Best GTD Apps

bcmyers2112 said:
For instance, @Longstreet loves Nirvana and @TesTeq is a big Nozbe fan, and both promote their preferences at every opportunity. Personally, neither software option really bangs a gong for me. So, clearly I'm wrong or @TesTeq and @Longstreet are, and either they or I must quit GTD and walk away from this forum for good. Or perhaps the only way to settle this is a good mud wrestling match.
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I'm in! Let's do the MW-GTD-A (Mud Wrestling GTD App) championships in Amsterdam in June 2019 during The GTD Summit! @Longstreet ;)
 
Alejandro Fonseca said:
Why has no one mentioned Outlook? What does one do with their email using Nirvana or Nozbe?
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If I have an email that I determine is actionable and I can't do it in 5 minutes or less, I forward it to Nirvana for processing. It shows up in the Nirvana inbox. I save the original email in an @actions folder in Outlook. Works beautifully for me. :D
 
Alejandro Fonseca said:
Why has no one mentioned Outlook? What does one do with their email using Nirvana or Nozbe?
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One of the advantages of GTD is that you can make it work using whatever tools you like.

I created a custom AppleScript for TaskPaper. To use it, I select the e-mail in Apple Mail, and I invoke the script with a keyboard shortcut. The script then captures the data that I want, and formats it into a task, with a live link to the e-mail (which continues to work even if the e-mail is archived or placed into a folder). This task is filed as the top item in my Communications project. It all happens in less than a second.

Example:

Communication:
- Respond to: Getting Things Done® Forums — 12/7/18 — Best GTD Apps - New message in watched forum — message://%3c751021f22b56189295228f434161390978cf34a5@forum.gettingthingsdone.com%3e — @start(2018-12-07)
 
Nirvana and Todoist are two of the best around. Outlook is pretty legit too, especially if you sync with your mobile device using Companionlink/Dejaoffice.

But, flat lists on index cards (one card per context) are surprisingly solid as heck if you’re a visual person. Paper can be a great app!
 
Alejandro Fonseca said:
Why has no one mentioned Outlook? What does one do with their email using Nirvana or Nozbe?
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In Nozbe you don't have to use email at all (within your team). You delegate tasks via Nozbe without the need to attach files and without a fear that you forgot to attach something. That's the next level of productivity - beyond Outlook! :cool:
 
Longstreet said:
If I have an email that I determine is actionable and I can't do it in 5 minutes or less, I forward it to Nirvana for processing. It shows up in the Nirvana inbox. I save the original email in an @actions folder in Outlook. Works beautifully for me. :D
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By the way: how secure is "forward to {Nirvana,OneNote,...}" for processing?

Actually, I can answer my own question: probably not secure at all.

Standard email systems have little in the way of authentication on email. So, unless you restrict yourselves to ascii text - not ascii text that looks like MIME, and certainly not HTML - it's a risk.

If your email client can apply a Private/Public cryptographic signature to email you forward to {Nirvana,OneNote,...}, then *maybe* I would trust it.

BTW - for real, this time - I used to do such forwarding all the time. I really miss it. I would hope that there are email clients and mail gateways to GTD apps that are properly secured in this way - but I am afraid that I don't know of them.
 
AFG said:
By the way: how secure is "forward to {Nirvana,OneNote,...}" for processing?

Actually, I can answer my own question: probably not secure at all.

Standard email systems have little in the way of authentication on email. So, unless you restrict yourselves to ascii text - not ascii text that looks like MIME, and certainly not HTML - it's a risk.

If your email client can apply a Private/Public cryptographic signature to email you forward to {Nirvana,OneNote,...}, then *maybe* I would trust it.

BTW - for real, this time - I used to do such forwarding all the time. I really miss it. I would hope that there are email clients and mail gateways to GTD apps that are properly secured in this way - but I am afraid that I don't know of them.
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I don’t really understand your security concerns. Things, for example, uses a long, pseudorandom email address and strips messages down to text, which are encrypted for transmission. It seems low risk overall, certainly lower than email itself.
 
I don't see where the risk is. Like, with HTML etc, are you worried that someone would send malicious code to your NirvanaHQ inbox? Pretty sure they all sanitize the input and nothing is actually executed or run. (cf. this XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/327/)

Or are you worried that someone might send tasks to your inbox to mess with your head? They'd still have to somehow get a handle on that long pseudorandom string (like, Todoist emails go to an address that's just a bunch of numbers and letters) that uniquely identifies your inbox.

I think FacileThings just uses a generic "inbox@facilethings.com" and thus someone would "just" need to spoof your email address to send stuff to your inbox. But even then, what's the end game here? Annoy the heck out of you by flooding the inbox? Well, if they want to be a pain in the butt, and they can spoof your email address, there's more pressing concerns.
 
Lagerbaer said:
I don't see where the risk is. Like, with HTML etc, are you worried that someone would send malicious code to your NirvanaHQ inbox? Pretty sure they all sanitize the input and nothing is actually executed or run.
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Like I said, the secure thing to do is to sanitize things to ASCII text.

No links to web pages - which can be malicious.

No images - which can overflow your image renderer.

Anything that is not straight simple ASCII is vulnerable. Heck, even unicode can be vulnerable.

If the only thing that I can use "Email to my GTD app" for is ascii text, it greatly reduces the utility. The thing that I most want to send is to forward email (from Gmail, or Outlook) to my GTD system. Very little of my email is text.




Lagerbaer said:
I think FacileThings just uses a generic "inbox@facilethings.com" and thus someone would "just" need to spoof your email address to send stuff to your inbox. But even then, what's the end game here? Annoy the heck out of you by flooding the inbox? Well, if they want to be a pain in the butt, and they can spoof your email address, there's more pressing concerns.
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Umm, there aren't very many widely used email systems in which they cannot easily spoof your email address.


Lagerbaer said:
Things, for example, uses a long, pseudorandom email address
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That's first step - but if the long pseudorandom email address is static, then it is just security through obscurity.

If that long pseudorandom email address ever leaks out - e.g you may have forwarded it somewhere like a mailing list - it is no longer secure.

The next step would be to sign (or encrypt and sign) the messages. But, of course, very few of us use encrypted email.
 
Has anyone looked at everdo? Its interface is very similar (almost copied) to nirvana's but the background is different. I think it is rather new app on the market.
everdo.net
 
Mateusz said:
Has anyone looked at everdo? Its interface is very similar (almost copied) to nirvana's but the background is different. I think it is rather new app on the market.
everdo.net
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No, I have not. But since I use Nirvana, I don't see any reason to switch based on what I see on their website.
 
I just wanted to mention this app. The owner (also main developer) seems to be very engaged and honest guy. I switched to nirvana and I will stay with it but good to know about others.
 
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