Google provides a lot of big-name services — in fact, depending on how you qualify a “service,” there are over a hundred items that you could add to this list. However, these have varying levels of success and get various levels of attention, with Buzz and YouTube forms opposite sides of this spectrum. One item that resides safely in the middle is Google Tasks. Tasks, while a neat tool for anyone who wants to make a quick note, is mostly seen as an addition to Google Calendar and Gmail, and not as a standalone product. Upcoming changes, however, may just alter your idea of what Google Tasks is.
According to the Gmail Blog post, the Tasks team has been listening carefully to the demands of those who use it — including some 17,000 individuals who participated in a vote for the most wanted upcoming products. They have now prioritized these new features and are working hard at adding them to the mix. These items are:
- Task reminders. Get notifications, such as popups or emails, on Google tasks.
- Repeating tasks. Set tasks to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, on weekdays, etc. — likely akin to what you have now in events in Google Calendar.
- Shareability. Share your task lists or make them public.
- Overdue tasks. Make overdue tasks stand out visually.
- Public API. The tasks API will be made available for developers, including for synchronization purposes.
In many ways, what we’re seeing is the functionality of Google Calendar for your to-do list. Considering that many, including yours truly, use Google Calendar instead of Tasks because it works better to keep track of to-do items, this seems like a solid move.
Although Google doesn’t mention the completion date for any of these tasks, they do imply that you should expect to see them implemented “throughout the year.”
