So, Tim says this is “fan-task-tic”. HiTask is a new task management solution that aims to make managing tasks easier and more fun for teams. We all know task management is a very crowded space, but HiTask has some great team-focused features that caught my interest. Besides the basic adding of tasks, HiTask lets you add notes, meetings, reminders, and birthdays. Users can also talk with team members in real-time using a simple, one-way chat. HiTask also provides a nice daily calendar interface with drag-and-drop capabilities for scheduling tasks. Also, users can assign tasks to specific members rather than sharing entire lists.

HiTask has built an easy to use application that allows users to access every bit of information on one screen. You will find a calendar on the left, tasks in the middle, and your team on the right. Adding a task is as simple as typing in a to-do. From there, you can group the task by user, project, date and color by dropping a task in a grouping. The rest is all very intuitive. HiTask’s interface is so easy to use, you can just about drag a task anywhere and it will do something. Drag a task to a specific date on the calendar and it will assign the date. Drop a task on a team member, or even on a chat window to assign a task to that member. Even set how long a task should take by dropping it on the daily overview and sizing it like you would in iCal.

Getting set with your team involves searching for each team member and inviting them to share tasks with you. I’d like to say this is a painless procedure, but we experienced problems when inviting a team member. Specifically, when a someone wasn’t registered with HiTask already, I would send an invite to them. They would then receive the invitation, signup and try to confirm their registration. But HiTask would for some reason fail to send the confirmation email and not allow them to use the same email address for sending a new one, thus requiring my teammates to direct it to a different email address. We are assuming things would have gone smoother if we were to register first and then connect with each other.

Once you and your team are all setup, you can start assigning tasks and chat with each other. As mentioned previously, this process is as simple as creating a task and dropping it on the appropriate team member. Perhaps my favorite feature is the real-time chat. You may be wondering, why would I need to chat in a task management application? It actually makes more sense than it sounds. Often when discussing a project with one of my teammates, we would start throwing around ideas and eventually end up with an even bigger list of things to-do than before. If we were to discuss in HiTask and a new task should arise, I could simply add the item and drag it on my teammate and further discuss it. The chat also allows users to send messages to one and another even if a user is not online. In this case, an email icon will appear next to the user’s name notifying them of a new unread message that they need to look at. The chat also acts as a log of sorts as it automatically creates a message when you assign a task to a team member. I would imagine this feature being more useful and appealing to teams that work over the web.

HiTask offers a free plan which can then be upgraded to premium at $12 annually featuring unlimited tasks, projects and teammates. HiTask is lacking in content, so I don’t really have limitations numbers on free accounts, but I can say that I reached the limit rather fast. Free users should also expect to see a small advertisement at the top which appears to have been added this morning.

So where does HiTask stand in this crowded space of online task managers? For starters, I found it be one of the more easier to use task managers out there and love how everything is just a drag-and-drop away. The interface has a young vibe to it, possibly to feel more inviting for small teams. Also, the ability to chat with teammates is certainly helpful, although I don’t expect to be using it all that much. I also like that team members don’t have to share their entire task lists with other members - invited members only see tasks that have been assigned to them from your account and other members (unless you provide them with your iCal feed). This way, I see only the tasks that I need to complete. Overall, I like what HiTask offers and my teammates appear to like it as well. We currently use Basecamp which has a nice todo list and milestone system, but we’re going to try using HiTask for a while and see how things go.

In related news: Wallnote, one of my favorite to-do lists for personal use, is now Nutshell. The core features of Nutshell are the same as Wallnote, but now it’s in a simpler interface and has a powerful command-based web search allowing you to search any website by keyword (for example, I have it search Solution Watch by typing “sw” and then the terms).