meetings posts

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, web 2.0

Presdo: Yet another online scheduling app

by Brad Linder Apr 27th 2008

Is it just us, or has there been an explosion of online scheduling services over the past few weeks? First there were Jiffle, Tungle, and When is Good. And now there's Presdo. Like the other services, Presdo makes it easy to schedule meeting with one or more people. You send out a request, and other users can reply with the times that work best for them. But there are a few things that set Presdo apart.

First, it uses natural language recognition to help schedule your meetings. The home page isn't filled with a bunch of boxes to fill out. Instead, you have one search box, into which you can type "lunch with Bob," or "dinner with Joan." On the next page, Presdo will make an educated guess as to the best time for your event. If you enter something vague like "take over the world with Pinky," it'll probably just use the default "tomorrow at 10am." But it does a pretty good time of picking the proper times for meals.

You can also use Presdo to help find a place for your meeting. If you entered "Coffee with Mike," Presdo will let you pull up a window to search for coffee shops with Google Maps. When you send out your invitation, recipients can either accept or offer their own suggested times.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: meetings, presdo, scheduling

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Productivity, Beta

Tungle launches still another meeting scheduling tool

by Brad Linder Apr 16th 2008

There seems to be an explosion of applications designed to help you schedule group meetings. In the last few days we've covered When Is Good, a simple, free web-based solution, and Jiffle, a desktop based application that synchronizes with Outlook and Google Calendar. Today Tungle launched a public beta of a desktop application that looks a lot like Jiffle.

When you install Tungle it will automatically find your contacts and schedule from Microsoft Outlook. When you want to schedule a new meeting you can select times that work for you, choose from your contacts list, and send out an invitation. If the recipients are also Tungle users they will see your availability in their own calendars. If they're not, you can create and share a "Tungle Space," which is a web-based meeting planner. People can then view your suggested times, and choose one and/or leave comments.

Tungle is free while in beta. It's not clear what the pricing will be when the application emerges from beta. In related news, Jiffle was not available for download when we took our first look at it the other day, but you can now download the application from the Jiffle web site.

[via Mobility Site]

Tags: jiffle, meetings, scheduling, Tungle

Filed under: Business, Internet, Windows, Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Freeware

Jiffle makes meeting scheduling easier

by Brad Linder Apr 14th 2008

Tired of sending emails back and forth trying to decide when to hold your next team meeting, video game night, or birthday party? Well, while we generally recommend having your birthday celebrations as close to the actual date of your birth as possible, Jiffle can help with the rest.

Jiffle is an online scheduling service that lets users pick the times they're free and then share their calendar with other users. In other words, it's a lot like When is Good, but with a desktop client that works with Outlook to let you share your existing calendar online. A new version will add Google Calendar compatibility.

You can sign up for Jiffle for free, but we found that when we tried to download the client today we were instead greeted with a message letting us know that a new version would be available next week and we'd be notified when it was available. Jiffle is a commercial application, but there's a free version that will let users schedule up to 10 meetings per month. For $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, you can schedule unlimited meetings. A few bucks more gets you a version with your company branding, and for $99.99 per month you can get the corporate edition with licenses for five users and no advertising.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: jiffle, meetings, scheduling, when-is-good

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, web 2.0

Plan your next team meeting with When is Good

by Brad Linder Apr 1st 2008

Need to schedule a meeting with a group of people spread out across multiple offices in multiple time zones? When is Good offers a simple web-based interface for scheduling meetings or events.

The organizer just needs to select a group of times when they are free and enter their email address. When is Good will send you an email with a URL that you can share with other attendees. Each participant will see just the list of times you've already flagged as good, and they can highlight the times that work for them. Their responses will be sent back to the organizer, making the process of planning a meeting a lot simpler.

If participants are in different time zones, just click the "use time zones" option when setting up your schedule. And if you visit the page on a mobile device or web browser that doesn't support Flash, you'll get a simpler HTML-only page.

[Thanks Keith Harris!]

Tags: events, meetings, planning, when-is-good

Filed under: Business, Fun, Web services

Calculate what a waste of time your next meeting is with Meeting Miser

by Brad Linder Nov 8th 2007

Time is money. And every time you have to sit down with your boss, coworkers, and some random consultant thinking what a big waste of time this meeting is, you could also argue that it's a waste of money.

Meeting Miser helps you figure out just how much money. The little web app works by pulling in average salaries for various job types and determining what their time is worth. So next time you sit down at a meeting, just open your laptop and pop in the job titles of all the attendees. Click the start button and watch the dollars rack up.

Somehow we doubt you'll actually show the total to your boss as proof that you should be allowed to skip the next meeting. But at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that your boring meeting has been scientifically shown to be a complete and utter waste.

[via New York Times Bits Blog]

Tags: calculator, meeting-miser, meetings, money, time

Filed under: Business, Internet, OS Updates, Utilities, E-mail, Productivity, Web services

Zoho Meetings keeps you at your desk

by Chris Gilmer Mar 22nd 2007

Zoho, the online productivity software company, has announced the latest member of their suite of products, Zoho Meeting. Currently in a private Beta, with full version due out in April.

Through Zoho Meetings, users can schedule meetings, share desktops, and chat between all invitees. As of the beta, only those that are on PC's can host meetings, but anyone can view them as long as they have Flash or Java running installed. Meetings can also be embedded into blogs or websites, how's that for web 2.0 at its finest, run an all day meeting for your blog or website visitors without scrolling or clicking. Zoho Meetings plays nicely with Zoho's other apps as well. For instance, users can plug a Meeting inside a presentation so that it will automatically launch when done, without opening up other applications. How's that for productivity. Will it impress business users? We'll just have to wait until we get a chance to try it out.

Do we smell another possible acquisition deal for Google here?

Check out a video of the new features after the jump...

Tags: conference, google, meeting, meetings, online, productivity, zoho

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