I'm sure many of you discovered that the Quick Entry Dialog can be invoked by pressing a keyboard shortcut. In the new version, this does no longer bring up the main application window. If you are on Leopard, the Dialog plays nicely with Spaces as well.

Also, the service menu entries for Things are now working again. You can select any text in your current application and go to Services > Things > New To-do Containing Selection as Note/Title. This brings up the Quick Entry Dialog with a pre-populated note or title field. It doesn't stop there, however, since you can assign keyboard shortcuts for these entries as well. Just go to "Keyboard and Mouse" in the System Preferences and switch to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab. Click the + Button and add "New To-do Containing Selection as Note" into the "Menu Title" field:

I use ctrl-alt-shift-space for this, but we are interested in what you are using. Feel free to put your shortcuts into a comment to this post.

But wait, there is more! Many of you wanted to be able to include references to files and mails in to-dos. Starting today, you can do this in one of the following ways:

• Drag and drop a file from the Finder onto the notes section of a to-do.
• Drag and drop a file onto the main application icon in the dock. This will bring up the Quick Entry Dialog with the notes field pre-populated.
• You can perform the above operations using email messages as well (requires Apple Mail 3.1).
• You can select one or more files in the Finder and use the keyboard shortcut you defined before (ctr-alt-shift-space in my case).

One of the biggest surprises was the amount of feedback we received on date related features. The single most requested feature: recurring tasks. Also users were often surprised that tasks due today didn't automatically show up in the Today list. Then there was this irritating bug that prevented system wide date preferences to be honored correctly. Users also requested more convenient input methods like natural language input and a mini calendar.

We have every intention for Things to get a best in class date implementation. Today we are adding natural language input and a mini calendar for due dates.

The next updates will also bring the following improvements:

• An option to automatically move due items to the Today list.
• An option to automatically move postponed items to Next or Today.
• Recurring tasks.
• Alarms for tasks that need to be completed before a certain time.

Of course, these features will be implemented in a way that does not complicate the existing workflow.

Things now uses a single input field for entering due dates. It accepts many different formats such as 12/25/07, 12-25-07, 12.25.07, or Dec 25th, 2007. System wide preferences for the ordering of date components are honored.

You do not need to specify day, month, and year at once. Numbers greater than 1000, or constructs such as '08 are interpreted as years. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. are taken to mean days. Ambiguities are resolved by assuming the users preferred ordering. Non existing components assume default values.

Dates can also be specified using relative expressions like, “today”, “tomorrow”, or “in 1 week”. “2 weeks”, “3 months”, “next year”, or short variants like “4d”, “2w” work also. Weekday names can be used like in “Mon next week”, or “Tue in 2 weeks”. Words like “in” are optional and short versions for day, week, month, and year can be used here as well. A single weekday name like "Wednesday" will always denote the next Wednesday. If you enter “Wednesday” on a Thursday, Wednesday next week will be assumed.

Currently, the situation for users of languages other than English or German is not ideal. Names for weekdays and months are automatically translated by Mac OS, since we are using Mac OS’s date preferences. Words like “today, tomorrow, day(s), weeks(s), month(s), year(s)” and also short versions like “d, w, m, y” cannot be handled by Mac OS. Those need to be translated manually. If you like to have those words translated to your language as well, just send us an email with the relevant translations, and we will be happy to have them included in the next update.

We are often asked, when Things will be released or when certain features will be finished? It is generally not a good thing to publish detailed roadmaps. But I wanted to offer a glimpse into the future and talk about our general approach.

Today we released the first update since we posted the alpha version. It has taken us an unusually long time for reasons completely outside of the actual development of Things. From now on we plan to release updates on a roughly weekly basis. But we are not going to bother users with small bug fixes or technical changes that have little effect on actually working with Things.

There are two contradictory aspects to publishing software as work in progress. On the one hand, we want as many people as possible to have access to Things. On the other hand, we still want to be able to respond to feedback in a useful way. After all, why publishing unfinished software if not for early feedback?

But now, we have much improved ways of communicating and are confident to be able to provide frequent updates. We expect to have completed sending invites in a week or so, and shoot for opening up access to Things sometime in January 2008.