iOS: Due is a simple iOS app that manages your tasks, alerts you when their due date has arrived, and also provides you with simple, re-usable “egg timers” for time you need to schedule right away. More »
Blog Archives
Due is a Simple and Quick Reminder App for Your iPhone [Video]
Posted on November 15, 2010
Create Your Own One Goal Taskbar Reminder [Windows]
Posted on July 1, 2010
Unitasking is all the rage these days, and sometimes all you need to stay on task is an always-visible reminder of that one thing you should be doing. Here’s how to create a single-goal taskbar reminder with the Windows scripting application, AutoHotkey. More »
Microsoft Windows – Windows – Windows 7 – Utilities – Shareware
Tomorrow’s April Fools’ Day; Prepare Yourself and Enjoy These Geek Pranks [Reminders]
Posted on March 31, 2010
Tomorrow’s April Fools’ Day, the one day a year that regularly upstanding publications push all sorts of nonsense and pranks are the rule of the day. Aside from offering this as a helpful reminder to take the crazy/exciting/incredible news you hear across the internet tomorrow with a grain of salt, we’d also like to remind you, if you’re the pranking sort, to check out these 10 harmless and awesome geek pranks. Be good, now! More »
Remindd Sends Email and SMS Reminders [Reminders]
Posted on May 20, 2009
There's a reason "Out of sight, out of mind" is such a common phrase—people forget things. Enter web site Remindd, a super simple solution to remembering events and appointments that should not be forgotten.
Once you've created an account, using the site is straightforward. Enter your reminder name, set a date and time for your reminder, and you're all set. You'll receive an alert via email—and SMS, if selected—five minutes before the time you chose. If you don't enter a time, your reminder will arrive at 12 AM. Be sure to set your time zone; the default is Eastern time.
Remindd sends SMS reminders through Zeep Mobile. SMS is a free option for the US only, although your standard carrier charges apply. Remindd isn’t the sole contender in the reminder market (we love Google Calendar for setting events and reminders), but it’s dead simple and works as it should.
Use an Outlook Macro to Stop Forgetting the Subject Line [Outlook]
Posted on May 18, 2009
Windows only: Microsoft Outlook is a powerful tool used worldwide by corporate drones—and with a little macro goodness, it will remind you to attach a subject line to your TPS Reports.
Adding the new macro requires a number of steps, but when you are finished you'll have a reminder to add in a subject line—just like Gmail has by default. You'll need to open up the Visual Basic macro editor, find ThisOutlookSession over in the left-hand treeview, and then paste in the macro into the editor.
Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim strSubject As String
strSubject = Item.Subject
If Len(Trim(strSubject)) = 0 Then
Prompt$ = "Subject is Empty. Are you sure you want to send the Mail?"
If MsgBox(Prompt$, vbYesNo + vbQuestion + _
vbMsgBoxSetForeground, "Check for Subject") = vbNo Then
Cancel = True
End If
End If
End Sub
Once you've saved and closed the macro editor, you should receive a warning anytime you forget the subject line—a very useful trick to avoid sending an unfinished email.
Hit the link for the detailed walk-through screenshot tour. Note: this macro was found on at least half a dozen web sites, so we’re not really sure who the original author is, but the CodeProject link explains the process in the most user-friendly way. For more, check out how to defer sending emails to avoid embarrassment, or take a look through our top 10 Outlook boosters.
Blank Subject Warning for Outlook 2007 [CodeProject]
Email Yourself Reminders From Launchy [Ubergeek]
Posted on March 30, 2009
Reader Ryan writes in with his ubergeeky method for sending emails to himself directly from Launchy—a very useful trick to quickly send yourself reminders.
To accomplish this hack, Ryan assembled a visual basic script (VBS) file that sends the email using Gmail's SMTP server—the email addresses are hard-coded but the subject line can be entered directly in Launchy.
If you want to use this trick for yourself, there's just a few steps to follow along—first, create a new *.vbs file and paste in the following contents, modifying the bold text with your own values.
Set iMsg = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
Set iConf = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
Set Flds = iConf.Fields
schema = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusing") = 2
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserver") = "smtp.gmail.com"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserverport") = 465
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpauthenticate") = 1
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusername") = "MYACCOUNT"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendpassword") = "PASSWORD"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpusessl") = 1
Flds.Update
With iMsg
.To = "EMAILADDRESS"
.From = "NAME <EMAIL>"
.Subject = wscript.arguments.item(0)
.HTMLBody = message
.Sender = " "
.Organization = " "
.ReplyTo = " "
Set .Configuration = iConf
SendEmailGmail = .Send
End With
set iMsg = nothing
set iConf = nothing
set Flds = nothing
Now that you have your script created and ready to go, open up Launchy’s Plugins tab in the options panel, and create a new Runner command pointing to the script. The key step here is to use "$$" in the arguments field—the quotes are important!
