Download: Keep your to do list under control with Shoutdone

Shoutdone is a to do list program that offers a well-designed interface for listing different jobs and making decisions about what to focus on next.

Internet Explorer warned that the installation file is not commonly downloaded but apart from that installation is simple. Shoutdone works with Adobe Air, which will be installed automatically if it is not already on your computer.

It is quite a large app, nearly taking up the whole desktop on our test computer running at 1024 x 768. There is a full screen mode if you want to take full advantage of the screen space available.

Creating a task is straightforward with a large plus icon for that purpose. Tasks are arranged into projects and we found that unassigned tasks don't show on the main screen. Instead they go into an inbox and can be assigned from there.

This is probably a good discipline to get into but we were a little concerned that tasks might get lost. One solution is to create a catchall project and reassign from there.

Tasks are displayed as large tile but the size varies depending on how the task is set. This is quite good for setting priorities but might be a problem if you have a lot of tasks to display.

For example in the same space that Shoutdone devoted to 16 medium tasks, Taskcoach fitted in 26 tasks, not including the parent tasks for projects. Of course that depends on how many tasks you try and manage at a time.

As well as this free version, there is a Pro version of Shoutdone that has some extra tools. These include the ability to synchronise tasks between more than one computer, integration with Evernote, online backup, adding tasks by email and priority support. The Pro version costs US$37.

Although Adobe Air has many advantages for developing software, it does have the disadvantage of being a little slow at times, and we did find Shoutdone to suffer from this.