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NotifyMe, an app from PoweryBase, is available for US$3.99 at the App Store.
For some types of personalities, a simple to-do list is all that's needed to keep things on track. They don't need reminders; they check their notes on their own accord. They don't like being bugged about stuff, so please get off their case already; they know what they're doing.
Others need a little more prodding, goading and hammering. Maybe they're absent minded, incredibly busy, or just the type of worrier who sleeps with three alarm clocks set at five-minute increments. Whatever the case, this type of person needs someone or something to get up in his or her face and shout DO THIS NOW!
Secretaries and personal assistants used to be the only ones the latter type could turn to for salvation. Now we have smartphones. However, even though you can set your phone to nag you any time about anything, the follow-through sometimes leaves something to be desired.
For example, take the built-in reminder functions on the iPhone. Calendar will buzz you, but if you need to tell it, "I'm busy -- remind me later," you have to go through a series of edit functions to reset the alert time. Clock has an alarm with a snooze button, but you can't include a message, and that snooze is stuck at 15 minutes.
For those who need a slightly pushier nag utility, NotifyMe uses the iPhone's push capabilities to wave your to-do list in your face a little harder.
Life With a Snooze Button
NotifyMe uses an external server to get its push notifications to your iPhone, so the first thing you'll need to do is register an account. That requires an email address (yes, you'll get email ads) and a password (no, not the password to your email account -- at least it shouldn't be, anyway). Then it asks permission to use push notifications. That's the whole point of the app, so best to allow that.
After that, the app is dead simple. The home screen has buttons for making a new reminder and viewing upcoming, past and recent reminders as well. Hit "New reminder," type in what you need to remember to do, and set a date/time (you'll have to be exact -- there's no "remind me 10 minutes prior" option). You can categorize it in one of several ways ("Work," "School," "Shopping," etc.), set a repeating schedule on a basis ranging from daily to annually, and type in extra notes. That reminder will be saved to PoweryBase's central servers and pushed out to your phone when the time comes.
So far, this doesn't sound much different than a regular Calendar reminder, but the benefit of NotifyMe lies in its snooze feature. When you receive a push notification, you're given the option of telling it to come back later. The default snooze period is adjustable -- 15 minutes to a full 24 hours. So if you're too busy to do what you reminded yourself to do, it won't just go away; it'll keep bugging you periodically until you stop hitting "snooze."
Bug Me Later - Please!
Unfortunately, for the truly frazzled mind, NotifyMe might not be persistent enough.
When you get a pushed reminder with your phone in lock mode, swiping the unlock key takes you straight to the NotifyMe app, where you can choose to either snooze or edit the reminder. The whole process isn't quite as smooth and snappy as a built-in alarm, since it needs to exchange data with an external server, but it does the trick.
If you're using another app when you get the reminder, you get a choice to view it or close it. View takes you to the same snooze-it-or-lose-it screen. Closing the pop-up, however, puts the note into NotifyMe's "Recent reminders" category -- no more push alerts for that one.
I can see where this can go wrong. Say I'm concentrating on an important email, a really interesting Web page or a great game when a NotifyMe note pops up. Even though I'd like to be bugged about this in the future when I'm not so enthralled, I don't want to exit the app, open up NotifyMe and hit "snooze," so instead I close it and keep doing what I'm doing. And since my attention span can be rather short at times (as evident by the fact that I paid four bucks for an app to remind myself about doing stuff), I forget about it entirely.
Also, if I don't have my phone with me when a note comes up, it eventually disappears from the screen.
At least a "closed" notification will go straight to NotifyMe's "Recent reminders" file and put a red number badge on the app's icon. That's fairly noticeable, especially if NotifyMe's on your bottom row.
However, that badge goes away as soon as you open NotifyMe again -- even if you don't open the "Recent" file specifically. So if you go into it to write yourself another reminder -- or if you bring up the app in order to hit snooze on another item that just got pushed your way -- you get no more external indication that you've got stuff to do (perhaps stuff that should have been done an hour ago).
Bottom Line
An application designed specifically to notify and remind you of specific tasks should be very simple and straightforward to set up and use, and NotifyMe gets that much right. It's simpler than using Calendar, and its snooze button just has you hit a button, not reset the time entirely.
But it also shouldn't be weak-willed or easily discouraged. It shouldn't sulk into the shadows if I passively blow off its updates. I put those updates there for a reason; I want them to keep pestering me on a regular basis until I actively shut them off.
I may be too busy or too far away from my phone at the moment they come in to actively bring up the app and hit the snooze button, so perhaps a new option should be included with NotifyMe's next update: the option to make snooze the default response to any push reminder that's not actively shut off.
