In this day and age of cloud based services we have come to understand that this relatively new tool has dis/advantages, a major advantage being that these services have made it possible for us to work with people all over the world, even when we're not physically at the same location (provided there's internet access, of course). One of the main disadvantages we could identify is that there are a number of clients available and many of us are using more than one of them, making managing everything tricky at times.
Let's take my humble self as a case in point: I use Google Calendar to keep track of my appointments, Dropbox for uploading documents, Google Drive for sharing pics, Evernote for taking notes and Twitter for communicating with individuals.
So there you go, that's quite a few services that require managing, and this, my friends, can cost time and patience. This is what led me to peruse the market for a service that would take over managing these other services for me: enter Hojoki.
Hojoki is geared at users that, like me, use several cloud based services professionally and/or for working with others. If you use these types of services solely for yourself you will find that Hojoki can help present them in an efficient, tidy manner, but the app won't be as beneficial to you as it will be to users who share the above-mentioned services with lots of other active users. This way you will always stay on top of who's uploading what or has made which changes.
In the case of Twitter you will see your own Tweets and those with which you've interacted. The presentation looks likes comments and is very nicely done (much nicer than the official Twitter app!).
Next, let's take a look at what it means to manage your services. In a nutshell: Hojoki will notify you about changes and then relay you to the app you need to go to in order to see documents or calendar entries. This function does not apply to all services; all other apps must be accessed via the integrated browser, which is a bit of a pity, as having all services integrated would make using Hojoki that much more comfortable to use. Furthermore, we found the link to Google Drive to be poor to inefficient on the Google Nexus 4. That said, Twitter, Dropbox and Evernote all worked smoothly.
Other services can be included, even lesser known ones such as Bitbucket. The only one that's missing is – oddly enough – the omnipresent giant Facebook. Hojoki is geared towards productivity and Facebook is more about communicating and networking (which can lead to productivity, granted). So while we get why the developers chose to exclude Facebook we would still love to see it as part of the group.
Another shortcoming we were able to identify is that it isn't possible to set up “Workspaces” via the app. As the name suggests, Workspaces are areas in which users can share updates with other individuals, e.g. meetings/deadlines, recommendations, documents... I'm not sure why the Hojoki devs chose to leave this super useful tool out of the app (you can set them up on the web interface).
Lastly, I want to address messaging. To help me stay on top of the latest activities I opted mainly for push notifications during my test runs. There is also a weekly newsletter/status notification re: updates.
Push notifications worked out very well for me. I could gage how prompt they are via Twitter, and the verdict is that they are very prompt indeed.
Bottom line:
Hojoki - One client for apps was a very pleasant surprise. At first I wasn't sure just how useful this app would be, but I've been converted. So long as you're willing to integrate Hojoki into your workflow and ideally can get your colleagues/team/clients to use it too, I think you'll find that it makes everything a little easier.
Latest Community Comments