Productivity is important to all Muslims. With our busy lives it often becomes difficult to manage our everyday tasks and time. That’s why ProductiveMuslim.com developed iTaskinator Pro.
iTaskinator Pro is an iPhone/iPod Touch application developed by ProductiveMuslim.com to help Muslims better manage their time. The application uses a method of task management called “time-blocking” to help users organize how long to spend on tasks and in what order to get them finished.
What is time-blocking exactly? Keith Rosen from AllBusiness.com describes “time-blocking” as:
Time blocking is the art of allocating blocks of designated time for specific activities or tasks throughout the day. These tasks should be aligned with your goals and compatible with the realistic number of hours available each day. Time blocking helps to keep your life in balance.
If you haven’t already, I would strongly suggest that you make a list and prioritize the tasks and activities in your daily routine along with established timelines for each.
Source:http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/sales-management/4019441-1.html
Now there are many task management and time management mobile applications available, what makes iTaskinator Pro so special? It’s custom made for Muslims. The iTunes application description of iTaskinator Pro describes it best:
iTaskinator Pro is a fully featured day-to-day task manager that helps you schedule and manage your tasks with an intuitive interface. It utilises a time proven method of task management called “time-blocking” which allows you to block time out for specific tasks therefore helping you focus on getting those tasks done in a specific time period.
What’s more, the iTaskinator goes a step further and automatically schedules around your local prayer times, so that your tasks never clash with your prayer times again
Pretty cool idea to integrate prayer times along with task and time management. The best way to describe the look and feel of the application is through video, here’s the official demo from ProductiveMuslim.com’s YouTube channel:
Application Strengths
- Great idea to automatically include prayer times into the user’s schedule. I really like how the application uses the phone’s GPS to find prayer times for the area that the person is currently in.
- I really like the progress bar on the home screen that shows overall progress through tasks.
- I like the drop down menu that allows the user to switch between different areas of focus on the ‘Schedule’ page
Areas for Improvement
- I’ll be honest, I don’t like the name ‘iTaskinator’. It may not seem like a big deal but the name of the application represents its brand and how people perceive it, perhaps it is just me, but ‘iTaskinator’ just doesn’t feel professional.
- The logo on the home screen for iTaskinator doesn’t serve a purpose and takes up valuable real estate on the screen. Perhaps use that area to list the next 3 to 4 upcoming tasks? Or remove the home screen all together and have the ‘New Task’ and ‘Random Thoughts’ buttons on a toolbar on the ‘Schedule’ page.
- Adding a new task could be faster. Once a user presses the ‘New Task’ button, the keyboard should pop up immediately. Also, the drop down menus used to set the ‘When’ and ‘Duration’ are uncomfortable to use, perhaps use the standard Apple user interface elements that people are accustomed to setting.
- There should be a way to change the prayer times from within the app rather than having to go to the Settings area on the iPhone
- There should be some way to sync the task data from iTaskinator with an online service or a desktop application.
Overall
A great start to an application with a neat idea, I look forward to seeing improvements on the application.
Overall Rating – 3/5
To learn more about iTaskinator, please visit their official website. Click here to download the application from iTunes. Also, make sure to check out all the great projects that ProductiveMuslim.com are working on at their website at http://www.productivemuslim.com/.
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9 Responses
I like the product placement on the ramadan diaries site, are you the productive muslim?
I could see Tareq being very critical of himself, i’d give a proper review but I don’t have a cell phone much less an iphone/itouch,
[Reply to this Comment]
tareq Reply:
8.14.2010
Haha, no Usman I’m not ProductiveMuslim and I didn’t place the link to ProductMuslim on http://www.RamadanDiaries.com!
ProductiveMuslim.com is managed by a great group of people! I don’t know the entire team but I’m privileged to know a few of their members. Their website is updated quite regularly and has some great interviews. I would recommend visiting their Ramadan focused spin-off, http://www.ProductiveRamadan.com/
Hope the article was beneficial to you!
[Reply to this Comment]
Faraz Reply:
8.14.2010
I’m really liking their articles on Ramadan. Very interesting stuff, and I’ll plan to revisit them inshaAllah.
My only complaint with the site was that it was awfully insistent on signing you up for their mailing list. At least, that was my experience on my browser. Every page was interrupted with an annoying popup asking me to receive a “free gift”. I was going to sign up anyway, but wanted to read a couple of articles first. Also, the wording “receive a free gift” was a bit fishy … I knew perfectly well it was a signup for their mailing list and even wanted to sign up. Why not present it as it is?
But still, Jazak Allah khair Productive Ramadan guys for a great site!
[Reply to this Comment]
Assalamu alaykum, Br. Faraz,
My name is Hafsa Taher, and I’m the Executive Assistant for ProductiveMuslim/ ProductiveRamadan.com
Jazak Allah Khair for sharing. We appreciate your feedback, as it helps us understand our audience better, and allows us to cater the website to their needs.
Firstly, I apologize for the annoyance the website has caused. I can totally relate to it, as I would have been just as frustrated, if not more in your situation
We assure you that it wasn’t our intent. From our experience and understanding of the code, the popup dialog box to sign up for the newsletter is supposed to be visible on the first visit only. After that, the browser checks the cache to validate if it’s the visitor’s first visit or nth. As you can imagine, while working on the website for the last week or so, I visit it a couple hundred times a day. The only time I’ve seen the popup was on my first visit, after I added the script of the page.
Perhaps, if you can provide me more information on your browser and version, I can replicate it on my end, and make sure it’s looked into, and resolved as soon as possible.
Regarding your mention of “free gift” – I understand where you’re coming from. And you’re right, it does sound fishy. Let me look into it further.
Jazak Allah Khair once again for your sincere concern towards ProductiveRamadan.
Wishing you a blessed and ProductiveRamadan, ameen!
-Hafsa Taher
[Reply to this Comment]
Faraz Reply:
8.14.2010
Wa alaykumus salaam Hafsa,
Jazak Allah khair for the response, and I love your site! I hope you didn’t see my comment as bashing ProductiveRamadan! I was just trying to comment on my experience with it.
Now that I’ve signed up the the list I’m no longer able to reproduce that popup. But if no one else has had this complaint then I suspect it was just on my end. FWIW, I’m using the latest version of Google Chrome.
I’m totally curious now as a fellow web and communications person … how can I find out more about the ProductiveRamadan team? You guys are doing an impressive job with the site mashaAllah (both design and content), and it would be great to meet the people behind the site.
Ramadan Mubarak, and salaam,
Faraz
[Reply to this Comment]
Hafsa Reply:
8.15.2010
Wa iyya kum!
Regarding ProductiveMuslim, we are a global team with over 20 team members.
You can join us
on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ProductiveMuslim
and twitter: http://twitter.com/productivemuslm
to stay in touch, insha Allah
-Hafsa
[Reply to this Comment]
Seems like an interesting concept but I am a bit lost. When its software under review I usually go for the demo video first and then read up more if it interests me, but I don’t get the demo video. Would probably be much more useful with a voiceover.
So far what I get is that its like any organizer already available on iPhones and BBs – not sure where the value add is (aside from that fact that your iPhone automatically detects your prayer times – which is cool!).
Look forward to understanding the benefits, value proposition etc.
[Reply to this Comment]
Hafsa Reply:
9.23.2010
Jazak Allah for the sincere feedback
[Reply to this Comment]
Asalamualaikum
Thank you for this very useful iphone application, i think the itaskinator can be used by a large no. of muslims if you could develop the .jar or .jad version of it.
[Reply to this Comment]