We all have too much to do and too little time to do it. And now that many of us are working from home, we need even more help getting organized.
Nobody knows that better than Liat Mordechay Hertanu and her husband, Gilad, busy Israeli parents of four kids aged 12, 10, 8 and 1.
In 2013, they managed to develop a smart personal assistant app, 24me, named “Best of the App Store” by Apple in 2014.
Now they’ve launched another free app under the 24me corporate umbrella, aimed to help us get organized at home and at work.
Because honestly, organizing our time more efficiently may be the key to keeping our heads above water.
The new free Android and iOS mobile-only app, GroupCal, treats shared calendars like group WhatsApp threads.
You invite a group of people to create a common calendar using their phone numbers or a link instead of email addresses. (But you do have to connect to another calendar for this app to work—and give it access to your contacts.)
You can make groups for family events, different business projects, a book club, volunteering, and so forth. Each group is color-coded, making it easy to spot which event belongs to which group.
You can choose to show events from a chosen calendar in full color, with other events dimmed out, to help you focus on one thing at a time without losing a sense of your fuller agenda.
“Today you are getting info about events which related to your schedule in many forms: emails, WhatsApp messages, etc. With GroupCal, any group that you are associated with will have its schedule shared. It will automatically inform all members about the relevant events,” Hertanu tells ISRAEL21c.
What other Israeli apps can keep us organized?
24me remains a popular personal assistant for millions of people hoping to boost their productivity.
This easy-to-use and yet super powerful app puts everything related to your schedule in one place: your calendar, to-do list, notes and personal accounts. It will automatically remind you of bills due and other important information as the app connects to your financial institutions, social networks and service providers.
24me also auto-completes tasks and errands and enables customization and syncs with all your devices.
Any.do helps busy people remember daily tasks and chores. It keeps you on track with a to-do list, reminders, notes and the ability to share lists with and assign tasks to others.
The app lets you sync between phone, desktop, web, and tablet to keep your lists up to the minute.
A voice-entry feature lets you add items to your task list just by speaking. Calendar integration is available for better task list management.
You can further enhance your productivity with cross-platform support for sub-tasks, notes, and file attachments. Choose either a free or premium version with advanced features.
Fitness22 offers a series of about 25 health and fitness apps that make it possible to fit fitness into our hectic routines. Its straightforward programs include a personal audio coach to guide you gradually to reach your goal.
Tens of millions of people around the world use Fitness22 iOS and Android apps such as Couch to 5K Runner, Abs Workout, Yoga for Beginners, Home Workouts Personal Trainer, Half Marathon Trainer and even – for in between workouts – Meditation and Relaxation Pro.
Mailwise groups emails from multiple accounts into conversations and cleans them up — hiding all the headers, signatures, disclaimers and other clutter so you save scrolling time and can zoom in on the content.
It also groups repetitive notifications, bundling together things like birthday alerts and newsletters.
Mailwise makes emailing similar to text chats without sacrificing the flexibility and strength of email. You can always see the original emails sent or received and can perform actions such as marking or starring individual messages.
Named by Forbes in 2014 as “one of the 7 great apps to simplify your life” (along with 24me), Mailwise supports multiple accounts and most email clients such as Yahoo! mail, AOL, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Gmail and Exchange.
Bizzabo is a large suite of event-planning tools in one elegant software package.
Targeted to employees in medium-to-large-sized businesses, Bizzabo offers several ways to streamline task completion and team collaboration. The software allows you to build event websites for registration, emails for marketing, and agendas for event management.
Monday.com makes collaboration and communication software used by employees at more than 1,000 companies, including GE, Walmart, Uber, eBay, Costco and PayPal, for planning, launching, monitoring and tweaking tasks and projects.
The monday.com app for Android or iOS – named the No. 1 Productivity App by the 2019 Webby Awards –puts all the power to run projects and workflows right in your pocket.
Spike brings your entire workspace into your inbox: email, chat, calendar, calls, team collaboration, and tasks. Spike works on top of your existing email and is available on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and Web.
Spike’s conversational email approach is geared to a more natural communication experience. Built-in team chat lets groups facilitate collaboration and manage projects. Integrated file management and storage allows access and preview of any file type without downloading.
Spike recently announced the close of an $8 million Series A round led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $16 million.
My Day from WeCare is designed to help older adults and people with memory impairment to organize their daily schedule and tasks for– for example, taking medicine or a shower, or going to a medical appointment.
There is continuous connectivity between caregiver and user. A friendly user interface allows both to schedule and monitor tasks and events. The caregiver receives an alert when each task is accomplished.
Cofounders Orly Yeruham and Roie Shimon Cohen have just launched the app in Europe and the United States following a successful pilot in Israel.
The goal, they say, is to enable people with cognitive decline to be more independent and enjoy greater personal wellbeing.
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