Too little time and too much to do. For many, like me, who do not have much faith on their own memory to remind them about when to perform certain tasks, appear to be forever on the losing side in this battle against time. But no longer. We now have many apps to fight on our side and the signs indicate we could be winning.
My trustworthy General in this fighting for time is Any.do, but that too does have some chinks in its armour and I wouldn't mind sacking the General if another comes along bringing more weapons to my armoury.
Shifu, is a relatively new recruit, who shows the promise of rising the ranks and brings in a lot of ideas that other apps of choice do not have or ask for money (Shifu is free). But Shifu, as I said, is still a raw recruit (it is in public beta and currently available only on Android) who has a lot to learn and implement to get those shiny stars on the shoulders.
Shifu's advantage is that it has a lot to offer. From in-your face notifications that you cannot possibly miss and takes context awareness wider. It can remind you about pre-assigned things not only depending on the time of the day but also where you are or which WiFi network you are connected to or with whom you are speaking on the phone and also things to do when you have some time to spare.
Shifu's disadvantage is that it isn't yet able to perform some of these tasks seamlessly. For a to-do app failing to remind me when to do something can trigger the urge to tap on the uninstall button.
When I first tested it over a month ago, Shifu faltered in alerting me of tasks to perform depending on my GPS-determined location, now after a couple of updates it gets that part right but doesn't notify me of tasks when connected to a pre-determined data network.
Shifu's notifications on the homescreen wallpaper is a much better way of catching the user's attention than the notification bar but the execution could have been better. One, its appearance doesn't look very good. Two, it randomly disappears without even giving the time to take action or even to read it. Three, the three-finger gesture to access the wallpaper notification is a little awkward to use.
The notification also appears on the pull-down notification menu, but tapping on it doesn't take you to the app, which, to me, is the expected behaviour. From the notification bar, all that you can do is to swipe it away.
Shifu is definitely a work in progress and looks and feels like it. In addition to function fixes the developer (The Signals) should also look at redesigning the app. In its current form it doesn't look very appealing and not as intuitive that I would expect a to-do app to be.
Looks matter and more so for an app that promises to offer so much (I will also take it a little more seriously if it does away with the multiple exclamation marks in the birthday notifications).
I will wait for Shifu to be further trained at the academy and see more action before I think about a change in command.
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