Astrid Tasks and To-do List has been a popular task management app for Android for quite some time now; it might not have been the first, but it was arguably among the best. Offering cross-platform sync, an easy to use and powerful companion web-app, Astrid really showed off how task management Android could work really well. Equally, it showed off what Google Tasks could have been if Google hadn’t ignored it.
Well it seems, like all good things, Astrid might be coming to an end of sorts. In a post on Astrid’s blog, CEO Jon Paris announced that his team would be joining Yahoo’s mobile team with the goal of “making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining”.
For existing Astrid users, Paris has announced the service will continue to work as-is for the next 90 days .. beyond that, though, who knows what will happen? In a sign that things might cease, annual subscriptions paid by users for extra storage, backup and more will receive refunds soon and those extra services will, presumably, cease to be offered.
For people — like me — who have used Astrid for years to manage their to-do lists and to stay on top of things, this is both good news and bad. Good news for the Astrid team, but bad news for us, with the likelihood that Astrid will soon bite the dust.
Google Keep gets an obligatory mention, because Google had originally offered some funding to Astrid but seemingly this wasn’t enough; Astrid now acquired by Yahoo, and Google devoting a little bit of time to Google Keep suggests that maybe Astrid wasn’t attractive enough a target for Google to acquire it (which would probably have been a better outcome for all of us).
Apparantly disingenuous Paris is the only one in the universe who doesn’t know that Yahoo is the domain of juvenile trolls and the only habits it makes easier are sockpuppet flaming and providing “answers” by people who know as little about the subject as the person asking the question… (who then, although admitting from the start that he doesn’t know the answer, is given the choice of
voting for the best answer.?!) Yahoo was my first email… But since closing the browser window on that flaming crap I have been living in relative ecstasy.
As an option for keeping your tasks safe no matter what, you can migrate them into Wrike (www.wrike.com) with our new import feature. We have a web version and free mobile apps for iOS and Android.
First my GeoCities page, and now Astrid? Yahoo is too cruel to me.
I live and die by this program. I would probably forget to put my pants on each morning if it weren’t for Astrid. Dammit, Yahoo, why must you destroy all that is good in the world.
Noooo… 🙁 I have Astrid Premium on my homescreen on my S4! I use it every day. Saved my bacon many times over.
Also Google Keep gets a mention due to the new Chrome Extension : http://auschrome.net/2013/05/03/google-releases-official-google-keep-chrome-app/