Don't Be A Bad Friend, Stay On Top Of Facebook Birthdays With Birthday Box
Birthday Box - Facebook Birthday Reminder, Wishes Send and Respond ($0.99) by Sarun Wongpatcharapakorn is an app that makes it easier to remember when all of your friends’ birthdays are, assuming that they all use Facebook.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one that feels bad when I accidentally forget about someone’s birthday because I’ve been busy with my life — we’ve all been there. Fortunately, we now have Facebook to keep track of our friends’ birthdays, but that would require actively checking Facebook every day to see who’s birthday it is. Sometimes, we just don’t have the time to check, or may get to it late at night. Thankfully, Birthday Box is here to solve that problem.
Birthday Box solely relies on Facebook birthday data, so if you aren’t using Facebook, this app is useless. But if you have an account, just log in and it the rest of the app is a piece of cake to use.
The app is split into three main tabs: Upcoming, Contacts, and Inbox. The fourth tab is for Settings, where you can set up reminders on the day of or before, create templates for birthday wishes and thank you messages, and toggle how many days for Recents and Upcoming. You can also edit your own birthday, if you like, lied about your age or something.
The Upcoming tab will show thumbnails of the recent birthdays, which you can tap on to view the full list, complete with date. The rest of the screen will be divided up to show you birthdays tomorrow, later this week, later this month, and then the following month. It’s definitely a great way to see who’s turning a year older at-a-glance.
If you would rather see a list of all of your Facebook friends and their birthdays, then you can do so with the Contacts tab. They will be listed alphabetically, and you can see when their birthday is. Of course, some people choose not to list their birthdays, so you won’t see anything listed for these people.
Tap on a person in either view to view a skimmed down version of their profile, tailor-made for birthday wishes. A history section will be there for viewing all of the messages you’ve left for them, and you can even add a note for something, such as birthday gift ideas. Of course, you can leave a nice birthday greeting right from Birthday Box as well.
Now, what about your own birthday? The Inbox view will reveal all of the messages that your friends have left for your special day, as well as replies. You can see the year and how many total wall posts you had received. The neat thing about Birthday Box is the fact that you can go back in time and view the messages you received two, or even three years back. Personally, I don’t have much interest in going back in the past, but if you got an epic birthday message from a good friend last year or something, it’s great to be able to pull it up immediately.
If you are constantly forgetting the birthdays of your friends and family on Facebook, and want an easy way to keep track of these dates and make notes, then this is a fantastic little app. It works well and has a well-designed interface.
On the topic of birthdays and gifts, I'd recommend checking out Gift Plan or No More Socks. I'd also suggest checking out Wongpatcharpakorn's other app, Last Time, to keep track of memorable events that you want to remember.
