We are thrilled to announce that we have been acquired by Yahoo!. When we set out to build Astrid, we sought to help as many people as possible become happier, healthier and more productive. We’re really excited to join the mobile team and continue this work with Yahoo!’s goal of “making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining.”

Over the next 90 days, Astrid will continue to work as is, and we will no longer be accepting new premium subscriptions. To make future changes as easy as possible, we’ll be in touch with users shortly to share how to download data.

We are grateful to the more than 4 million of you who have downloaded our apps, to those who have shared Astrid with friends, family and co-workers, and to all who encouraged us with your kind words along the way. You honored us in so many ways, and we won’t forget you.

We are also grateful to our many mentors and investors:

• Thomas Korte and AngelPad for your sage advice and assembling a tremendous community of entrepreneurs.
• Google Ventures and the team at the Startup Lab for teaching us so much.
• Nexus Venture Partners, TMT Investments, and the amazing angel investors who provided the resource and support we needed to build our products and company.
• Jump Associates and LUXr for helping us understand our users and build products people love.

To all of you, in both big and small ways you have helped us achieve the success we enjoy today. It is our sincere hope that our work will help you come closer to your own dreams.

Warmly,

Jon Paris & the Astrid Team

*Note: Yahoo! will be administering refunds to eligible users who have paid for annual subscriptions, Power-Pack and Locale Plugins.

Today we want to share some exciting news: all Astrid Power Pack features now come standard with Astrid on Android. As of this morning the Power Pack is no longer be for sale, but Astrid Premium continues to be. 

So why are the Power Pack features now standard in Astrid? First, we released the Power Pack at a time when there weren’t easy ways to have a subscription service. Back then, one-time app purchases were the most common way to survive as an app maker. Second, we’ve come to believe that the Power Pack features like scrollable widgets are core to a great experience on Astrid for Android, and our first priority is providing a great experience.

Thank you for all of you who have purchased Power Pack. We would not have been able to get to where we are today without your support, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the great features. For those of you who love Astrid but aren’t ready to upgrade to Astrid Premium, tell your friends about Astrid on Facebook and Twitter.

Based on some feedback we’ve received, we want to reiterate that Google Task sync works with Astrid 4.6.0 on Android.

If your primary use of the Astrid app is to sync with Google Tasks, you can still do so. If you only sync with Google Tasks, this update will not affect your usage.

The only users affected by this update are people using both Astrid.com sync and Google Task sync at the same time. These users will only be able to use sync with one or the other, but not both.

Why the change?

Two reasons:

(1) Better, faster sync: With Astrid 4.6.0 we’ve introduced an entirely new sync architecture which vastly speeds up the sync experience and greatly reduces potential errors. This has been a common request from our users and we have created a sync system to help make this happen.

(2) Google Tasks limitations: Google Tasks is limited in its ability to track and update invidual tasks (due to the lack of a persistent unique identifier).  Because of this, when a task was updated on one device, it could cause problems as Astrid’s servers try to update this change across all other devices.  For example, Astrid allows tasks to be on multiple lists.  Google Tasks limits tasks to a single list. When moving a task from one list to another, Google Tasks does not actually move the task, but deletes the original and makes a new copy in the new list.

This limitation in task data was creating some bad experiences for our users who were trying to use both services. When syncing with both Google Tasks and Astrid.com, this problem revealed itself in the form of duplicated tasks, tasks not being completed properly, deleted tasks reappearing, and other various sync issues.

After a lot of thought, testing and engineering, we decided it was best to let go of simultaneous sync with both Google Tasks and Astrid.com so we could create a better sync experience.

What do I do if I currently sync with both Astrid.com and Google Tasks?

The most common reasons we hear for using Google Tasks have been being able to access to our tasks within Gmail itself and the ability to add those tasks to our Google Calendars.  You can access Astrid tasks from within Gmail using our Chrome extension or add tasks to calendar by default.

For full details on transitioning to Astrid.com sync, see our post here.

What if I don’t like these solutions and I want to keep syncing with both Astrid.com and Google Tasks as I have been doing?

If you haven’t experienced the sync problems mentioned above and you’d like to continue syncing with both Astrid.com and Google Tasks simultaneously, you can install the previous version of Astrid (4.5.3) here: http://weloveastrid.com/old/

We had some confusion, so we want to reiterate that Astrid Android 4.6.0 still works with Google Tasks. You can sync to Google Tasks OR Astrid.com, but not both at the same time. We explain more here.

The latest in our series on making sync flawless – 

With the most recent Android update of Astrid, we made strides towards making sync flawless. Sync issues were preventing some of you from being your most productive selves, and we took a long hard look at how we can achieve the level of quality that we stand for. We realized that half of our sync issues were caused at least in part from having devices talk to both Astrid.com servers and Google Tasks servers. Therefore, in order to make perfect sync possible, we decided to stop supporting simultaneous syncing with Google Tasks and Astrid.com. We know this will be a disappointment to some of you, but we’ve built some infrastructure to make this as painless as possible.

1. Sync with Astrid.com

This will be the most reliable way of getting all your Astrid tasks on each device you own as well as on Astrid.com. To sync with Astrid.com, just make sure you are signed into Astrid on your devices. You can also go to settings on the web to app multiple email addresses to link accounts together.

2. Import your Google Tasks

We built a Google Task importer on Android to allow you to quickly transfer tasks into Astrid, where you can reliably use Astrid.com sync. To use the Google Task importer, go to Menu → Sync & backup → Google Tasks → Import Google Tasks.

