A tasks list wouldn'e be complete without the ability to group items.


• Creating sub tasks is easy with an indent feature.


• The ability to add a due date and add notes. This is very cool. If you want to keep a running tab of things as you progress towards completion, the notes section is just the place.

I think I'll spend some to create a simple Getting Things Done (GTD) workflow using Gmail Tasks. Shouldn't be too difficult with the ability to create seperate task lists.

The biggest draw back, and maybe the deal killer for a lot of people, is that tasks are not support on the mobile platform yet. That is a real disappointment for me. Remember The Milk and many others have web/mobile combinations, and you would think Google would have made that combination a priority.

I suspect a mobile version will quickly follow once the features catches on. Makes no sense to use tasks if you spend most of your time on a mobile device.

One more feature I would like to see added are notification of uncompleted tasks sent with the daily events list.

[update]

Thanks to a great question from @utahcon, he brought up the fact it was difficult at first to find the Tasks link. So here is a picture of where you can find the link. Also, don't forget, use the keyboard short cut Shift-T when you have items selected to create a new task.

[image title="Taks Link In Gmail" size="medium" id="991" align="none" linkto="full" ]

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Google Sends Me 98% Of My Traffic

I was looking through Google Analytics™ web analytics service this morning, and of all traffic sent to my blog from search engines, 98% came from Google. Of course the stats came from Google, so I'm not real sure how skewed the numbers are, but that tells me one thing. If I were to focused on making money with this blog, I would do all I could to make sure I capitalize on the Google way of doing things.

Last week I saw a quote that said if eighty percent of your business comes from twenty percent of your products or services, why are you not focusing more on the twenty percent? Are you willing to get rid of the eighty percent that isn't producing? If not, why? If eighty percent of my visitors are looking for help with problems, or for the latest Tumblr theme, maybe I should be looking closer at that.

Another interesting fact I noticed, is the search words are for things that I don't normally talk about, but for some reason my posts make it high enough on the search results that someone clicks through. For example, I have a post about removing sharpie ink from a dry erase board. I wrote that post a long time ago. Its not something I have ever talked about since, but I get a lot of traffic from that post.

The one post I get sear traffic from, by a margin of a 100 to 1, is a post I wrote on a Tumblr theme I created. Its not a spectacular theme, but, interestingly enough, for every 100 hits I get on my site, I get 1000 to this post. I've never written about Tumblr themes nor have I created another Tumblr theme since. I should, for all the traffic driven to my site.

So how do I capitalize on this? I've heard in the past write more about the things people are visiting your website for. My first thought was I don't care anymore about the sharpie ink problem. But maybe it's not so much about the ink problem as it is people are looking for solutions to problems. Now that I can get on bored with.

I'm not an SEO expert, but I would say you can target a lot more of your posts than you are. Think broader. Use a mind map on a topic. I know you can come up with 50 different ways to write how-to's, or creating solutions to problems, or even related problems. For example, I think I'm going to write a blog post on the abnormal passion people have with Sharpie pens. I'm one of them. I treat them like people. I give them names, have different types, thin, think, gigantic. It's almost as bad as a passion for Moleskines.

Give me some examples on how you can expand or broaden you existing blog posts.

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