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

ldokov · May 7, 2012

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:

Gorki247 · May 8, 2012

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.

ldokov · May 9, 2012

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.

Petulinek · May 9, 2012

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.

Gorki247 · May 9, 2012

ldokov said:
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!

ldokov · May 10, 2012

Petulinek said:
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.

ldokov · May 10, 2012

Gorki247 said:
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.

ldokov · May 21, 2012

New version released!

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

nithin1992 · May 22, 2012

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

eltonada · May 27, 2012

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.

ldokov · May 28, 2012

eltonada said:
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.

Hi eltonada,

I am glad you like the app!

Reminders are definitely coming in one of the next versions. I am currently thinking on the best way to implement them.

Thank you for the feedback!

wpxbox · May 28, 2012

Here is our detailed review we did for our Readers http://www.wpxbox.com/birthdays-diary-facebook/

It includes a video and suggestions for the app. Thanks for making such a brilliant app for Windows Phone.

ldokov · May 30, 2012

wpxbox said:
Here is our detailed review we did for our Readers http://www.wpxbox.com/birthdays-diary-facebook/

It includes a video and suggestions for the app. Thanks for making such a brilliant app for Windows Phone.

Great review, thank you!

Also, I really appreciate the suggestions, they definitely make sense. Since this is the official forum thread, I will write a few comments:

Suggestion 1: improving responsiveness.
I am trying to improve responsiveness all the time, but there is always more to be desired. Also, it is different on different phones. For example, it works great on Lumia 800 with its 1.4 GHz processor. It works fine on the Omnia 7, but not as fast as on the Nokia. I guess it would be worse on the Lumia 610, but I do not have such a phone yet.

Suggestion 2: pin individual user as live tile.
This is definitely doable, but you can also pin a user from contacts. You can also post on his wall from there. I am not sure what can I do to make it better. Please let me know if you have something in mind.

Suggestion 3: integrate Facebook Contacts with Contacts on the phone.
I am already working on this. This was an idea since the first version but I never had the time to do it. It is not very easy, you can read my earlier posts in this thread for more info on that topic.

Suggestion 4: Pull in last status update for the Facebook contact.
This is also doable. I am also thinking about other ways to integrate Facebook. For example, maybe it would be nice to see who else wrote on your friend's wall for his birthday.

Let me know if you have other suggestions or anything else you want to share about the app. I will be happy to discuss it.

The Last Byte · May 30, 2012

Looks fascinating, I like the GUI, will try it out.

ldokov · Jun 11, 2012

Hello everyone,

Version 1.3 is now available worldwide. It is mostly a bugfix release, here are the changes:

[New] Introduced a setting to disable category-based background color for the live tile
[Improved] Spell check is now enabled for Name and Description fields (when adding custom anniversary)
[Fixed] Minor Facebook integration issues were fixed
[Fixed] "Single birthday" mode for the live tile now works correctly

Another update is coming soon, it will include support for three new languages: Portuguese(Portugal), Portuguese(Brazil) and Dutch.

I would appreciate your help with translating the app to other languages as well. If you want to help, just let me know and I will send you the files. It should take no more than 2-3 hours if you are fluent with the language.

Thank you, I hope you like the new version.

ldokov · Jun 17, 2012

Paid version released

A paid, ad-free version of Birthdays Diary is now available. You can get it from here: http://bit.ly/Krfrvr

The paid version is exactly the same as the free version, except it does not show ads at the bottom of the screen.

Please note, that the paid version uses different storage than the free version. This means you will lose any settings or custom anniversaries you have entered. This is a limitation of Windows Phone, one app cannot access the storage of another. I am planning to introduce SkyDrive integration and the ability to back up and synchronize data there, but this is not yet available.

Gorki247 · Jun 30, 2012

Thanks ldokov. I noticed the paid version today and bought it immediately based on my experience with the free version. This is the best Birthday app out there, IMHO. Works really well on my Lumia 800. Great job!

Personally, I also love the fact that we can add other anniversaries and set the live tile to use the relevant colour. It's a really useful feature.

Edit: Just noticed that with adding a custom birthday, the 'year is unknown/does not matter' option doesn't seem to do anything; i.e. the entry will still show a birth year even if this box has been ticked (unless I'm missing something).

LogiBird · Jul 1, 2012

Thanks

ldokov · Jul 2, 2012

Gorki247 said:
Edit: Just noticed that with adding a custom birthday, the 'year is unknown/does not matter' option doesn't seem to do anything; i.e. the entry will still show a birth year even if this box has been ticked (unless I'm missing something).

Hi Gorki247,

I am glad you like the app!

Indeed, I just tested it and it is a bug. Even if you check that the year is unknown, it still shows you the selected year. This will be fixed in the next update. Thanks for reporting it. :good:

ldokov · Jul 2, 2012

Hi everyone,

I would like to announce that version 1.4 is now available!

The most significant in it is the support for four new languages: Dutch, Czech, Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil).

Here is the full list of changes:
[New] Four new languages are now available: Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch and Czech
[Improved] Live tile: if contact picture is unavailable, contact name is always displayed
[Fixed] The app was crashing sometimes when selecting main or related contact for custom anniversary
[Fixed] Filtering by category was not working properly

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

Member

Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Similar threads

Top Liked Posts