LifeShaker Review and Giveaway
If you’re like me, organization of tasks does not come easy. Luckily for us Mac users there are a plethora of organizational apps including LifeShaker from Funky Cloud. LifeShaker is unlike any other to-do application and makes remembering to do things easy with its fun and clean interface.
The application allows you to create goals and steps that must be completed for that goal to be accomplished. These goals are then divided into categories that are each given their own customizable color.
LifeShaker displays a random nine goals in a 3×3 grid which can be shaken up at any time to allow other goals to float to the top, thus becoming viewable. Shaking it up by clicking the cocktail shaker located on the right sidebar. If you have a goal or two that is top priority, you can star them to denote their significance.
LifeShaker can also note that some tasks need to be put on the back burner. This is easily accomplished by dragging the task from the grid to the fire icon, thereby temporarily removing from the grid and allowing that space to be fill by a goal that is more important. Once a task is completed, drag it to the check mark where it will be removed from the grid but will still remain in your master goal sheet.
In the few days that I have been using LifeShaker extensively and I really believe my productivity has increased. If you’re in need of a helpful and fun app to add to your dock, definetely seek out Lifeshaker and take advantage of the 14 day trial. If you decide that you like the app, a full version is available for $29.
BUT WAIT! It gets better! The guys at Funky Cloud have given us 3 licenses to offer up to our loyal readers.
The catch is (there is always a catch), you must answer this question in the comments below:
What features would you like to see in the next version of LifeShaker?
The winners will be announced Wednesday, so put your ideas in the comments before Tuesday at 5PM EDT. Good Luck!
That app looks really interesting. I’m not satisfied with iCal, and I can’t wait for Leopard To-Do’s.
I would like to see a lifeshaker button on Google Calendar that would import/sync daily items rom gcal. I use gcal as a pseudo to do manager and I love the sms/email reminders built in. Combining the beauty of Lifeshaker with the functionality of gcal would be awesome!
I love the simplicity. This application is easy to use and understand. It is a great compliment to my performing everyday tasks. I find this a better fit to the mac compared to ical.
There are some fresh concepts in this program. I look its appearance, as well. It might be more convenient if there were a dashboard widget displaying a miniaturized grid in the next version.
I would like to use this on an iPhone. It would be beautiful and fun, as well as productive.
I would like to see a QuickSilver plugin and/or a Dashboard widget for easy entry.
I would love to see an easy way to manage other people’s tasks as well as my own. I have 4 direct reports that I need to know what they are doing each day. They give me monthly and daily goals and email me as they are completed. No get it done app handles this with any level of simplicity. I either need to pretend it is my task, which get confusing when it comes to trying to sort out my stuff or I need to create unique files for each report, but then I have trouble seeing where people are relative to each other. I wouldn’t want anything complicated mind you, but maybe a simple way to tag different peoples to do lists.
In extension to the above, I would like to be able to create a mass to do. I would like to be able to add a to do that shows up for everyone. An example of this might be a monthly meeting that I know all of us needs to attend.
What a great application! It combines my ical usage together with mori. What would be really great to see in a future version is that seperate goals can use the same categories.
I can’t find a way to move a goal from one category to another. I like the randomness of the shaker but I would also like to be able to set a fixed priority to my goals.
I’d like to see Quicksilver integration.
Terry – you can right-click or control-click on the goal’s category to change it.
I like my task list visible at all times so I can easily see what I need to do next. A (customizable) sidebar with stacked blocks that hangs out at the edge of my screen would help. Click-and-hold on dock icon to show small version of grid would be cool.
Categories may be used as contexts or locations, and goals may consist of steps that happen in different contexts/locations. So, categories should apply to individual steps, and only to goals when there are no steps (goal category could serve as default for step category).
Streamlined item creation would be nice, too. I should be able to double-click an empty area of a list to create an item. Creating a category, for example, takes 2 clicks, typing, and 2 enters – it should be double-click, type, enter.
I would like it so family members can “login” by hitting a button on the top of the screen and see their own tasks. It could then replace the family chores board we have hanging on our fridge!
In the next version, I’d like to see a beer and sandwich retrieval module, a function that lets the dogs out and a hardware dongle that surrounds the use with the aura of Jessica Alba.
This certainly won’t increase the functionality of the app but how about leveraging the macbook and macbook pro motion sensor capabilities and allowing tasks to be shaken by actually shaking the laptop instead of clicking on the lifeshaker button.
This looks liek a pretty great app. What would be pretty cool to see in the next version is access to the program in the menu bar. so if you click on the icon in the menu bar, you can look at the 9 goals you recently had shaken up.
