Hojoki – A Unified Front

The more web-apps you use for personal and professional purposes, the more websites you have to check for status updates and notifications on a daily basis. Rather than spending hours each day clicking from app to app, Hojoki gives users a centralized space where they can find all their most important updates in one unified newsfeed.

Hojoki has undergone a number of updates since we last reviewed the app back in April. For one, the Hojoki now integrates with many more popular web-based applications, including Zendesk, Box, Basecamp, Delicious, Dropbox, Github, Evernote, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Twitter, to name just a few. Once you’ve connected with the cloud-apps you use through the Hojoki platform, you can check the Hojoki newsfeed to see all the most recent updates from all the apps you’ve connected. In recent months, Hojoki has also debuted a new UI that collaborators can use for microblogging and commenting within the web-application.

Hojoki has also introduced push notifications, which people can use to receive immediate alerts when new updates and activities pop up on their connected apps. Users can choose which apps they’d like to receive notifications about, making it possible to receive alerts when new files are uploaded to Dropbox, for example, but not when changes are made to projects in Basecamp.

Practical Uses:

• Spend less time checking for updates on multiple project management accounts
• See when an employee uploads a new file to a company Dropbox account
• Find out immediately when you’ve been given a new assignment
• Get notified if a collaborator modifies an event on Google Calendar

Insider Tips:

• Users can sign in through Facebook or Google
• Companies can set up their Hojoki accounts to monitor specific Twitter hashtags
• Hojoki users can sign up for push notifications
• Hojoki offers a mobile app for iOS and Android devices

What we liked:

• Anyone who uses Facebook’s newsfeed can understand how to use Hojoki
• Hojoki’s newsfeeds are updated immediately whenever a new file goes up on an integrated app
• Files mentioned in a Hojoki newsfeed can be downloaded or accessed with a single click
• The list of apps that Hojoki integrates with is always growing

What we didn’t like:

• Hojoki is only useful if the apps you use have integrated with the platform

Alternatives:

• 300.mg – https://300.mg

Company Info:

• Launched: December 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Chemnitz, Germany
• Founded by: Martin Böhringer
• Web site: http://hojoki.com

Costs:

• Free in beta