Hey all,
This evening, I’ll be opening up the VitaDesktop beta to the public. For those who don’t know, VitaDesktop allows you to easily view and modify your Vitalist from your Windows XP/Vista desktop, without having to open up your browser.
Here’s a sample screenshot to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about:
Before I officially release the beta, I thought I’d use this time to give everybody a little bit of background info on VitaDesktop:
I’ve been using Vitalist for a while now, and I’ve gotta say that it’s the best Getting Things Done (GTD) web-app I’ve found. I got addicted to it fairly quickly, trying out all of those little “tips and tricks” that other users came up with to make Vitalist more accessible. One of my favorites is using Jott to update my list using my phone, as mentioned in the Vitalist blog.
That was a really neat trick!
The thing is, as I got more and more into using Vitalist, I found it more and more bothersome to have to consistently open up my bloated web browser and log in, just to see what my next action item was…
Side-note: Maybe it’s just me, but when my copy of Firefox starts up, it immediately eats around 60 MB of my RAM. After I’ve surfed for a while and have opened a few new tabs, that figure easily jumps to over 100 MB.
…and don’t get me start on Internet Explorer!
So, being a software developer, I decided to write a program to solve these problems — because that’s what we do, solve problems! 
I had four main goals in mind when writing VitaDesktop:
- Use the least amount of system resources (especially RAM) as possible,
- Make it super-easy to access and modify my Vitalist action items,
- Make it secure, and
- Make it non-intrusive: it should stay hidden when not in use and avoid occupying unnecessary window/taskbar space.
Once I finished the initial VitaDesktop prototype and started using it, it was fantastic! Now, whenever I want to access my Vitalist data, I just double-click on the little System Tray icon and — bam! — up pops VitaDesktop with my Vitalist tasks.
I made a “Compact” mode (which uses the mobile version of Vitalist) to keep the window nice and small. There’s two other view modes as well.
Also, the amount of memory used is only around 10-11 MB during regular use, and just about 3.5 MB when hidden — that’s just 1/5th to 1/10th what I’d end up using with Firefox.
Not too shabby!
I’ve found it so incredibly useful that I figured other people would like to use it as well. So, I’m going to allow people to download a beta version starting sometime (late?) tonight to try it out.
So, spread the word! And be sure to check back this evening (EST), or tomorrow morning for the beta version of VitaDesktop!
