BondAppMergedEven with all the communication tools at our disposal, it can be hard to remember to stay in touch with people we love and care about. We live busy lives, and that means sometimes forgetting to call, text or email just to check in.

geekwireapp2Enter Bond: an iPhone app designed to keep you in touch with the important people in your life. The app connects with several different communication and messaging services, and reminds users to keep in touch with their contacts on a regular basis.

Users choose a communication method, select a contact, and indicate how frequently they want to reach that person — every day, every week, every two weeks, every month, or every year. Bond will then send push notifications using the chosen timeframe, reminding users to get in touch and giving them quick access to the chosen method of communication.

Bond works with the iPhone’s calling and messaging functions, along with Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Gmail and Gmail for Work. Reminders for different people can be set independently, but they’ll always show up at a particular (user-defined) time for each service. Swipe on the notification, and Bond will automatically connect you.

Section1This is one of those apps that does one thing, but does it well. The reminders that I set for myself popped up consistently, and it was easy to go immediately from the notification to communicating with the person I wanted to reach.

It’s very tempting to say that people should just get better about remembering to stay in touch with their friends and loved ones. But we lead busy lives, in part because of all the stuff we could be doing on our phones at a given time. Bond is a great way of reminding yourself to carve out some space for people that matter to you.

Going forward, I’d like Bond to add the ability to easily set up one notification to communicate with a single person across multiple communications platforms. Right now, if I wanted to remind myself to text or call a friend, I’d have to set up two separate reminders (one for the text, one for the call). In the future, I want to be able to set one reminder that lets me reach the friend through any of the various accounts we both share.

I’d also prefer fine-tuned scheduling options, such as the option for different reminder times for different days. I can only call my friends at night on weekdays, but I’m more likely to reach them during the day on weekends. Under Bond’s current setup, I can only get a reminder to call at a certain time of day, no matter what day of the week it is.

But even with those limitations, Bond is quite helpful when it comes to staying in touch. Android users who like the concept have something to look forward to — the company says it’s “coming soon” to the Google Play Store.

Bond is available for free on the iOS App Store.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.