On August 13th, we experienced a DDoS attack on our Cloud servers originating from multiple locations, including Iraq, Vietnam, Brazil, and Ethiopia. As a result, synchronization services were unavailable for approximately four hours.

Our team jumped into action right away, and we’re happy to share that the issue is fully resolved and sync is back to normal. While it was an unexpected challenge, it also gave us valuable experience that will help us make MLO even more resilient in the future.

Thank you for your understanding, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Best regards, 

The MLO Team

On Sunday morning, February 23, we performed scheduled maintenance on our servers. Some of you may have noticed a slight slowdown in synchronization for a few minutes during this time.

As a result of this maintenance, we have increased server bandwidth and enhanced our backup system. These improvements are part of our ongoing efforts to optimize cloud performance and prepare for the upcoming web version of MyLifeOrganized.

Thank you for your patience and support as we continue to enhance our services.

The MLO Team

In the past few days, many of our users could notice a decrease in synchronization speed and problems with access to our site.

We have found out, that for several days our servers have been under a massive DoS attack from various IP addresses with high intensity. As a result, the servers get overloaded and deny access. Automatic protection works, but after a reboot, normal performance is not restored.

The attack is still ongoing, but yesterday we managed to noticeably mitigate it. While fighting off the attack, we had to suspend Cloud accounts of some users who used our synchronization servers too intensively, and under the DoS attack their requests did not allow to process requests from other users. At the moment, the accounts are all restored, but we are still analyzing the reasons for such a high load from some users.

Now the servers are operating normally and we continue to monitor the situation. This is not the first time we repel a DoS attack on our servers. Each time we accumulate experience in order to diagnose the problem in time and minimize the possible negative impact.

We apologize for inconveniences and thank you for your understanding!

The year 2016 was very productive for MyLifeOrganized team. We improved our mobile versions to make them almost as powerful as our desktop app. We also added fully automatic push background cloud sync to all mobile platforms.

We released next major update for iPhone and iPad task manager with Apple Watch, flags, counters and other features you asked. We also significantly improved our Android task manager version 2. In the next few months we plan to add counters, flags, statistics, backup, multi-select and many more to the Android app!

In the next year we will put more effort to our desktop application since it is time to refresh the UI and add more features you asked.

Collecting Your Ideas!

We will continue to improve the MLO apps and your suggestions are always vital to ensure we provide what our users need. We are excited to give you the opportunity to tell us about your wishes for future development of the MyLifeOrganized (MLO) apps! Please let us know your wishes on MyLifeOrganized Facebook page as comments for this post.

The best ideas will be commented by our CEO Andrey Tkachuk. By the way, hope you did not miss the interview about MLO history and development with Andrey last year.

Happy Holidays!

--

Sincerely,
The MyLifeOrganized Team

Great news from MyLifeOrganized again! This time for our Android users. After the recent announcement for iOS background push synchronization is coming to MLO Android task manager. The cloud sync was automatic even before but it was still needed to run MLO for this. Now you can forget about manual sync and updates of MLO on Android completely. Once you are online the MLO app will receive all updates from MyLifeOrganized Cloud automatically and will send all changes you made while offline. All this in the background even if you do not run the app itself.

Yes we know that you waited for such news quite a long time. But we had to make it right and I think we did.

Here is an example of how it works. You set a reminder for a new task on your MLO task organizer for Windows and sync it to the cloud. After that you leave your home taking only your phone with you (even without opening the MLO app). As a result, the reminder from MLO app on Android will alert you at the required time. This is because it was sent to your MLO app on Android automatically during background cloud sync a few moments after you synced your MLO-Windows with the cloud.

How do I configure PUSH sync on my Android device?

Would you like to try this new feature? The PUSH notification is OFF by default in MLO-Android app and you'll need to configure it. Here is how you can do it:

1. Install the latest MLO for Android update.
2. In MLO settings click Synchronization and open cloud sync configuration profile. If your profile is not configured to sync with the cloud yet then connect it to the cloud as you normally do.
3. Switch ON the "Use Push" setting on this screen.
4. Make any change in your tasks in MLO on your device and perform a manual sync to the cloud. This manual sync will register your device on the cloud for future PUSH notifications and background synchronization.
5. From now completely forget about any manual sync to the cloud from your Android device.