Since the example uses “tome” as the command, you can just type “tome” into Launchy, hit the tab key, and then type the subject of the email message. If all goes well, you should see a new email in your Gmail account with the same subject line.
This tip can be used for much more than just sending yourself emails, however—you can make a copy of the script and adjust the To field to quickly send emails to Remember the Milk or any number of other services that accept new items via email. You could even modify the script further to pass in further parameters to your RTM tasks if you really wanted to get geeky with it.Thanks, Ryan!
If you’d rather use your web browser, you can open a new Gmail compose window directly from Launchy. For more on Launchy power tips, read our feature on taking Launchy beyond application launching.
[Sponsored]
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GMinder Puts Google Calendar in Your System Tray [Downloads]
Posted on March 30, 2009
Windows only: System tray application GMinder gives you quick offline display of multiple Google Calendars—and even alerts you of upcoming appointments.
The application was created by reader Greg Todd, who wrote the application for his own use—but decided to release it for the rest of us to enjoy. Using the application is simple—just enter in your Google account information, click the Download button to get your list of calendars, and then select the ones you want to display. The only small issue is that Windows Vista users will need to select a different sound file in the options panel since the default one doesn’t exist on Vista—a small price to pay for an excellent application that bridges the gap between Google Calendar and your Windows desktop. Thanks, Greg!
GMinder is free and open source, available for Windows only. Google Desktop users can also check out the powerful Google Calendar gadget, and readers using Firefox should check out our own Better GCal extension.
How Do I Email Remember the Milk Tasks to a Specific List? [Ask Lifehacker]
Posted on March 9, 2009
Dear Lifehacker,
I forward emails to Remember the Milk to create followup reminders, but they always end up in the inbox. Is there any way I can put them into a different list?
Sincerely,
Following Up
Dear Following Up,
You can do more than just send emails to create a task on a specific list—you can also set the due date, tags, priority, or even make repeat using these instructions from the Remember the Milk help section.
Simply forward your email to your specially formatted secret email address found in the RTM settings panel, and then add any one of the following lines to the beginning of the message body to set the task parameters:
Priority: 1
Due: Monday at 9am
Repeat: Every Week
Estimate: 2 hours
Tags: report coffee
List: Followup
––-
This is a heading for the first note.
––-
The key is to end your list with 3 dashes, to signify to RTM that everything below should be considered a note—and keep in mind that the subject line will be the name of the task in RTM.
Since typing all of that every time you want to forward an email would get really tedious, you can use Lifehacker’s own text substitution utility Texter to do most of the typing for you. Just create a new hotstring similar to this one, which will insert the text anywhere you type “fup1″ and hit the tab key:
The magic piece of text in this hotstring is the %| bit, which will place your cursor right at that location once the text has been inserted—in this example the cursor is left right where the due date is so you can easily type in a date (like "next friday").
You could (and should) add in your own set of options to the Texter hotstrings, or you could even create multiple pre-defined hotstrings for common followup text. Note that sometimes rich text formatting in your email client will confuse Remember the Milk’s parser, so you may want to stick with plain text if possible.
Update: As marness points out in the comments, you can also create custom signatures or something like Outlook’s quick parts in your email client to accomplish the same thing without extra software. Thanks!
Love and Geekery,
Lifehacker
How Can I Sync Bookmarks Across All Browsers? [Ask Lifehacker]
Posted on February 20, 2009
Dear Lifehacker,
How can I sync favorites in Opera, IE7, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox? Is there any way to do it, beside manually export everyone and then painfully editing the HTML?
Best Regards from a Daily Reader
Dear Daily Reader,
For Firefox and Internet Explorer, at least, we’ll whole-heartedly recommend the newly IE-friendly and Safari-friendly Foxmarks. It doesn’t have the password support of its Firefox iterations, but it does do an admirably swift job of keeping your bookmarks and toolbar favorites synced up in the background.
As for Chrome and Opera, well, that’s a trickier task. If you’re using all four browsers equally, you might want to consider using the long-standing, well-tested Delicious as your primary bookmarking tool, since its accessible from anywhere, keeps everything in sync with or without your action, and has handy bookmark bar tools for reading and saving bookmarks from any browser. When you import your bookmarks from any browser, they’ll be set to private by default, saving you a whole bunch of work. The minor pain is that new bookmarks can’t be set to private by default (correct me if I’m wrong, readers!), but it’s truly the only way to keep your bookmarks in sync without a lot of import/export/save shuffling.
Unless, of course, one of our readers have a smart solution for shuttling or syncing each browser's HTML bookmark files around—maybe an AutoHotKey script? A clever use of syncing tool Dropbox, similar to how we utilize it as the ultimate password syncer?
Peace and soul,
Lifehacker