Springpad

I have been using Remember the Milk and Evernote to keep track of things.  Remember the Milk is a great app to manage task lists, and Evernote is an application where notes, pictures or documents can be stored.  Both of these applications synchronize with cell phones, so you can access your data when you are not connected.

One way that I have been using these apps for is to keep track of things that I see or hear about will want to get later.  For example, when I see a video game, that I don't necessarily want to buy when it first comes out, I want to keep track of it so I can add it to my Goozex list later.  Also when interesting movies come out in the theater, I write them down, so I can remember to add them to my Netflix queue.

The problem with using Remember the Milk and Evernote is that, those entries are not typed.  So when I want to take a look at the items that I indicated some preference for, I need to remember what the item was from the name.  When I want to get one of the items, I need to manually do a search on various sites to get the item.

This post mentions Springpad, which looks like a very promising application.  I downloaded the application on my phone, and created an account, and was easily able to add items.  The best feature of Springpad, is once you add an item, it offers contextual actions.  For example, for a movie, you can purchase a ticket, purchase it from Amazon, stream it from Amazon or Netflix.  I also like the fact that I can choose to make my list public, and you can "follow" other people's list

There are a few things that I don't like, or I think could be done better.

1. When you create an account, and add items, you start getting emails when some other Springpad user adds something that is in you list. I would want to opt-in to receiving the emails.  (You can opt out)


2. By default, certain types of items in your list are public.  Once you add the items, you have to modify the sharing preference for each item already created


3. I don't see why you would use Springpad for contacts or tasks.  I think that there are better tools for those data types.


4. In the application on the phone, I would like it if it wasn't necessary to specify a data type to perform a search.