The product looks fantastic! The feature I would most like to see added is .mac syncing. The ability to sync everything across two computers is pretty essential for my work style.
The ability to “link” Lifeshaker Goals to different objects would be cool. For example, if I’m writting a paper, I could drop the .rtf file onto the Goal associated with that paper. I would also be nice to have deadlines associated with Goals that need them (or the ability to link to iCal events).
Well. It is really unique way to do todo. Wish I could give a try on it.
Some kind of workflow for GTD implementation, quicksiver and ical integration, and especially mail integration (so we can easily make todo item from mail message).
I would like to be able to sync with multiple different calendar type apps/devices (e.g. gcal, ical, and my blackberry).
I’d like to see an iCal/Entourage Integration.
I’d like to see iCal integration with Lifeshaker. Other than that I think this is an excellent app! Tried it out and I’m liking what I see so far.
Wow! So simple but It’s doing the job! I would like to be able to change the icon on the left side with a library or by custom icons! And may be a link with iCal.
Jut put the demo on my computer but find that there is a lot of dragging and clicking. Maybe I am missing something but the less I use my trackpad the better. I think that lifeshaker could do with more shortcuts for shaking it up or backburner or completed.
Can it be translated to French?
Would be great if the interface was cleaned up, looks a tad messy now.
@TI3VOM – have you tried daylite?
As for me, I’d buy this in a heartbeat if it easily synced with my Treo (and wiht my Daylite database as well as my iApps). I had one app I was trying that did that, but it didn’t work in the same fashion as LifeShaker.
[...] people over at FunkyCloud. In order to be eligible to win, you must have posted a comment on our LifeShaker Review article telling the developers what you would most like to see int he next version of [...]
Lifeshaker fits the bill for me very nicely! I have it full screen on a 2nd display hooked to my macbook pro. It is like having a digital whiteboard that helps me keep my eye on the ball. Good work!
The one thing I wish you would add is the ability to click on an empty line in categories, goals and steps to make an entry instead of having to hit the “+” sign each time.
Keep up the great work!
Mitch
Thanks to everyone who commented, there’s some very interesting ideas in there! Congratulations to the three winners, we hope you’ll have a lot of fun with LifeShaker.
Patrick – you could make a category for each person and use LifeShaker that way.
Richard – genius idea. made me smile.
Josh & Mitch – it’s much quicker to use the keyboard shortcuts: Cmd-N creates a new goal and Shift-Command-N creates a new step.
I agree LifeShaker could use .Mac integration, and several other things folks have already mentioned.
The feature I would add immediately: a way to get phone numbers and/or addresses from Address Book without launching Address Book. (Lots of other apps do this.)
Also instead of just the one star option I think there should be three ranking indicators — if the iTunes-like 5 star model is too busy (which it well would be I think) maybe 3 different graphic symbols? Like a comet, a star, an asterisk, an exclamation point (well-styled),…?
Otherwise I find LifeShaker very pleasing. It’s highly intuitive, attractive (non-threatening to look at – which is important in a presentation of things one must do) – has some “fun” built in (the sound effects), is colorful but not obnoxiously so…
[one thing though -- sometimes the program will not accept the category/color I assign to it, takes two or even three tries to register as correct category.]
Lovely app though! Thanks…
- DGBly
This program made me think at the crews of “conquistadores” that traded clinging and colored beads [colored basic list and rattling sounds] with natives, against rich and valuable resources [my own 29 bucks]. While the program tries to place its value in its simplicity, lack of critical features [for me] such as no printing capability and one single installation per license [I can't transfer all of those cute lists onto my laptop when I travel??!!] have left me with that terrible taste as when coffee is mistakenly sweetened with salt … Not worth the $29.00 with its present features.
The main reason that LifeShaker is only single install is because in version 1 it is not possible to sync the database between two systems so therefor it really doesn’t make sense to have more than one install. You could manually transfer the database file between two systems but you’d also really have to transfer the preferences too and it soon gets messy.
Printing will be the next major feature and existing customers will get that for free.
I’m sorry that you feel deceived because of course that’s not our intention. The whole reason we have a 14 day trial is so you can try LifeShaker out and decide if it is suitable for you or not.
Martin Baker
http://www.funkycloud.com
I would like the ability to prioritize individual steps that make each goal. That way, after a shake, primary steps always appear before secondary steps. That would be cool.
Josh did! He asked for requests for art subjects to break in his new tablet pen. Dude got nearly 200 replies.
Really useful Thanks for sharing
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