Alfred, Remember the Milk

After toying with Google Tasks as a way of managing my life (or at least the parts of my life not already managed by Trac), today I’m experimenting with Remember the Milk, with hopes of finding, in its single-minded focus on task management, a more fulfilling solution.

After getting the iPad and iPod apps set up, getting the email-to-tasks chain flowing, the next task is getting (the excellent) Alfred app up and running for easy task entry from anywhere.

Here’s how I did it.

Step One: Install rumember

This is a handy command line Remember the Milk utility. Install as follows, from the command line:

git clone https://github.com/tpope/rumember.git
cd rumember
sudo gem build rumember.gemspec
sudo gem install rumember-1.0.0.gem

Run ru from the command line the first time and a browser will open Remember the Milk requesting permission to access the application; one you grant this once you don’t need to do it again. Once you’ve done this, you can test the utility from the command line like:

ru Setup Alfred for Remember the Milk

Step Two: Setup for Alfred

Open the Alfred Preferences window and click on the Terminal section:

Click on the + at the bottom of the list to add a new command, and enter the following:

• Title: Remember the Milk
• Description: Add a Remember the Milk Task
• Keyword: r (this can be anything you like – rtm or task… anything)
• Command: ru {query}
• Optionally, grab this official icon and drag it into the icon field.

And click Save:

Make sure you check the Silent checkbox beside your new command to prevent a Terminal window from opening when you access the command:

Step Three: Use It!

…results in:

I’ve only been a Remember the Milk user for a few hours now, but I’ve already upgraded to the $25/year “pro” level – partly just because I admired the gentle on-ramp provided for this, where everything works fine and dandy at the “free” level, but just works better once you pay up. I’ll report back in a few weeks on how I make out with it…