<title> Total ReQall: How Far to Go?</title>

Total ReQall: How Far to Go?

(Photo via reQall)

ReQall is an online cloud service that I’ve been trying out for the past few months. It has definite advantages for time strapped people who use mobile phones a lot, don’t have time to type and want to keep on top of their task list. It has a lot going for it though it could do with additional improvements.

THE GOOD

ReQall is great to for taking down spur of the moment notes. Its online interface is wonderful because of the quick entry box (which reminds me of Omnifocus). It also has strong integration with Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, RSS and Evernote though most of those options are available only in the Pro version.

ReQall’s major advantage over online services like Evernote (which I love a lot by the way) is that it can translate your voice messages into text, which saves you from having to re-type your notes. These transcribed voice messages are saved to their online system and can be reached by your mobile phone or computer.

The free version is more than enough for most people. The other advantage is that you can edit your tasks offline on your cell phone or computer. Evernote’s standard version doesn’t allow that.

THE BAD

The process of turning your voice to text doesn’t always work perfectly and this is usually due to the strength of your microphone. The iPhone 3G that I use definitely doesn’t give that kind of power. Turning your voice to text also takes some time — sometimes as long as 10 minutes.

ReQall doesn’t allow you to organize tasks differently or in custom projects. They only have set categories like Memory Jogger, Shopping List, Today List and People. There’s no way to setup a Getting Things Done style of organization with contexts.

THE IMPROVEMENTS

The ability to edit each item’s name or description from the web overview or main window would make things easier for users rather than having to drill down and then edit.

The web panel needs more drag and drop capability. Having to select each individual action and switch its categories really kills the flow.

Being able to export the different task lists (or the entire one) to popular outline formats like OPML or mind map forms would be a huge advantage. This is useful to you because it makes it easy to back up the whole thing and use it in another task manager system.

The point is to make everything play as nicely as possible with everything else (talk the same language).

For now, I use Evernote more simply because it allows me to take notes (and categorize) in a way that a task management system like ReQall doesn’t allow (for now). If reQall improves I might switch back to using it more often. If you’ve used ReQall before do you have anything else to add about what’s good, bad or could be improved?

RESOURCES

reQall for the iPhone

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Sunny Lam is a “change agent” consultant at sunnylam.ca who a co-founding co-coordinator and semi-city farmer (guardian) at FoodCycles city farm (http://foodcycles.org). Sunny is also a crazy coffee drinking fanatic who chooses local roasted, organic and/or fair trade whenever possible — his current record daily high is 6 cups.