[Russell]

I'll come out saying that I have used kGTD and right now I'm using both iGTD and the sneaky peek builds of OmniFocus.

Reading some posts comparing iGTD and OmniFocus, I came up with some ideas for OF...

- Inbox item count on the OF icon
I like how iGTD displays the inbox item count on the dock icon, just nice to
see how your inbox looks without opening the window

- auto read task text
This might be something that is already in the works, just not released.
iGTD is nice in that it has fields for links to webpages or files on your Mac, and also Address Book contacts, but the fields do clutter up the interface a bit.
What if OF could auto-detect weblinks or Address Book contacts in the task text?
This could be similar to the way OmniOutliner handles web addresses.
With contacts, OF could compare names against Address Book and pull up the results automatically and link to the Address Book contact.

- linking to other apps
Along with the above, it would be nifty if OF played well with other apps such as Mail (especially with MailTags), Journler, and others...


These are just some ideas that came to me. I'm not trying to turn OF into iGTD. I think these two apps are shaping up to be the 2 titans of GTD Mac apps, but so far I like both for different reasons. OF just looks better to me right now, the interface is not cluttered with tabs and fields. Also, I like the organization of tasks and projects with the visual representation of folders and index cards in OF.

We'll see how OF shapes up. I have high hopes as a lot of people do, I'm sure the Omni team and others associated with OF are feeling the pressure. In fact, I wouldn't be suprised if they were regreting even touching this...

Keep up the great work!

[rjfay]

I love the idea of linking and the autoread. But I'm not sure how I feel about the running count of inbox items. As I understand GTD, the inbox is supposed to be a place where you put things for safe keeping until you process them, but you're supposed to process the inbox on your terms and in your time. A visible counter (and in red, the EMERGENCY color!) needles you to process the inbox on something other than your own terms. That's the reason I quit Mail when I have to work on something. The inbox counter draws my focus from what I'm doing to "what's out there." It's a temptation: "Stop what you're doing." The problem with me is the only thing I can't resist is temptation. So I wouldn't want an inbox item counter prompting me in that way.

However I see the virtue of having some way to count inbox items and to have OF prompt me to process the inbox. I think a good way of doing this would be to establish a preference where the user sets a threshold and then OF prompts the user to process in a way that's similar to an iCal alarm. I set a preference for X inbox items. When that threshold is achieved or crossed, the prompt appears and gives me the choice to a) go process, b) "snooze" for 5 or 10 more items, or c) dismiss the prompt.

Rob