BirthdayKitty: Birthday & Anniversary email reminders from your Google Contacts

For more than a decade, I ran a simple program a friend had written that sent me an email once per day with a list of family members and friends who had birthdays, anniversaries, or other important events. I'd then contact these people, usually by email but sometimes by text message, to wish them a happy birthday/anniversary. It was a great way to make sure I didn't forget important days and to keep in touch with old friends at least once a year. But the process for this was cumbersome: I had to hand-edit a plain text file. Since I also kept the dates in Google Contacts, I had to make edits in two places. I always thought it would be nice if the information was fetched read-only automatically from Google Contacts and thought I might even write it myself one day. But work and life got in the way for many years, until recently, that is.

So I developed BirthdayKitty to replace my old system and make it easy for me to store birthdays, anniversaries, and other important events in Google Contacts and still get a daily email reminder. Privacy matters a lot to me, so I built it with careful attention to protecting your data. I am hoping it will be useful to others as well. It is a paid product but there is a free trial (and no credit card is required).

I should mention that though remembering the days is simple with this app, the real payoff is in making the effort to reach out. Take a few minutes to write a nice email to an old friend. Tell them what you've been up to and send a recent picture of something fun. Ask them genuine questions about themselves and what is new in their lives. Personally I've found over the years that I've developed deep and meaningful relationships with those friends and family members with whom I've written back and forth over these many years. My hope is that BirthdayKitty will help me to continue this going forward.

I hope you like the site and find the joy I've found over many years keeping in touch with family and friends on their birthdays and other special days.

Have you launched a small product like this solo, off the side of your desk? I'd love general advice or specific feedback you may have on this project.