[APP] Birthdays Diary - free birthdays reminder app [R] March 20 2012

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This is a discussion thread for Birthdays Diary, one of my Windows Phone apps. I hope you'll like it.

Screenshots:


Demo video: here

Official Facebook Page: here

Description:
Birthdays Diary is a great free app for browsing and managing your friends' birthdays.

You can easily see birthdays coming soon or find the birthday of a particular friend.

Birthdays Diary features a nice, customizable live tile, allowing you to peek at coming birthdays from your home screen.

Other features include:

• browse birthdays by month, week or day
• see additional data, like age and zodiac sign
• hide birthdays you are not interested in
• greet your friends from within the app
• Facebook integration

User reactions.
Currently the app reads birthdays from Facebook and from the phone. It is not possible to add custom birthdays in the app. This will be available in the next version.

Version history:

Version 1.1
[Improved] User interface improvements
[Fixed] Birthdays displayed one day earlier in certain time zones

Discussions.
I welcome any feature requests, bug reports or just random thoughts.


Thank you and take care.

Free download:

I do like this app, but there are currently two issues that stop me from getting it.

a) Duplicate entries. In the case where a local contact is also on FB, it creates two entries. I know there is an option to hide one of these, but this also means you lose half of the contact details. It should be possible to merge these, no?

But more importantly

b) Ads and I'm not talking about the banner ads (although would prefer an ad-free version - paid for, of course). The issue is the added icons linking back to your other apps. Fair enough if these were in the about page or something, but remove them from the menus. It just ruins the clean look of an otherwise excellent app.

If you made a fully ad-free version and found a way to deal with linked contacts, I'd be more than happy to pay for this app.

First of all, thank you for the feedback.

About A, the duplicate entries. I think it is currently not possible for third party apps to get the linked contacts in Windows Phone. Even if you linked two or more contacts there is no way for a developer to find out they are linked. Please someone correct me if I am wrong here(I hope I am).

About B, the color icons in the app bar. I am sorry they annoy you. I believe this is a less annoying way to promote my other apps. It is just an icon. But you are correct, they should be limited somehow, not showing so much and maybe only in certain screens. Point taken.

Once the app becomes mature I will release a paid version without ads.

Nice app, duplicate contacts can be hidden, its fantastic.
But - stupid adds on bottom page, some strange buttons.
I'd rather pay some money than annoying adds...
So, now its unusable for me.

Originally Posted by ldokov

About A, the duplicate entries. I think it is currently not possible for third party apps to get the linked contacts in Windows Phone. Even if you linked two or more contacts there is no way for a developer to find out they are linked. Please someone correct me if I am wrong here(I hope I am).

I've seen some apps that pull data from Facebook and Windows Live; merging it into one contact. However, I believe this is done by comparing the name and probably depends on it being exactly the same. Having thought about it a bit more, I think your solution of being able to hide one is actually quite a nice way of dealing with it; plus it has the added advantage of being able to hide those birthdays you're not necessarily interested in.

It would be great if you released a paid version. Keep us posted if you do, as I really like the app and would definitely buy an ad-free release.

Keep up the good work!

Originally Posted by Petulinek

Nice app, duplicate contacts can be hidden, its fantastic.
But - stupid adds on bottom page, some strange buttons.
I'd rather pay some money than annoying adds...
So, now its unusable for me.

Sorry you see it that way. But that's how life is - free apps come with ads. I tried to make ads unobtrusive and looking nice, but it is only possible to some extent.

About the color icons in the menu: they were not color at first, but then they looked similar to the other icons and you expect them to do something related to the current screen, which I think is worse. I decided to make them color - they look nice, different and you always know what they do. This is for the black theme. If you are using white theme, they look the same as other icons (black). There is nothing I can do about that.

As I wrote, once the app matures I will release a paid version. I just want it to be perfect if I am going to take people's money for it, this is why I am waiting a bit. Also, I will make the color ad icons in the app bar appear less often and in fewer places, as I promised Gorki247.

Thank you for understanding.

Originally Posted by Gorki247

I've seen some apps that pull data from Facebook and Windows Live; merging it into one contact. However, I believe this is done by comparing the name and probably depends on it being exactly the same. Having thought about it a bit more, I think your solution of being able to hide one is actually quite a nice way of dealing with it; plus it has the added advantage of being able to hide those birthdays you're not necessarily interested in.

It would be great if you released a paid version. Keep us posted if you do, as I really like the app and would definitely buy an ad-free release.

Keep up the good work!

Yes, it is possible to merge contacts by comparing the name, However, I think the name is rarely exactly the same in Facebook and in the phone(Windows Live). The main reason is that in Facebook your friend normally writes his real name while in the phone you write whatever name you know him by (maybe a nickname or just the first name).

I have an idea on how it might be possible to merge contacts but I am not sure it will work. I will try it for one of the next versions and will let you know if it works or not.

Thank you for the feedback and for understanding the problem, it's always good to have a constructive discussion. This really helps me make Birthdays Diary a better app.

I will definitely announce it here when I release a paid version.

New version released!

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The next version of Birthdays Diary is now available in the marketplace! I hope you'll like it! You can download it from here.

The update adds several new features and also fixes some known issues. Here is the complete changelog:

Version 1.2 changes
[New] Ability to add custom anniversaries
[New] Ability to show days left in live tile
[New] Compatibility with low-memory devices
[Improved] Birth date is now visible in search
[Improved] Advertizing menu icon is now showing much more rarely
[Improved] Default live tile settings adjusted
[Fixed] Facebook synchronization problems
[Fixed] Posting on friend's wall did succeed but progress was not hiding
[Fixed] Age was sometimes not showing in live tile even if turned on
[Fixed] "Show zero count" setting for live tile not working for "Single birthday" mode

The inbuilt windows phone calendar does a great job in syncing and reminding all the birthdays of your windows live,fb contacts. But this a nice app as well.

Sent from my Lumia 710 using Board Express

Very nice app!
it's the most fluid birthdays app I tryed.
I just miss the possibility of notifications like reminders.
Apart from that it's very good.