Team LightAr­row is very excited about our new 5.1 update of Life­Topix, which includes sev­eral new fea­tures and usabil­ity improve­ments. Life­Topix 5.1 is avail­able imme­di­ately from the Apple App Store as a free update for any­one with pre­vi­ous Life­Topix ver­sions. If you’re new to Life­Topix, it’s avail­able for a lim­ited time at a spe­cial price of 99 cents. As a uni­ver­sal app, a sin­gle pur­chase enti­tles you to use it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

We’re happy to give you a quick tour of the excit­ing new Life­Topix fea­tures, and help you to under­stand how to take full advan­tage of the significant changes.

Check­lists (To-do Lists)

At LightAr­row, we under­stand that your to-do lists are an impor­tant tool for get­ting things done. That’s why we’ve beefed up this func­tion­al­ity — elim­i­nat­ing the need for you to use a dif­fer­ent app for to-do lists. In Life­Topix, check­lists and to-do lists are syn­ony­mous. For exam­ple, when I refer to a to-do list, it’s essen­tially a check­list in LifeTopix.

Check­lists are eas­ier than ever before to cre­ate and view. The most sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ment is the abil­ity to add a check­list directly from the What’s Next sec­tion in the Home view on the fly. This means that within one or two taps upon launch­ing Life­Topix, you can add a to-do list. You can see an exam­ple of the What’s Next view below. Notice the new sec­tion, “To do lists.” This is where you can add, view, and choose check­lists. You’ll also notice that now in the What’s Next sec­tion that the next item on your agenda is high­lighted with a light green shade (see Car­pool below).

We’ve also added the abil­ity for you to cre­ate a reusable to-do list. For exam­ple, per­haps you have to-dos that you need to com­plete every day. You can cre­ate a check­list, such as “Daily Check­list,” and you can re-use this check­list each day for the to-dos you wish to com­plete. Reorder­ing of items can be accom­plished by tap­ping Reorder and hold­ing down on the icon to the right and drag­ging the item to a new loca­tion. We’ve also added the abil­ity to clear all the items so you can re-create the items in your check­list each day, if nec­es­sary. The fol­low­ing screen­shot high­lights these changes.

We under­stand that your to-do lists need to flex­i­ble. There­fore, you can now copy entire check­lists, copy check­list items within check­lists, copy check­list items into dif­fer­ent check­lists, and move check­list items.

As before, you can share your check­lists through Face­book, Twit­ter, Email, or Text. This allows you to share your check­list with oth­ers. For exam­ple, per­haps you’ve hired a babysit­ter for the evening, and your child has an evening rou­tine that you record through your check­list. You can eas­ily share this check­list with the babysit­ter through these col­lab­o­ra­tion methods.

Siri and Reminders Integration

At LightAr­row, we under­stand that you need to add reminders eas­ily and quickly so we’ve inte­grated with the iOS Reminders app. If you’re using Siri, you can now sim­ply tell Siri what you want to be reminded about. For exam­ple you can say, “Remind me to pick up Timmy from Soc­cer prac­tice at 9:30 p.m. today.” Siri launches the Reminder app and requests con­fir­ma­tion. With the Life­Topix inte­gra­tion, you can auto­mat­i­cally view your reminders in the Life­Topix Home view (What’s Next), My Cal­en­dar view, and the Events Cal­en­dar. And you can open the Reminders app directly from Life­Topix to edit your reminders or to mark them as com­plete. You can also cre­ate new entries in the Reminders app from the Life­Topix Events topic.

For the Life­Topix inte­gra­tion with Siri and the Reminders app to work, you must have an iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPad with Retina dis­play, iPad mini, or iPod touch (5th gen­er­a­tion). You must also have updated your device to iOS 6.

Cal­en­dar Enhancements

The Life­Topix cal­en­dar has been updated with sev­eral enhance­ments. It now includes a new, improved look and feel for bet­ter vis­i­bil­ity of cal­en­dar items. A new Week view has been added, which sup­ple­ments the stan­dard Day, Month, and Year views. As an enhance­ment to the Finances topic, you can now see bill pay­ment amounts on Life­Topix cal­en­dar views — help­ing you to bet­ter orga­nize your finances. Items from device cal­en­dars are color coded, and a new leg­end in the Cal­en­dar fil­ter, as shown below, iden­ti­fies the col­ors that are used for each type of device calendar.

Also, if you’ve installed the Face­book app and you’ve allowed access to your cal­en­dar through IOS 6.0, you can view all birth­days and events recorded in Face­book in the Life­Topix cal­en­dar — so you’ll never miss a birth­day or event again. For exam­ple, in your device’s set­tings, locate Face­book, and tap it to access the set­tings, as shown in the fol­low­ing exam­ple. Turn the Cal­en­dar set­ting “ON” to allow Face­book to use your calendar.

Badge Changes

Pre­vi­ously, badges only included items that were expired. Now, items that are expired and items that are due today, such as tasks, shop­ping list items, and other items are included within the icon count. This includes items on the same day, as shown in the fol­low­ing example.

Sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the Events Topic

Pre­vi­ously under the Events topic, the events, appoint­ments (includ­ing device cal­en­dar items), reminders, and occa­sion reminders were sep­a­rate views. By pop­u­lar demand, they are now con­sol­i­dated into a view called “Events, Appoint­ments, Reminders”. The view also now includes iOS Reminder app’s items.

New Way to Securely View User­name and Pass­word for Bookmarks

If your user­name and pass­word are stored in the Bookmark’s detail view, when a book­mark is launched for view­ing, the login infor­ma­tion is now con­ve­niently acces­si­ble via an (i) but­ton on the toolbar.

We hope this helps you under­stand how to lever­age the new fea­tures in 5.1. Enjoy!