We hope that the new PUSH sync functionality in MyLifeOrganized for Android will help you to become even more productive!

Respectfully, the MyLifeOrganized Team

Life is easy when organized!

In the latest update for MyLifeOrganized iPhone and iPad task manager we released one of the most awaited functionality - the PUSH synchronization from the cloud. The PUSH notification is needed for MLO on iOS devices to receive updates you made on other devices via MLO Cloud automatically and in background i.e. even without opening MLO app on your iPhone or iPad.

Here is an example of how it works. You set a reminder for a task on your MLO task organizer for Windows and sync it to the cloud. After that you leave your home taking only your iPhone with you (without opening MLO app). As a result the reminder from MLO app on iPhone will alert you in the required time. This is because it was sent to your MLO app on iPhone during background cloud sync a few moments after you synced your MLO-Windows with the cloud.

How do I configure PUSH sync on my iOS device?

Would you like to try this new feature? The PUSH notification is OFF by default in MLO iPhone and iPad task manager and you need to configure it. Here is how you can do it:

1. Install the latest MLO for iOS.
2. In MLO settings click Synchronization and open cloud sync configuration profile. If your profile is not configured to sync with the cloud yet then connect it to the cloud as you normally do.
3. Switch ON the "Use Push" setting on this screen.
4. Make any change in your tasks in MLO on your device and perform a manual sync to the cloud. This manual sync will register your device on the cloud for future PUSH notifications and background synchronization.

Well done. Now your iOS device is ready to receive PUSH sync requests from MLO cloud in background.

How do I check that the PUSH sync works on my iOS device.

You can test that it works with these steps:
1. Lock your iPhone/iPad
2. Create one new test task on desktop with reminder for Now and sync desktop with cloud.
3. Wait for ~10-25 sec - do not unlock the phone.
4. MLO on your iOS device will get updates in background and as a result the reminder will be played on your device.

Why PUSH sync does not work on my device?

The PUSH sync may not work in the following cases:
1. When you unload MLO app from memory. Just start the MLO app again and do not unload it to receive future push notifications.
2. When MLO not allowed to receive notifications in iOS settings. If you did not allow it when MLO requested you can verify and change it in iOS settings->Notifications->MLO.
3. When MLO not allowed to make background refresh in iOS Settings-> General->Background App Refresh-> MLO
4. If there are too many modifications received in background by MLO from the cloud today. To protect your battery iOS may stop forwarding further PUSH notifications to the MLO app in background for the current date if there were too many requests already processed or the requests were too heavy. So if you made too many modifications in MLO-Windows, then start MLO on iOS to sync the changes from the cloud while the app is foreground. All future background sync requests should be processed normally. If it does not restore the PUSH background sync you may need to wait till the other day for the background sync to start working again. Unfortunately this is the restriction implemented by iOS and we can do nothing with it.


We hope that the new PUSH sync functionality in MyLifeOrganized for iOS will help you to become more productive!

P.S. The same background PUSH synchronization for MLO on Android already in the testing phase and will be available when all tests are over.

With inspiration, the MyLifeOrganized Team

Life is easy when organized!

We have to perform some essential maintenance to MyLifeOrganized Cloud service.

To minimize the impact of this maintenance, we have scheduled this downtime in the following maintenance window:

* 20:00 Sat 06 Feb – 21:00 Sat 06 Feb, San Francisco time
* 23:00 Sat 06 Feb – 00:00 Sun 07 Feb, New York time
* 05:00 Sun 07 Feb – 06:00 Sun 07 Feb, Amsterdam time
* 15:00 Sun 07 Feb – 16:00 Sun 07 Feb, Sydney time

All time zones.

The estimated duration of the maintenance will be 1 hour.

You may experience difficulties while connecting to MyLifeOrganized Cloud during this time.



UPDATE: We had to reschedule the maintenance window 30 min later to: 4:30-5:30 UTC
UPDATE: The maintenance has been completed successfully.

