Keep Your Wishes And Toast Those Who Grant Them This Holiday Season

Toast – Birthday Christmas Wishlist (Free) by Giveatoast GmbH is the perfect app for the holiday season. I hope you have your gift wish list ready, because this app will make full use of it.

So what is Toast? In short, it’s a social wish list app. You will need a Facebook account to use the app, as well as iOS 5. Unfortunately, these are the requirements, so if you don’t use Facebook, you are unable to use the app. Hopefully this can be changed in the future. Since Toast is a social wish list, the first step after creating your account is to find people to follow, or invite your own friends to join. Once you have people to follow, or who follow you, the app becomes more fun to use.

Toast makes use of the slide-out side panel menu for navigation. You will have five options: New Wish, Feed, Wishes, Activity, and Profile.

Each user will have one wish list in Toast. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to create multiple lists from what I’ve seen — you basically just get the one. Maybe this can be implemented in a future update, but I think it would be neat to have different lists for different occasions, or even different kinds of gifts. For example, I would like an entire wish list dedicated solely to Doctor Who stuff, but for now, it must remain mixed in with everything else I want.

To add a new wish to your list, go to New Wish. From here, you enter details about what you would like to receive someday. Give it a name (product name is usually best, I’d imagine), a location to where you can obtain it, a website if it’s online, and the price. You can even snap a new photo of the product or import from your device Photo Library.

The location data seems to be pulled from Foursquare, so I got pretty comprehensive results. Of course, this will really depend on your area, but if you cannot find a specific location, you can also add it in manually. Toast also lists plenty of websites, but it won’t have everything (for some reason, Thinkgeek.com is not listed). Again, you can manually add in a website as well, just like location.

When you have all of the details on your wish filled out, tap on “Done” and it gets saved to your list, ready for others to see. Your followers can see your wishes and “love” them, and even comment on them if they want. You can also do this with the people you follow.

If you actually do receive something on your list, then it would be best to remove it. This is done by viewing Wishes, and then tapping on the “Remove” button. However, there are two choices that come up when you are about to remove something. You can just remove it, or you can actually write a public thank you to whoever gave the item to you. This is what the app calls a “toast,” hence the name. The toast will appear in your feed, and the other person will get a notification for their good deed.

The Activity tab is where you are able to view who started following you, who loved your wishes, who commented on a wish, and any toasts that you have received. You can view your profile (or someone else’s) and get information like how many items are on their wish list, who follows them, and who they follow. Each time someone loves, comments, or follows you, you will earn “Karma” points. Kind of like Foursquare, there’s a leaderboard for you to compete with your friends on who has the most karma. I’m not entirely sure what the point of this is, but hey, if that’s your thing, then go for it.

Since the app makes use of Facebook, it will make use of birthday data. Swiping the screen from right-to-left will reveal “Birthdays,” where you can view all upcoming birthdays from your Facebook friends. If you select one, and they do not have a Toast wish list, you can invite them to make one. As of now, the app is only available for iPhone, so make sure your friends have an iOS device before you try and invite them to join you on Toast.

Whenever you want to share your wish list with your friends, just go to your Wishes, and tap on the share button. You can send a link to your list on Facebook, Twitter, email, or even message. Even if the recipient doesn’t want to use the app, they will still be able to see what you are wishing for, so make sure to share it before Christmas comes around.

I’ve been using Toast for a few days, and I love how well designed the app is. It’s clean and elegant, and easy-to-use. However, I did come across a few glitches, like an image not showing up for a wish even though I did attach one. Not sure why this happened, as it was fine before. It would also be great to see multiple lists supported in the future.

Regardless, Toast is a free download in the App Store, and it’s perfect for Christmas, which has already begun sneaking up on us. Get your wish list ready and hope you get the things you want this year, and don’t forget to Toast your “secret” Santa.

For more helpful holiday shopping apps, make sure to check out this AppList.