I had downloaded it earlier, gave it a try and realized that I am not using it the way it is to be used, so I stopped using it for few months. Then after a while I really need to create a @TODO folder in Outlook so that I can track my action items. I started moving the emails which required some action from my side into this folder. But quickly I realized that there are action items originating outside the emails. I had thought of writing an email and send it to myself,that is when I remembered that I know of a tool which does exactly same thing.

But I couldn’t remember the name of the application, so I searched my machine using X1, trusty desktop search engine. After couple of combination of search terms, I was able to find it in my download folder. Rest was easy. I had used it earlier, so I knew I needed to edit the .hta file to point it to correct Folders. As soon as I was done, I was able to jot down the next TODO item. It was that easy.

More about this tool at the author’s page here.

Originally Published on Jul 18, 2006

Installation

It didn’t take much time for me to find this nice tutorial. Obviously, Tracks on Windows is popular and has been around for a while. Otherwise finding such crisp instructions is not common for tools based on open source technologies. The instructions were not without their share of problems , but looking back they were hardly big problems, nothing that little bit of googling can’t solve.

Initially I decided to get the latest and (hopefully) greatest versions of all the components required. Needless to say that didn’t go well. The instructions were written for specific versions. So this time I decided to follow the instructions to the letter. Downloaded all the exact versions listed in the PDF, from the links provided in the tutorial. I already had Uniform Server 3.3 installed, So that was the only variation from the tutorial.

The instructions were really simple and things worked OK till step 22. rake was not to be found on my system. Having googled about Ruby and rails, I realized that I can download rake separately. I got it from here. Once rake was installed, it was smooth sailing after that.
Note: Later I found that this problem was already reported and solved here

Observations

1. After following these instructions, I’m using WEBrick, the default webserver that comes with Ruby (?) rather than Apache from Uniform server. It would have been nicer if it used both Apache and mysql. There are notes elsewhere on Web about how to use sqlite instead of mysql. If I did that I would not need Uniform Server
2. For some reason (may be it is a known issue) when I resume back from hibernate, Tracks doesn’t work until I restart the server. Note: I have this installed on my laptop, hence hibernating. Otherwise it may work just fine.
3. When I start the server from command line using ruby.exe, I can not close the command window where messages are displayed, else it stops Ruby/WEBrick server as well. One possible option is to use rubyw instead, so that there is no terminal to be kept open. But due to #2 above, I prefer to have a command prompt open, so that I can at least restart the server when required.