Let Facebook organize your life, at your own peril
Have you ever been using Facebook and caught yourself thinking “ugh…since I’m always on Facebook, and it’s become my life, I wish there were a way to use Facebook to organize my life as well…” No? You’ve never thought that? Well that’s ok. You’re not an app designer. But the folks who designed the FaceTheDay app did think of it, and they decided, yes, your life would be easier if you could manage it using “events” instead of, you know, writing stuff in your day planner like a less tech-savvy person.
Sure, your iPad has a calendar application already. But it doesn’t link events from Facebook to your day planner! And it doesn’t have a countdown clock! And it doesn’t shift from a black background to a white background, does it? Exactly. That’s why you need this app. Or at least, those are the only things I can think of to list in order to give you a reason to purchase it.
It works like this: You open the app, feed it your Facebook login info, and you’re on your way. Immediately you’re taken to the “events” screen, which is sort of the default here, because “events” are the whole reason you’ve gotten this app in the first place. The idea is to create an event for everything, no matter how trivial. If you have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday, make an event for it. You can even invite your doctor, assuming you are friends. The event can be public (if you want people to know you’re looking out for your health) or private (if you are ashamed of your prescription drug addiction). And you’re off! The event pops up on your screen and you can begin creating, or at least planning more events. Plus, if you’re popular among your 1500+ pseudo friends like I am, you’re likely already receiving upwards of 20 event invites a day to go to art gallery openings, bar mitzvahs, bachelor parties and funerals, and you have a tough time managing all those invites on a day to day basis. You are the king/queen of not responding to event requests. Your friends are beginning to hate you. But there’s hope! With FacetheDay, just swipe the event away, and you can delete it from your queue, which will automatically respond “not attending” on your behalf. Now your cousin knows you can’t make it to her karaoke quinceanera!
There’s also the ability to create a to do list with FacetheDay, which you can’t do on Facebook. So, eat that Mark Zuckerberg. The other interesting but sort of unnecessary function is the ability to turn the application “white” or “black” with what amounts to the flip of a switch by pressing a button at the top of the screen. You do it once, and you say “oh, the background is black. Neat.” Then you click it again and the background is white. And you are sort of impressed. Then you create an event on Facebook to invite your friends to. It’s called “come over to my place and marvel at my app that changes colors from black to white and back again.” Few will respond yes, but that’s ok. Because it’s cool to you.
But the app itself on the whole is kind of a drag. The things I’ve mentioned I discovered not by using the app, but by looking up information about it on iTunes. It’s not a spectacularly intuitive app, and I got the feeling that I wasn’t using it to its full potential. But I also realized there was nowhere for me to go within the app to learn how best to use it.
Ultimately, I don’t have much use for FaceTheDay. There’s no twitter connectivity. It doesn’t link to my actual calendar, which I actually use. It doesn’t really present Facebook that well (I much prefer an app like Friendly or MyPad), and frankly I don’t want to organize my life through a social networking site. But that’s me. Maybe you’re different. Maybe you and I are black and white. The good news is, with FaceTheDay, there’s a way the same app can cater to those two differing views in terms of appearance, but unfortunately, it can’t cater to my individual needs in any other way.
App Store: $2.99
Comment on this story | Comments Off on iPad App Review: FaceTheDay
Loading ...
