Tracks – An Advanced “Getting Things Done” Application

Whether you are in school, college or becoming an adult and enjoying the family life, everyone is busy. With technology taking over our world, it’s making us even busier. Having open contact with email, phone and several social networking sites, communication is easier than ever which has made life even more hectic.

Along with this same technology however, comes many many ways to keep track of what you’re doing and everything else organized as well. Online to-do lists, tasks and several different versions of online calendars has taken the pain off somewhat.

Tracks is not just another version of my aforementioned examples, it adds some very nice functionality and is much more advanced than anything I’ve seen previously. Open source and running on Ruby on Rails, it includes its own web server for use on any Windows, Linux or Mac PC.

Below are some highlights.

You can create several different categories and create your own set of tasks for each. In the screenshot below, you can see that this example includes Office, Email, Errand and Internet. Each with their own set of tasks, which are then displayed in a completed section at the bottom. Re-organization and customization has limitless possibilities as well.

Along with a simple tasks view, you also have project sections that may include their own set of tasks along with them. One ongoing project that almost all of us experience, is maintaining our car, like the example below shows us.

Adding tasks to each category or project can’t be any simpler. On the right hand size of each page, you’ll see a simple Ajax add column, for quick and easy entry. All entries allow you to add the context of each task, project (if applicable), tags and of course due dates. After a task is entered, due dates change color as they come closer and closer to their specified expiration.

Monitor your progress in nice and clean charts. See how well you are keeping yourself consistent and motivated.

Want continuous updates sent to your RSS reader of choice? There are plenty of options for that as well.

Want to keep other members of your family on task? The application is also built for multiple users. Each user will have their own set of projects, contexts and due tasks.

Since Tracks includes a web server, it’s also important to note that you can access your information from any compatible web browser. The proper ports would need to be opened on your firewall, but it is very simple to do, and makes Tracks even more useful.

As I said before, keeping on task these days can be a daunting task. There is way to much to do, to see and to accomplish in our daily lives. In the old days, an appointment book accomplished most of this. Using pen and paper however is becoming a thing of the past and something like Tracks takes care of all that, and much much more.

What are some of your favorite “To Do” or task tracking sites? Do you see any benefit of Tracks over other similar products?


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T.J. Mininday

Hi, my name T.J. and I'm a Techaholic. Since the takeoff of Web 2.0, I have been 'over the top' obsessed with technology, the internet, and just about every single gadget released during that time. Whether reading, watching or listening, I can't get enough.

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Hide 9 Comments

  • Tibu March 11, 2009
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    TPS report :)

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    • T.J. Mininday March 11, 2009
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      I know…I love how they snuck those into the screenshots.

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  • ChefBliss March 11, 2009
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    WOW, this looks like a dream come true! Can’t wait to check it out. Thanks!

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  • Atmchick March 12, 2009
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    I use Thinking Rock. It’s not web based, but can run off of a flash drive so it’s portable between home and work. It has a lot of reporting capability so I can work off of a hard copy which is important to me. It looks like Tracks does not allow nesting of projects which is incredibly important in my system, and which Thinking Rock allows.

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  • stat March 12, 2009
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    Interesting, I too use TRock but there are some definite limitations (such as the inability to access from my phone on the go) that this might solve. I am pretty sure that the nesting of projects could be worked around just from the little I have played with this.

    The only problem I see is that apparently they did not see the memo about the covers for the TPS Reports. Now where is my swingline?

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    • T.J. Mininday March 12, 2009
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      What is TRock? I did a quick search on it, and couldn’t find anything about it. Do you have a link?

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      • Bill Bell March 13, 2009
        0 likes

        TRock is an abbreviation for Thinking Rock which is available at Thinking Rock.

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  • Senthil Nambi April 16, 2009
    0 likes

    Is there an easy way to install tracks? I looked around and it is way too complicated for a newbie. Any .deb or tar.gz files available?

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  • Chetan Sachdev May 16, 2009
    0 likes

    @Senthil
    Yes there is. Infact, I also found it a little long process to set Tracks up and running. But there is an installer for Windows and I guess for other OS too from BitNami. Below is the link to Windows Installer.

    bitnami.org/download/files/stacks/tracks/bitnami-tracks-1.7rc2-1-windows-installer.exe

    Hope this helps.

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