Tracks: Slick, Rubyfied GTD
Tracks is a slick Ruby on Rails webapp for “Getting Things Done” (GTD 
). I didn’t include it in my Top Ten Mac tools for GTD post because I didn’t know about it.
It’s very nice. Highly flexible, the main page allows you to display all your next actions or just the next actions for a particular project. You can also drag and drop things around until they are ordered how you want them to be.
The interface has a pleasing 37signals-esque (or is that just “Web 2.0″?) look:
Click the image for a full-sized view
Particularly nice because it doesn’t always happen, it includes international date options in its preferences:
It’s overflowing with features, but I am not going to stumble through them here when the developer sets them out so nicely on the app’s web site.
Obviously, as a webapp the natural inclination is to host it on a server, although it comes with its own built-in webserver, WEBrick , so you can run it on your own computer.
Tracks is open source and freeware.
Setting it up could be traumatic, although Jacken has written a great walk-through to get Tracks up and running on your own computer with Locomotive.
If you still don’t want to go through all the steps he outlines or you want to “try before you buy”, Chris Erway is hosting it on his site tracks.tra.in and allowing other users to create accounts. The screenshots in this post come from an account on his site. Head over and try it out.
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Tags: getting things done, gtd, Productivity, rails, ruby, tracks, very nice, webapp
July 21st, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Looks very nice — though downloading and install is not for the average grandma. —
Here is but one line from the installation readme:
Open db/exported_fixtures/todos.yml and search for the lines starting created: and replace with created_at:, and done: “0″ with done: “f” and done: “1″ with done: “t”. You need to replace the similar ‘done’ lines in projects.yml, and in contexts.yml replace hide: “0″ with hide: “f” and hide: “1″ with hide: “t”.
Geek grandma’s may have no problem with this but most people may want to wait for the hosted version :)
July 21st, 2006 at 10:56 pm
I agree. The whole thing scares the bejeezus out of me.
That’s why I mention Chris’s hosted version :)
July 21st, 2006 at 11:26 pm
The installation on MacOS X is really easy using this step-by-step instructions:
http://www.jackenhack.com/blog/archives/2006/05/25/gtd-ruby-on-rails-and-the-mac
I just did that and it works great! :)
July 21st, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Thanks Sebastien — that looks a helluva lot easier than the instructions on the tracks site.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:43 pm
Thanks. I’ve added that link into the post. Nice.
July 22nd, 2006 at 1:40 am
Glad you like it!
To be fair, the part of the instructions that smorr quotes are for those upgrading from an earlier version of Tracks (which was necessitated by a change in the way Rails handles different databases), so they would already be familiar with the general process. I try to make it as easy as possible (Locomotive is the way to go if you’re on a Mac, InstantRails or something similar on Windows), but there’s inherently a certain amount of hacking involved with Rails-based applications. The instructions are long partly because I go through it all in easy, baby steps ;-)
July 22nd, 2006 at 4:42 am
Thanks for the introduction to Tracks. Looks awesome. I was getting bogged down with KGTD, this looks like a nice alternative to try.
July 22nd, 2006 at 4:44 am
I have been using TRACKS now for four months and it has changed my life. I originally installed it from source having no idea what ruby, rails or any terminal commands other than the trusty top, kill and sudo periodic weekly and it took me 12 hours of learning about unix and mysql along the way.
Since then Locomotive has made it so easy to install on a Mac. I host Tracks on my old home iMac that has a static IP and I access it at work via Quicksilver and Firefox as well as on my Sprint Treo650 so I always have my next actions. I use Textile (http://textism.com/tools/textile/) to convert my notes to html code and as my home imac is also a webserver I can tag links to files associated with my next actions via ftp:// tag and Transmit does the rest. My wife works on a PC at work and is able to access all the same features
If you are brave the TRUNK version is a huge “web 2.0″ improvement on 1.04.1 with a great mobile phone interface as well. The #1 piece of software I could never do without!
July 22nd, 2006 at 6:03 am
I just installed it, which was very simple and will be trying it out for a while. I have been using OmniOutliner Pro off and on, but find it to be difficult when I have three computers. This may be the solution I’ve been looking for. Great find!