3. Use Chrome extension to see tasks in Gmail

We heard from some of you that being able to manage your emails and tasks in the same place was important to your work flow, so we built a Chrome extension that lets you view and edit tasks from right within Gmail. The extension even lets you turn emails into tasks with the press of a button. Download the extension on the Chrome Web Store: Remind Me by Astrid.

For more information on the Gmail integration, see here: Getting Started on Astrid’s “Remind Me” Gmail Integration.

4. Add tasks to calendar

If you want all your tasks to show up in your calendar by default, then go to the menu on Android and select Settings → New task defaults → Default add to calendar.

To add tasks to calendar on Astrid.com, see our posts on adding to calendar.

Here’s the latest release candidate, see The Quest for Flawless Sync — Astrid 4.6 Beta

Image credit: tableatny

Jensen Hendriks is one of our entrepreneurial users who’s using Astrid to help get his company off the ground. He teaches graphic web design at Full Sail University in Florida and is the founder of Faithful Athletics, an apparel company set out to show high school and college students that they shouldn’t be ashamed of their faith regardless of their religion.

In our discussions about how he uses Astrid, Jensen shared how he uses Astrid to help run a clothing startup:

There are many steps to the process. Designing the apparel, trademarking, non-profit mumbo-jumbo, marketing, social media, financing and so on. Because of all this craziness I upgraded to Astrid Premium. What a life saver. Now me and my partners, interns and such can share ideas, documents deadlines and more. All of us have the app either on our phone or tablet and of course our laptops. No excuses not to get something done!

The ability to attach documents to tasks is a Premium feature, but the free version of Astrid lets you share tasks. We’re always happy to hear stories of how users are taking advantage of these features.

Check out Faithful Athletics or follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

We previously shared a workaround for making Astrid work with Siri — today we are proud to announce a full Siri integration. It’s kind of magical: Tell Siri to remind you of something, and Astrid will automatically add a task for you.

Here’s how to enable the Siri and Reminders App integration for Astrid:

1. Tap the menu button in the top left
2. Tap Profile
3. Scroll to the bottom and tap Import Siri & Reminders
4. Tap Import from Reminders toggle to put it in the “on” position

If you do not want to keep a copy of the tasks in your Reminders app, press Complete on import. Now whenever you add tasks to Reminders app using Siri, they will show up in your Astrid app. If you’re syncing Astrid on multiple devices, these tasks should show up elsewhere too.

Today, at LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco, Hojoki is teaming up with Astrid and announcing Hojoki for teams to help people organize and communicate around workspaces and tasks.

Hojoki is a service that combines multiple productivity apps like Dropbox and Google Apps into a single, unified feed. Instead of logging into multiple websites and apps, you can see all your updates in the same location. You can comment on items and even share them with collaborators.

Once you connect your accounts, you can even access your feed on the go with their iPhone app and Android app.

Hojoki is free during the beta and promises to always retain a free version of the service. Check them out at hojoki.com!

Introducing Hojoki from Hojoki on Vimeo.

► Notice: Astrid 4.6 is now available on Google Play! ◄

For the last few months, Astrid’s engineers have been on a quest to make Astrid sync perfectly across all your devices. We are proud that Astrid syncs between iPhone, Android, Astrid.com and the new Gmail Extension – but sync is tricky. What happens if your phone loses reception in the middle of a sync? What happens when you edit the date on one device and the title on another, both while offline? What happens if multiple people change the description of a task at the same time? Astrid’s engineers have been thinking about all these situations so you don’t need to. For you, sync should just work.

As millions of you have discovered, Astrid sync currently works pretty well. 99.9% of the time there isn’t an issue. But with millions of syncs happening every day, this just isn’t good enough. Astrid 4.6 is our attempt to make sync FLAWLESS. This beta is a big step in that direction. We’ve tested it extensively ourselves, but before we release it to the masses we wanted to invite the daring among you to try it out. A few caveats -

DO NOT use this beta if you:

• Sync with Google Tasks or Producteev
• Cannot afford to experience an unexpected bug

DO try this if you:

• Sync with Astrid.com
• Want an improved sync experience
• Like living on the edge!
• Want to help us get to flawless sync!

► Notice: Astrid 4.6 is now available on Google Play! ◄

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Astrid user Marianna Zelichenko is a busy woman in the Netherlands who is a business analyst and interaction designer for a software company, a part-time student, and board member of a photography club. She found Astrid after doing a quick search of task management tools.

“I loved the clean and simple interface and at the same time the flexibility of having lists, priorities and due dates.” 

Using Astrid, she shares tasks with the other photography club members to manage action items and monitor progress between meetings. We also love that Marianna finds creative ways to use Astrid to manage different parts of her life. Not only does she keep check lists, grocery lists, and to-dos, she has these other interesting uses:

• Coupons: When she buys a Groupon, she creates a task with the expiration date. She used to forget when coupons would expire, but now she can cash in on her savings.
• Subscriptions: She creates a reminder as the date she needs to decide whether to continue or cancel a subscription. In the description is the actual subscription end date (in the Netherlands, one usually has to cancel several months in advance).
• Books and movies: If there’s a book she wants to read or a movie she wants to see, she creates an item Astrid. If the book or movie is not yet released, she adds the release date as the due date.

Check out her blog at at morna.nl – it’s mostly in Dutch, but that doesn’t stop you from looking at the beautiful photography (including the one in this post)! 

Image credit: Marianna Zelichenko