TOP PICK: Done!

Ever since I got my Palm Pre on a sweltering June morning last year, I’ve been craving a powerful task manager. Other apps have come close (ToDo Classic comes to mind), but none of them have been able to meet my standards for a comprehensive, highly customizable, and cloud-syncing solution.

Enter Done! by Tiger Country Software ($3.23).  If I could break down my feelings on this app in one phrase, I’ll quote one of the reviews in the App Catalog: “Finally, a task manager with some teeth!” Couldn’t have said it better.

[Watch our video review of Done! on YouTube here!]

Let’s start off with what makes Done! so appealing.

For starters, Done! is actually a client for the highly-acclaimed online task manager service, called Toodledo. This free service is, in a word, awesome. Easy to use, highly customizable, and jam-packed with features, it’s become the favorite service of many individuals and even business entities. All you need to get started is an e-mail address. The free service should suit the needs of most folks, but if you pony up the extra dough (from $15-30 a year), you get added features such as the ability to edit shared task lists and/or online cloud storage.

While some webOS task managers offer similar online sync solutions, Done! provides the best integration that we have seen to date. Virtually anything that can be done on Toodledo’s page can be done right on the device: folders, goals, status updates, and contexts can all be created, edited, organized, and reorganized right from your webOS device.  Just like its parent website, Done! supports type-to-search of any task entry. Online sync is also very easy, fast, and highly customizable; you can even have the app sync automatically in the background, if you wish.

Done! utilizes the awesome webOS notification system better than any productivity app we’ve seen so far. When you receive a notification of an upcoming task, a push of the button on the left of the notification allows you to cycle through all your unfinished or upcoming tasks. Another feature we really, really liked was the ability to have upcoming tasks pop up in the notification area at a specified time. For instance, you can have the notification pop up in the morning so you can quickly see your upcoming tasks without even needing to open the app. Really nice.

Because of all the features and customizability we keep raving about, there’s was a slight learning curve before we felt like we could use Done! comfortably. With very little time however, using this app felt like second nature to us. We also really came to appreciate the elegance of the UI and the way the app could be tailored to meet our specific needs.

Done! is not necessarily for everybody: if you feel like a lot of these features are too much, then check out Todo Classic — while less elegant or full-featured, it still packs quite a punch and actually reminds us of Palm’s original task manager (hence the name “Classic!”).

Complaints? They’re minor, but we have a few. For one, we’d like to see more snoozing options and an audible alert with recurring reminders (ala the default webOS calendar). While we’re on the topic of alarms, we really dislike Palm’s obnoxious chime sound this app uses: it scares the hell out of us if we’re not ready for it. We suggest (beg for) individual sounds for individual tasks…  how ’bout it, TCS? Finally, there’s a few Toodledo features that have been left out in Done!, such as sharing of read-only task lists, subtasks, and importing/exporting task lists directly via the device. We feel these would really take Done! to a whole new level. Again, these are more soft suggestions than complaints as we really love this app.

[Reading on your webos device? Watch our YouTube video review of Done!!]