Task Squid: Task Management Meets Activity Streams [INVITES]

About 12 hours ago Jennifer Van Grove

Name: Task Squid

Quick Pitch: Collaboration focused on completing the tasks that ultimately complete the project. Its group tasks done easy.

Genius Idea: In the spectrum of project collaboration tools you have the completely free form Google Wave () and structured enterprise tool from SAP called 12Sprints. In the middle is Task Squid, a private beta project management tool (we’ve got invites!) that takes an activity stream approach — designed with productivity in mind — to project collaboration.

The Task Squid experience is centered around task management, with you as the focal point. Upon login, the service displays the tasks assigned to you or those that you assigned to others. The activity stream also highlights all recent items — tasks, subtasks, comments, files, time — in reverse chronological order and color-coded by type for an overview of all recent project activity.

During the initial setup process you can connect your Twitter (), Facebook (), and Google Calendar accounts. You’ll also want to start the process by predetermining categories — which you can treat like separate projects — for tasks. Those categories will be shown on the right-hand side of the page so you can filter through tasks. Should you wish to be notified of new or completed tasks you can add your mobile number to receive SMS messages for updates.

Tasks themselves can be basic notes or robust action items, which means you can include stylized text, rich media (including flash), add files, assign multiple owners and add a due date. Each task also supports comments (with replies), subtasks and time entry options. Tasks can even be shared via direct URL or Facebook and Twitter, though login will be required to access the shared task.

For those of you with a penchant for aesthetics, TaskSquid doesn’t disappoint. The experience looks and feels clean, and the comments are treated as colored chat bubbles that make back and forth repartee visually appealing. Task Squid won’t work for everyone’s project collaboration needs, but it does get simple task management right.

The service is still in beta, but Mashable () readers can enter “sparkofgenius” in the invite code field to get in early. That code will work for 1,000 users, so get in there, try it out and let us know what you think in the comments.