Have you ever wanted a personal secretary, someone to remind you about meetings and such so that you don’t forget? While you may not be able to afford an assistant, TaskFM offers an affordable, easy-to-use alternative.

To create a reminder with Task.FM, all you have to do is send an email to reminder@task.fm. Jot down the event, time and date in the body of the email, and Task.FM will set up a reminder for you. You can choose to be reminded by email, text message or by  phone call. The user interface is attractive, and setting up an account is easy, as is adding and editing reminders.  For some strange reason, I had to set up an account twice, though-the first time, I wasn’t able to log back in after I logged out, and when I requested my password I got a blank email.  I went through the sign-up process again, though and everything is fine now.

Task.fm also includes a very basic to-do list that’s separate from the reminders. It’s not bad, just basic, and I’ve become so accustomed to Remember the Milk’s bells and whistles (categories, tags, time estimates, ability to include a relevant, clickable  link) that I can’t see myself switching.

The best thing about Task.FM is how easy it is to set reminders. The service understands natural language, so you can say “noon tomorrow” instead of “12:00 pm 07/28/09.” The natural language recognition puts this app in the same category as ReQall, which I’m inclined to think is a better value.  Here’s why:

The free version of Task.FM includes the following features:

The ability to create and receive reminders via email
The to-do list
The ability to create and receive reminders via Twitter
15 phone/SMS reminders per month

The paid version, which is $9.99 per month, adds the following features:

100 phone calls and SMS reminders per month
The ability to create reminders with a voice call
No ads

Now, with ReQall, free accounts can create reminders via SMS or a phone call, but you have to have a paid account to create reminders via email. However, a paid account with them is only $2.99 per month. ReQall also uses natural language inputs, and although you can’t receive reminder phone calls, you can receive reminders by email, text and IM (with a paid account). ReQall can also let you create a grocery list and add notes-things you want to remember but don’t need a reminder for.

The only thing Task.FM offers that ReQall doesn’t is Twitter integration. If you spend a lot of time on Twitter, that might be an advantage for you. Or, you may not need all of the bells and whistles that come with a ReQall paid account, and just want the ability to create tasks by email and Twitter and have a few SMS/phone call reminders to use when you’re away from the computer.

What do you think? Do you prefer ReQall or Task.FM? Or is there another productivity app that works better for you? Let us know in the comments!

Our Rating of Task.FM

Tags: Productivity

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