Does the world really need another social media dashboard? That’s what I asked myself as I signed up for LifeIO, an online application that promises ‘my life, my way’.

Getting Started

Once you have an account, the best place to start is with the settings tab, where you can edit your profile, change the theme of your page, upload an avatar and more. The ‘import’ icon allows you to bring in contacts, calendar entries and RSS subscriptions. You can add email accounts, individual feeds, and connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Finally, you can organize your information into categories.

The Dashboard

When you have completed setup, it’s time to head for the dashboard. The main window is in the middle, while the left column has links to different areas such as email folders, feeds and calendars. The right column shows your online status, latest feed posts and widgets.

Across the top of the page are several little icons which you can use to change your dashboard view. The ‘Now’ button shows you what’s happening at the moment. What you see will vary depending on your setup, but in our test, it showed recent tweets as this was the most active account.

The email window brings up your email. You can hover over a message for a preview or click on it to read and reply, all from within LifeIO. There are also icons for your calendar, categories, notes, feeds, social accounts and shopping. The shopping icon allows you to search Yahoo Shopping, Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Craigslist and Fandango without leaving LifeIO.

Wherever you are, you can click on a widget to add a chat window, clock or scratchpad, and your contacts are automatically loaded into the chat window. It’s a shame that doesn’t also work for email.

Does It Work?

Early tests suggest it’s not yet time to ditch all your other applications and manage everything from within LifeIO. It’s promising, because it links a lot of useful features. Live news updates could also be a plus. But it would be good to see automatic contacts import, and more customization options. Like many applications that want to do it all, LifeIO is a useful hub. However, it doesn’t handle email, feeds and social sites as well as other applications already out there.

This post was submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online.com.
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