App review: Soon, the place for your bucket list

For a procrastinator, a bucket list can be more about failure than fantasy. It exists in your head, always changes and is never completed - an endless tally of unlived dreams.

As with seemingly everything since the introduction of the iPhone, however, there's an app for the bucket list. It's called Soon, and it's wonderful.

Creating an account took about two seconds. I downloaded the app, linked it to my Facebook profile and was presented with the home screen: a list of activities, including movies, books, music, and restaurants and stores I'd like to visit. Soon's design is simple and intuitive; I was never flummoxed.

I'm an avid reader, so I tapped the list for books and added one I had just finished and added a few others I'm about to start. Once I was done, I ticked the book off as completed and wrote a little blurb that went on my Facebook wall. The book then went from my finish-soon list to my done list, pleasant evidence of achievement.

For bucket list items that require transportation, Soon will summon an Uber ride, in case you're too lazy to switch between apps.

A little flame icon at the bottom of the app shows what other users are adding to their bucket lists. Recently, people wanted to see "Finding Dory" (me, too!), "The Revenant" (done) and the new season of "House of Cards" (ugh).

Under the music category, the app will play samples of songs. On a whim, I looked up the British classic "Roses of Picardy," but nothing came up. Oddly, you can search artists and albums but not individual songs. So then I looked up Stop Light Observations, my favorite indie band, and found it. Since I own its album "Radiation," I took it off my bucket list (I like this app!).

The podcast bucket list plays full episodes of podcasts (I added "Serial," which I've yet to listen to), but there was no way to rewind audio segments or jump ahead.

The app also integrates your friends, so you can tick things off together.

Soon allows you to rearrange bucket list categories, moving books above movies, for example, and to remove categories altogether. But there's no way to create your own categories. I wanted a hiking category for trails that I'd most like to share with friends.

The app, according to the creators, was developed to answer the common questions "Have you seen ...? " or "Have you been to ...?"

"With Soon," the creators note in the app's about section, "we wanted to create a really good way to organize this inspiration, and ultimately help people to experience more and better things in their everyday lives."

The app does exactly that. So users can then check those things off their bucket list.

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STATS

Name: Soon

Cost: Free

Operating system: iOS

Creator: Beginner AB

User ratings: iTunes, Three stars (133 ratings)

Review's bottom line: An easy way to get through your bucket lists.