Qs Smart Birthday Wisher for Reminders plus Automatically Send Birthday Wishes
by Paul Wilks
Sep 19, 2011 8:42 AM –
Install
Qs Smart Birthday Wisher is a clever way to keep on top of friends’ birthdays. By using your phone’s contact list, or syncing from your Facebook account, the app can provide you with reminders for friends’ birthdays, or you can even set it up to post birthday wishes on your behalf. You might never accidentally forget a friends birthday again!
Price: Free, $0.99
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Medium Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Efficient way to manage your friends birthday wishes.
- Easy to set up and use.
- Reminder widget.
Cons
- Intrusive advertising model on the Lite version.
- Impersonal concept.
Features:
New forms of social networking present us with new ways to make and maintain relationships. Instead of our lives being filled with just family, friends and colleagues; we now have any number of friends who only exist to us online. One of the courteseys we commonly oblige towards our online friends is the humble Facebook birthday message. It doesn’t take very long and it’s a nice thing to do. However, how many Facebook friends do you have? Is there the time to message them all on their birthday? Do you often forget? Well, perhaps Qs Smart Birthday Wisher can essentially do this task for you.
It’s easy to setup, simply authorise the app to view your Facebook friends, and those in your phones contact list, create a greeting – for example: “Have an awesome birthday!” or “Happy Birthday!!! 
” etc. Set a time of day to send the greeting and watch as the app meets these minor social obligations on your behalf. What could be more efficient than that?
I kind of have two opinions on this. Firstly I love the way things get invented in tech based new and novel communication forms. The idea of something like Qs Smart Birthday Wisher just would not have existed a few years ago- and yet, here it is. The world changes and new spaces are created all the time for products, services and inventions. Secondly, however, and maybe I’m outdated in thinking this- isn’t this a little impersonal? Is it really just saying that you can’t be bothered to do this yourself- do you actually feel the wishes behind a greeting like this?
I think there’s debate to be had there- especially in that many people have over a thousand Facebook friends and surely management of this must be a burden, even for people who genuinely want to wish each and every friend a happy birthday. Facebook friends often are not like real life friends, and we might only have a passing shared interest in many of them. So, if online spaces create these new problems, why not solve them with new solutions?
Qs Smart Birthday Wisher in many respects could be a bit of an online-lifesaver. It is incredibly simple to configure, simply authorise Facebook and it will list all your friends and their birthdays. You can then decide to send them an automated Facebook message when you choose and with a message you create yourself. You can also add their mobile number to this and the app can send automatic text messages wishing them Happy Birthday. You can also add your own new contacts. There is also a widget that can run on your home screen to remind you whose birthday it is.
To be honest you don’t have to set the app to send a greeting at all, you could just merely use it to remind you- instead of having to consult Facebook on a daily basis to check on these online relationships. Everyone has busy lives these days and this is perhaps a great way of managing these little tasks.
For me the major downside is the intrusive advertising in the Lite version of the app- after all you are going to want to try it out before you buy it. Unfortunately the app adopts the advertising model which sends adverts straight to your notifications panel- and in my experience these have been of the spammy “Find hot singles in your area” variety rather than anything meaningful. The app sets its content rating to ‘Everyone’ but this simply isn’t true. If you have children or young teenagers who use an Android phone, such ads are highly inappropriate in my opinion. It’s such a shame, because this demeans the app itself which could be very useful to you.
http://youtu.be/A9LJArTJ6d0
Watch on Mobile
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Upcoming Birthday list
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Create Birthday wishes manually
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Create Birthday wishes manually (2)
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Edit greeting
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Notifications
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Sync
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Widget
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Settings
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Qs Smart Birthday Wisher – Help
Usefulness:
If you have a large number of online relationships to maintain, and perhaps do not always have the time to check Facebook and/or send individual messages, this would be hugely useful to you.
Ease of Use:
Qs Smart Birthday Wisher is incredibly easy to use and very intuitive. There are a good range of settings available, and there are lots of customizations in terms of when you send a greeting, what message is sent and to whom.
Frequently Used:
Fully utilized, you could end up using the app every day, especially if you have quite a few Facebook friends who each have a birthday.
Interface:
The interface is very basic and simple- menus and multiple choice options, etc. Nothing to write home about, but it is at least functional and well laid out.