Manage Your Christmas Shopping With No More Socks
No More Socks: The Christmas List Genius ($1.99) by Food for Benjamin is a handy app for all your gift-hunting needs.
Christmas is almost upon us, and I know that plenty of you still have shopping to do (even myself, truth be told). So how will you tackle your gift list? No More Socks (NMS) can give you a hand.
The main screen of NMS has a brushed aluminum background covered with various colored sticky notes on it, giving it the “refrigerator notes” feel. The four big stickies are the main sections of the app, and they include: Events, People, Shopping, and Ideas Pad. The other three smaller stickies include Tell, Settings, and Help. You could also access the app’s help section by shaking your device.
The first thing you will want to do in NMS is to add people in the People view. You will need people before you can really create some events. Some other apps will automatically pull everyone from your contact list with their birthday information (if it’s in your address book), which can lead to an extremely long list of people, thus becoming overwhelming. NMS allows you to only add the people you really want to give gifts to, which eliminates the problem of being overwhelmed. You will add each person individually, and it can be from your Contacts or someone new (provide their name and birthday). Once you add someone, they will show up in the list, along with a photo (if provided). Tapping on a person will give you their name and birthday (with an option to have a birthday reminder), a shortcut to view contact details (if from Contacts). More information, such as gift ideas, past gifts, and personal traits can be viewed. If they are attached to a specific event, the event will show up at the bottom.
When deciding to add a gift idea for a person, just tap on Ideas. From here, you can add a gift idea, which will give three options: you can pull an idea from previous ideas, create a new one, or browse the shared ideas from the NMS community. Adding a new one will have you give it a name and a set budget, add a photo, and any additional notes you may have. When a gift idea is added, you can tap on it to view details about it, mark it as purchased (a green check instead of a red one), and also add retailers. You can search Google, or choose a retailer (there’s a pretty good list of both online and offline retailers). The retailers section is important for the Shopping tab, which we will get to in a bit.
In Events, you can personal or group events. Personal events will be stuff like birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Group events will be holidays, such as Christmas. When adding a personal event, you will assign a date to it, pick a single person, give the event a name, and set a budget for the gift.
The Shopping tab allows you to view what you still have to get, either online or offline. You can also view your past purchases. Each view has a slider at the top that allows you to adjust the time period to be shown.
Ideas Pad is where you would go to quickly jot down gift ideas, regardless of who they would be for. Find something in the mall that would make a great gift, but unsure of who it would be great for? Just jot it down in the Ideas Pad with a picture for future reference.
Joining the NMS community will allow you to participate in their competitions, such as the current one: The Best Xmas Present 2011. It’s also a good way to find inspiration if you are unsure of what to get someone.
The Tell sticky will allow you to contact the developers directly via different methods, such as Facebook, Twitter, or email. There are also links to their website, and sharing the app with others. Settings will provide the option to set a passcode lock for the app and when you should be reminded of someone’s birthday (how many weeks before and the time of day). Help will provide videos and text explaining the features of the app.
While I found NMS to be useful overall, I did find navigation to be a bit cumbersome. Once you get far in one specific section, you will have to repeatedly tap back in order to get back to the main screen. A quicker way to get back to the main view is needed, and would save a lot of time (and be more intuitive). It would also be great to see barcode scanning, as this would be much easier when you’re out and about – see something, scan it, add it!
Despite these small issues, NMS is still a great little app to help you manage your gift list. If you need an app to help you take care of the Christmas shopping you still have to do, then give this app a try, and don’t forget that it can be used year-round.
