Astrid TasksRemember my review of the task management app known as Astrid last week? Well, my timing may have been lousy. Astrid announced on their blog today that they’ve been acquired by Yahoo!, and it’s an ominous announcement.

Here are the two ominous parts:

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.

And:

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

I didn’t like the sound of any of that. I may be reading it wrong, but it sounds to me like the app I’ve grown to love and rely on is going to either go away completely or be significantly changed. The latter option could be good if the changes are positive, but it could also change everything I like about the app.

And Yahoo! administering refunds indicates those services, at least, will be going away. I’m not a premium subscriber, so I’m not directly concerned about that, but putting everything together makes for a grim picture.

I think I’m going to be spending the next 90 days looking for an alternative. Any suggestions?

NO COMMENTS

  1. Julie:- I have a suggestion: Remember the Milk (RTM). This task management app has both a free and a pro (premium) account. RTM can be accessed from Windows and Mac computers through their website. RTM has apps for IOS devices and Android devices. At its simplest, RTM lets you create as many lists as you like. These lists are accesible on all devices through a straightforward interface.

    You can tap into the real power of RTM by creating Smart Lists, which use metadata from the list items, including user-specified tags, to create sophisticated saved searches. Like many others, I use these Smart Lists to implement a comprehensive Getting Things Done (GTD) system.

    The free version of Remember the Milk lets you synchronize your web-based lists with your devices once per day. The Pro version, which costs $25 per year, syncs your lists automatically whenever you access them on a device, along with several other features and priority access to the RTM team via email. The relationship between the Pro and free versions of RTM is similar to the Evernote model.

  2. I use both Astrid and RTM — Astrid is much better for managing tasks. RTM is much better for its original purpose of managing shopping lists.
    Does anybody have any information about what Yahoo intends? Why did they buy Astrid?

  3. @geischen, no Yahoo hasn’t commented, as far as I know. But many competing apps are suddenly offering “Astrid task import,” which makes me wonder if Astrid isn’t going away, at least in its current form.

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