We are happy to announce the results of the contest “FREE Cloud Sync for Your AppStore Review”!

The contest was held from the 3rd of December till the 3rd of January. The MyLifeOrganized team dedicated this event to the release of the new version of MLO for iPhone and iPad. We are very grateful to all the participants for your honest opinions about it!

As we promised, five random participants won 1-year Cloud Sync subscription: Shariq Farooqui, Cameron Smyth, Sergey Novikov, Daniel Janssen and Waldi Smits.   

We are also introducing the lucky person, who got the whole 2-year Cloud Sync Subscription -

Carlos Estrela.

Congrats to all the winners from the MyLifeOrganized team! We are sure that our prizes will help you to become more productive. And don’t forget to participate in our further contests!

A major vulnerability in the technology that powers encryption across much of the Internet was discovered this week. The OpenSSL project has announced a security vulnerability in OpenSSL affecting versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 (CVE-2014-0160), called ‘Heartbleed’

Heartbleed affects the OpenSSL framework which is used by many websites to privately send data to and from an Internet server.

Like many other teams, we took immediate action to patch the vulnerability in our MLO-Cloud infrastructure. We deployed the updated OpenSSL libraries, changed internal private keys and passwords. We spent many hours to fix the issue, test the MLO-Cloud Sync and Task By Email services.

MLO-Cloud is no longer vulnerable.

We encourage you to change your password not only on MLO-Cloud, but everywhere, as many of the services you love were affected.

How to change your password in MLO-Cloud:
1) Login to your MLO-Cloud account:
https://sync.mylifeorganized.net/mlo/Login.aspx
2) Click: Edit Profile->Change Password
3) Change your password.

Thanks,
MLO Support Team.

P.S. Here you can check the services you use if they affected with ‘Heartbleed’:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

We are excited to announce new feature of MLO Cloud - Task By Email. When you send email to a special address it is automatically moved to <Inbox> folder in your Cloud file and then synced to your MLO Client.

How to configure Task By Email feature:
1) Login to your MLO cloud account:
https://sync.mylifeorganized.net/mlo/Login.aspx
2) Click "Stored Files" on the left
3) Locate your data file and click "Task by email" on the right for this file
4) Enter your secret email address in the field.
 For example: "BobMLOTasks"
5) Now you can send emails to "BobMLOTasks@sync.mylifeorganized.net" and they will be converted to tasks in your <Inbox>. The text of the email will be placed to task notes




Please note that only plain text is placed to the task notes. Attachments are not supported.

We are working on improving the functionality of this feature. For example to move the task in a specified project or set a context.

To protect from spam we implemented the following:
1) You can set "Allowed senders". Emails sent from other addresses will be ignored and not placed to your cloud file.
2) You can change your secret email at any time if your current email was compromised by spammers.
3) It is not allowed to send more then 60 emails per hour to your account. If more emails sent they are ignored.


Andrey.

I am happy to announce that the beta team has been testing the new functionality of MLO-Cloud: “Task by Email”. 

Here is how it will work:

1. You assign a secret email address to your file on MLO-Cloud in the web interface.

2. When you send email to this address it is automatically moved to <Inbox> folder in your Cloud file. And the next time you sync with the Cloud you will see this task in your MyLifeOrganized client. The email subject will be assigned to the task title and the plain text part of the email body will be placed to the task notes.

To protect from possible spam you can assign the addresses which are allowed to send tasks to your Cloud account. You can also change your secret email at any time.

During this week the beta team has found a few problems if using some of email clients which have been already fixed and the service is working normally. The planned release date is January-February since we need to change the web interface a little.

In the future we plan to extend the Task by Email functionality. For example you will be able to set some task properties in the email or assign specific folder or project where this task should be placed in your Cloud file.  

Let me also note that the auto-sync is a priority task on our list. This function is being tested on MLO-Android by the beta team. After that the auto-sync feature will be implemented on the major MyLifeOrganized clients. And yes, we understand that with introducing of the auto-sync the new Task by Email feature will be even more useful.

Tell us how you think we can improve the Task by Email functionality? 

Andrey Tkachuk

MyLifeOrganized Architect.

and

MLO-Cloud team