Remember the Milk: Don’t forget to add your tasks

One of the many upcoming Web 2.0 applications is Remember the Milk (RtM), an online personal agenda with the very appealing option to add the locations of your appointments to the map. And yes… it is Beta.

Since this coming weekend is going to be very busy, I decided to enter all my weekend appointments in RtM to see just how it works and if it is really usefull. The interface to add your appointments is quite basic, but with some very usable features.

Adding tasks
For example if you want the appointment set on the coming Saturday, you just have to type ‘saturday’ and RtM automatically adds the date. Other things beside date and time that you can edit for your appointment are Repeat (for scheduling weekly appointments), add Tags, add a URL and last but not least the very promising Location option.

This weekend my appointments are all over the Netherlands, so this is a good opportunity to check the functionality. Adding a street in Rotterdam was very easy, but when I got to my third appointment in Arnheim the location couldn’t be found and it wasn’t even some back alley, it was one of the largest squares. That might have something to do with the Beta phase, let’s hope so. The rest of the locations worked like a charm.

After a couple of minutes getting used to the interface and checking out all the options, I now have my weekend schedule in Remember the Milk complete with all the locations on the map. Adding tasks does take some time though, so just a little helper: If you check more than one task in the Tasks menu and change something it is applied to everything checked. This doesn’t go for the location though.

To remind you of your appointments you can have RtM send you an e-mail, messenger or mobile phone. Too bad the Netherlands isn’t supported (yet), so I’ll just have to work with e-mail which is quite annoying if you’re out a lot.

The Beta potential
Now we’re getting to an important conclusion, because RtM would be a very usefull application (or website) to have available on your mobile phone or PDA. Getting a reminder, complete with location, would be ideal on the road if you don’t have a map ready. If RtM would also add the option of route navigation to get from one appointment to the next, this would be a very usefull application. But these functions aren’t available (yet).

Remember the Milk is a Web 2.0 application with a lot of potential, especially with the recently added location functionality. A lot more needs to be added and done though, but hey… It’s Beta! Although the location function makes this application really stand out among other calender and reminder applications.

And while you’re busy adding your whole calendar to RtM, you might just forget the milk or an important meeting because it is quite time consuming. Because I think I just missed my train to Arnheim…