ReadWriteWeb

In a very short period of time - just the last 18 months - Salesforce.com has risen from "up-and-comer," straight through "challenger" status, to the potential out-and-out leader in workforce software. Every move it has made so far, including the December 2010 purchase of open cloud platform Heroku, has been part of a well-played strategy thus far to build leveraged platforms in cloud-based services the way Microsoft leveraged its platforms for office applications... only somewhat faster.

This morning, Salesforce has fired a volley straight at the heart of Microsoft's leveraged tower. Do.com - a free, Heroku-based service coupled with Gmail, but enabled for all e-mail users - is a cloud-based, socially-oriented task management and collaboration platform aimed not just at Salesforce's typical office user, but the general public. It serves not only as a group planning tool for any scale of project, including the smallest scale (e.g., remembering to pick up groceries), but as a kind of cloud desktop for collaborating around Google Docs.

For users of Apple's iOS mobile operating system, there was much to be excited about in yesterday's keynote unveiling iOS 5, the next version of the OS for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Deeper Twitter integration, wireless syncing across devices, and the ability to untether your iOS devices from the desktop have rightly got users anticipating the next OS upgrade.

One feature that is sure to please productivity geeks is Reminders, a new native task management app for iOS that works across devices.

Remember the Milk, a popular task management Web and mobile app, recently launched their long-awaited offering for the iPad.

Although the desktop Web version of Remember the Milk works fine on the iPad, the interface doesn't quite take advantage of the tablet form factor. Their new native iOS app fixes that problem with a fancy layout reminiscent of Twitter's iPad app.

Asana is a company created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Googler Justin Rosenstein. Its aim is nothing short of reinventing how we collaborate. It's a lofty goal, especially with so many Enterprise 2.0 tools aiming to do just that. But it has deep pockets, high profile advisers, a strong vision and lots of buzz.

The team has been toiling on the project in secret for two years, but have finally started talking about it over the past few months. In February, the company held an open house where Rosenstein demoed and explained the product. It's currently in private beta, but don't hold your breath waiting for an invite.

Here's what you should know about the company and its product.

Sometimes, we here at ReadWriteWeb like to write about technologies that we think are going to change the world. Other times, we like to take a look at the most simple, minimalist tools that can make your life easy. This time is one of the latter.

Strike is a collaborative to-do list that makes it quick, easy and effortless (at least in terms of list-keeping) to work together with others and get things done.

Keeping up with every RSS feed item and tweet is hard enough for anybody, let alone someone trying to run a business. That's why each week, ReadWriteBiz rounds up the most important tech news and insights for small and medium-sized businesses.

On Thursday, we took a look at Flow, a new to-do list management Web app that offers collaborative features for small teams. Flow is still in closed beta, but its feature set and well-designed UI may offer real competition for popular tools like Remember the Milk and Things. There's also a really cool Easter egg hidden on their homepage, if you can find it.

Web workers and small teams are always on the lookout for really solid, affordable productivity apps, especially when it comes to task management.

Although the field may already seem crowded with popular products like Remember the Milk, Things and Producteev, there's one more that's worth checking out, called Flow.

Busy Android users have a new way to manage their to-do lists thanks to the arrival of Todo.txt Touch in the Android Marketplace yesterday.

The open source task management app is the latest phase of the Todo.txt project, which started with a command line interface for managing to-dos in what is quite possibly the geekiest possible manner.

As the week began, all eyes in the tech world were on the Techcrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco, from which some of the biggest tech news of the week came.

While

Producteev, the up-and-coming task management service which launched the newest version of its service earlier this month, just launched its first API. With this release, developers can now make use of Producteev's scheduling back-end to create their own online, desktop and mobile front-ends for Producteev or integrate the service into their existing apps. The company is also launching a developer contest, with a cash prize of $2500 for the winning app and $1000 for the runner-up.