Dear friends of Astrid,
Over the past number of months we have been hard at work taking in your feedback and using it to help us improve Astrid. This has resulted in hundreds of hours of redesigning, developing, testing and improving Astrid (Android’s Simple Task Recording Dashboard) to make it both simpler to use and more customizable.
We are proud to announce that the result of all this hard work is nearly ready.
Before we share the latest and greatest version of Astrid with the world, we wanted to invite you, Astrid’s fans and supporters, to try out a pre-release version.
The first change in the latest version will be imperceptible at first. Astrid now facilitates add-ons that allow us to add additional features. Example add-ons that are in the works include alternative synchronization services, additional widget sizes and more styling. This has been facilitated with a complete reworking of Astrid’s guts. You might also notice considerable speed increases if you have large task lists and better synchronization if you use Remember The Milk.
The second big change is to the user interface. The goal is to make Astrid easier for new users while providing the features that you power users love. There is now a filters page, better search capabilities, and the create/edit task screen has been updated to make it faster to do the most common tasks. Finally the reminders now come with a bit more personality. We think you will learn to love all these changes, but we also know that for those who fell in love with the way Astrid was, it may take some time to appreciate the changes. Please give it a day or two at least before you ask us to change it all back!
Ok, enough talk. If you are ready to try out the latest version of Astrid you can download it at: http://bit.ly/astrid3rc
Three quick notes before you upgrade:
1) you may need to configure non-market apps to be installed on your phone
2) make a backup of your tasks before you upgrade (menu -> more -> export tasks)
3) if you use Remember The Milk, do a sync before you update.
After you try it out, there are three ways you can help us make Astrid even better.
1) Give us feedback
Let us know what you like, don’t like, wish was improved or want to add. You can do all of this and more by visiting our support site at the link below:
http://bit.ly/astrid-beta-feedback
2) Teach Astrid your language
If you are a non-English speaker, cool, so is Astrid! In fact Astrid speaks over 16 different languages. But there are so many new changes, that Astrid needs to be taught some new words and phrases. Instructions on how you can quickly and easily start helping Astrid learn your language are found here:
http://bit.ly/astrid-translations
3) Support Astrid by buying the Astrid Power-Pack
Two of us have quit our jobs and have spent thousands of dollars on development and customer support in order to help you become more productive. When the next version of Astrid comes out some of the power-user features like timers, backup and additional widget options will only be available through an add-on called the Astrid Power-Pack. Would you consider buying this even if you don’t regularly use timers and backup or are not even interested in additional widgets? We plan on keeping the price pretty low, at $3.99 or about the price of a large latte. While a latte might help you be more productive for a day, Astrid is designed to make you more productive for years! Please consider purchasing this and through your ratings, comments, tweets and “likes” letting the world know that you love Astrid. This would help us a ton.
Thanks again for all your support,
Jon Paris