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Productivity is an elusive bugger, isn’t it? Forget the daily work stuff — which is challenging enough — I’m talking about the mindless everyday stuff. Everything from acknowledging birthdays to adding flight plans to your calendar to checking traffic before you leave the house.
EasilyDo is a virtual assistant that promises to automate a variety of tasks, ranging from those you’re likely to forget to those that distract you from more important activities. Yes, please.
Good news: There’s a free version that does quite a lot. But if you want to really take advantage of everything the service has to offer, StackSocial is offering a lifetime EasilyDo Premium subscription for $19.99. How good a deal is that? Subscriptions normally run $4.99 per month. That’s $49.99 over the course of a year. In other words, pay for four months, get the service for life.
I won’t list all of EasilyDo’s capabilities here, but I will call out a couple of my favorites. First, it can automatically send a text message when you leave someplace. Second, it can automatically add travel itineraries to your calendar, as well as provide real-time travel alerts. Finally, it helps you organize your email and can identify messages that need a response (for example, those from business associates or family members).
There’s a lot more to it than that, and because CNET hasn’t reviewed EasilyDo, I’ll refer you to this PC Mag review of the iPhone version. It’s also available for Android, naturally, and there’s a Gmail plug-in as well.
StackSocial’s deal will be running for at least the next four days, so I definitely recommend trying the free version first to see if it’s something you like. (I find solutions like this to be a little cumbersome at first, but usually much better after you’ve lived with them a few days.) If it is, $20 for lifetime service is a killer deal.
Bonus deal: Google Play is once again giving away perfectly good MP3 albums that would normally cost you, well, money! This time out: Elvis Presley’s “30 #1 Hits” and Jeff Buckley’s “Grace”. The latter is the “Google Play Bonus Track Version,” which isn’t even included on the $9.99 standard version. You do need to have a credit card on file with Google if you want to take advantage of these freebies. If you consider that reason to complain, well, you’d also need to provide a credit card to buy these albums. Just saying.