If I’ve ever forgotten your birthday I’m sorry. Remembering them is something I don’t do all that well. Even when I remember I have slim chance of knowing how old you are. But now, thanks to Occassions on my iPhone, I should never miss your birthday again—assuming of course that I know it in the first place.
Occasions displays birthdays, anniversaries and other upcoming events on your iPhone. Each entry gives has a name, date and countdown. If a year is present Occasions calculates the age of the event. If there is no year specified, you’ll get the date and number of days until the event only.
I know too many people. Do I have to enter their birthdays?
My contact list has close to 700 people which includes my 141 Facebook friends. It’s fair to say that I don’t know all their birthdays but for those I do I’ve already keyed in their details. My Facebook friends have keyed in their birthdays for me already. Either way I don’t want to key them into Occasions again.
An absolute strength of this program is its integration with the default iPhone contacts (address) book. Every person who has a birthday or anniversary will be loaded and kept up to date automatically.
You can also link Occasions to your Facebook account and everyone who has given Facebook applications the ability to access birthday details will be loaded as well. The application even matches names (or where it can’t suggests matches) between contacts and Facebook. So, you don’t have to double-dip and buy two presents. Respectfully Occasions lets you confirm all matches, automatic or otherwise, and doesn’t just assume. Great if you know two people with the same name. Want more? It imports Facebook avatar pics as well.
Playing nicely with Gmail contacts
Gmail recognises you may know the day and month of a birthday or anniversary but not the year. It allows you to miss any of day, month or year. And that’s great. However, the iPhone contacts app requires a year and if you haven’t specified one the date won’t transfer across and subsequently not be shown in Occasions. I’ve got around this by setting 1900 as the date. Few of my friends are 111. though some are moving that way. I’ve a great aunt and uncle which are 95 each and have just celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.
My favourite band are playing. Can I get a countdown?
Yes, by creating a custom event. Simple. You can even load public holidays which for Australia includes Mothers’ and Fathers’ days.
Final words
I really like this app. It makes remembering birthdays easy. So much so that I’ve deleted corresponding entries from my Google calendar. I need only add the date to a person—which is where it belongs—and that’s it. There are ample notification, search and filter settings to play with to really configure things how you need to.
Priced at the lowest end of the app pricing scale (just above free), you may receive a copy for your birthday. That is, if your friends have Occasions on their iPhone.