Free service to serve as birthday reminder?

November 15, 2011 7:31 PM

I need a free service that can send me warnings for scheduled events (birthdays, anniversaries), specs inside

I am ridiculously bad at remembering people age's and their birthdays. (Sometimes I forget mine own! Derp!)
Hopefully, in this digital age there are services to help the date-impaired people like me. I had been using myemailreminders.com for two years and was quite content with it but the website died- which I didn't notice, and I got late in wishing one of my friend's happy birthday as a result.

I am looking for help to find a new service that:
-is free
-can send mails to my hotmail address
-won't spam me
-can be set to warn me in advance
-does NOT pop on computer boot (I never shut the darn thing)
-therefore a online service or an installed one that runs unobtrusively
-hopefully isn't set to die without warning like my previous service did but I know this might be wishful thinking

Thank you very much!

posted by CelebrenIthil to Technology (16 answers total)

Best answer: google calendar can do all that except (as far as I know) the hotmail part. I have it set to remind me of tax filing deadlines for my business. But, alas with a gmail account
posted by edgeways at 7:37 PM on November 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Drats. I have been rocking the same hotmail address since the guy that came to install our internet at home when I was young made one of all the family members. I have a gmail account because Google strong-armed me into getting one to access various service but I am unfailingly steady to my hotmail.
This won't work, unless I can somehow tell my gmail to forward all the stuff to my main address. :/
posted by CelebrenIthil at 7:48 PM on November 15, 2011

That is not a bad idea, you might be able to actually do that, let me poke around and see if I can figure it out, unless someone with more knowledge responds first
posted by edgeways at 7:52 PM on November 15, 2011

Best answer: I have been using if this then that and love it. It takes a bit of time to set it up, but it can email, text, call and utilize other services (post to facebook, twitter, blog). I have never been spammed by them at all either.
posted by lilkeith07 at 7:53 PM on November 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Celebren, yes you can forward email from your Gmail address to your hotmail address. Mail settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
posted by trunk muffins at 7:53 PM on November 15, 2011 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Gmail email forwarding
posted by lucia_engel at 7:53 PM on November 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You could set your gmail address to forward any and all messages from Google calendar to your hotmail account.
posted by looli at 7:54 PM on November 15, 2011

Best answer: I've used Birthday Alarm. It fulfills all your requirements.
posted by sharkfu at 7:54 PM on November 15, 2011

Response by poster: You guys are magical!

Also, "if this then that" looks neat- I may find a use for it even if not for this particular use.

Have an armload of best answers! :D
posted by CelebrenIthil at 8:00 PM on November 15, 2011

I use memotome.com all the time. Can't really vouch whether they will stand the test of time, but for the year or two that I have been on, it has worked just fine. They have a pay-for version, but the free site works fine for me.

The only sort of weird thing is that the site still shows Copyright © 1997 - 2008 Jaytu Technologies, LLC. All rights reserved.. That may or may not bode well when considering their longevity.
posted by lampshade at 8:20 PM on November 15, 2011

I use Remindr and you can use it with any email.
posted by jessamyn at 8:54 PM on November 15, 2011

It is also a startup on development hiatus (read: could die), but I have become utterly dependent on 30Boxes. I like the birthday aspect because you can optionally enter a year and then the reminder is sent with "wnissen's birthday - 76 years old!" It's a general calendar, but the layout makes it much easier to see more each event in the month mode. It can send to an arbitrary email address.
posted by wnissen at 9:40 PM on November 15, 2011

"if this then that" (ittt) is great. I set up four daily alarms and a bunch of birthday alerts and it works perfectly. I also just set some weather alerts. Great free product although it is a little hard to set up.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:52 PM on November 15, 2011

I've had a hotmail address for a billion trillion years also but I almost never sign into hotmail, I do everything through my gmail interface, and use googles calendar, too, as I am, like you, mostly glued into google services.

But I thought "Hey, hotmail has GOT to have a calendar thing going, they've GOT to compete" so I went and logged in there, found the link to the calendar from my email, clicked it, and all it did was churn and churn, it never did load anything. Friggin' microsoft and they've got a dead app -- what the hey?

So go with google calendar, or another of the above if you like them, but you might want to never, ever consider rotmail calendar app.....
posted by dancestoblue at 4:42 AM on November 16, 2011

If you have a hotmail account, the online calendar component should be able to do all of that.
http://explore.live.com/windows-live-calendar should be the equivalent of google calendar without the additional hassle of setting up forwarding to your hotmail.

All of your criteria is pretty basic for all online calendar service as all of them has the same *.ics format. If you have freinds on facebook, this might help even more.

Just follow the steps for getting the link from facebook and add as a new calendar in live calendar.
posted by radsqd at 2:16 PM on November 16, 2011

Btw, I use google mail but my friend has another service - I set up events in Google Calendar and then invite her via her email address. That would let you keep your yahoo address. I also push the calendar into my ipod so I still have access to my event details even if I'm not at a computer.
posted by jaimystery at 3:57 AM on November 17, 2011