[App Birthday Hub] Birthday reminder with facebook integration

[Cryp2pass]

Hi All,

i would like to introduce my app Birthday Hub. The app does remind you to all the birthdays from your People Hub and optionally from your Facebook account.The design is oriented at the design of the People Hub to give you the most possible windows phone experience.

The Live Tile does show you how many birthdays are in the next 14 days on it's front site and the next 3 birthdays on the back site. A reminder will coming up 3 days before a birthday to give you time to buy a present and once again at the birthdate itself. But the app does not only support birthdays from the People Hub and Facebook, you can add anniversaries, namedays, birthdays, wedding days and deathdays in Birthday Hub which do not need to be in the People Hub.

You can send emails, sms, make phone calls and you can post to the facebook wall of the your contacts directly from inside of the app.

Birthday Hub is themable with a dark or light theme and i'm allways working to enhance the app to make it the best birthday reminder app on Windows Phone. The app is not new and very popular in the german marketplace. I think now is time to make it international more popular. The app is currently localized to english and german and works on WP 7.5, WP 7.8 and WP 8. The trial version has no limitations but is ad supported. The paid version for only 99 cents has no ads and does help me to enhance the app with new features.

If you are missing a feature in the app feel free to tell me what you need and i will see if it is possible enhance the app.

You can download it at Birthday Hub | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States) from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

At the installation the marketplace will ask you to allow location services. It is only used by the microsoft advertising service in the trial version and will be deactivated in the full version.

The following screenshots with different themes does show some squares which are filled with the contact pictures from the People Hub if the app is running on your phone.

Hint: If you have an issue with birthdays with a date one day before the actual date, please check the dates in your People Hub. It is not an issue of Birthday Hub, it seems to be an issue of Windows Lives Contacts or Calendar. It mostly does not affect all contacts. Birthday Hub does only pull the birthdates from the People Hub and does not change anything. After you did change the birthdays in your People Hub please start a sync from the menu in Birthday Hub, otherwise the app will ignore the changes.

I hope you like the app
Holger

 

[Muessig]

Does this app have Lockscreen support? I could imagine setting upcoming birthdays to be the detailed lockscreen app would be very useful. Also do you have to enter in each birthday you want to be reminded of manually or will the app pull the information from existing contact / fb info?

 

[Cryp2pass]

Does this app have Lockscreen support? I could imagine setting upcoming birthdays to be the detailed lockscreen app would be very useful. Also do you have to enter in each birthday you want to be reminded of manually or will the app pull the information from existing contact / fb info?

It currently does not have lockscreen support because it is only possible on WP 8. I'm planing to make a port to WP8 with lockscreen support but i can't give you a date when it's done. Anyway, the reminders will also coming up if the phone is locked.

The birthdays from your facebook contacts wil be pulled from your existing fb account if you are logged in to fb from the settings page in Birthday Hub. You do not need to enter anything manually but you can if you want.

 

[Cryp2pass]

Hi All,

if you have an issue with birthdays with a date one day before the actual date then please check the dates in your People Hub. It is not an issue of Birthday Hub, it seems to be an issue of Windows Lives Contacts or Calendar. It mostly does not affect all contacts. Birthday Hub does only pull the birthdates from the People Hub and does not change anything. After you did change the birthdays in your People Hub please start a sync from the menu in Birthday Hub, otherwise the app will ignore the changes.

Until now i thought it was only a german or european issue but today i got a feedback about that issue from USA. It seem that it could happen world wide. Sorry for that but it's not in my might to correct the data in the People Hub. I have added the hint to my initial post in this thread.

 

[philpeeps]

Does this app support exchange contact anniversaries?

 

[Cryp2pass]

Does this app support exchange contact anniversaries?

If you mean whether the app does write the anniversaries to the People Hub which you did add in Birthday Hub, the answer is no. The app does not write anything to the People Hub. It was a feature request by some users because they don't want to have the data of their children in the People Hub.

 

[philpeeps]

No, I mean, does it read anniversary data from MS Exchange contact entries? Exchange contacts supports an anniversary field but none of the apps similar to yours read that data. They read similarly entered birthday data, but not anniversaries. Does your app read that data and utilize that data for live tiles?

 

[Cryp2pass]

No, I mean, does it read anniversary data from MS Exchange contact entries? Exchange contacts supports an anniversary field but none of the apps similar to yours read that data. They read similarly entered birthday data, but not anniversaries. Does your app read that data and utilize that data for live tiles?

Ah...that would be a nice feature but it is not possible to read the anniversaries from the contacts because the interface to the contacts by MS doesn't have an anniversary field. If MS does extend it's interface with an anniversary field in the future i will add it as soon as possible. Until then the only way is to manually add anniversaries in the app. I'm very sorry.

 

[philpeeps]

Ah...that would be a nice feature but it is not possible to read the anniversaries from the contacts because the interface to the contacts by MS doesn't have an anniversary field. If MS does extend it's interface with an anniversary field in the future i will add it as soon as possible. Until then the only way is to manually add anniversaries in the app. I'm very sorry.

Thanks...that being the case, I will stick with the app I am currently using with the same limitation.

 

[Cryp2pass]

Hi All,

version 2.7 was published yesterday evening to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The app does now import the addresses from the contacts in the people hub to the detail page of birthday hub.
This was a feature request by a user. A good idea i think, because some people like it to write birthday wishes by
snail mail.

There is a new entry on the settings page to change the count of the days for the extra reminder.
From 0 up to 14 days before the anniversaries. 0 means that no extra reminder will rise.

Marketplace-Link: Birthday Hub | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

Please let me know if you need other good feature. I will try to implement it if it is possible.

I hope you like the new features,
Holger