Calendar coordination remains one of those pain in the butt things that everyone loves to hate. Unless you’ve got a MS Exchange server – which can be a very expensive investment – it is very difficult to synchronize calendars. In most client situations you won’t know what, if anything, the client is using. That compounds the problem because not all calendars are made equally. Spanning Sync from my old chum Charlie Wood does a first rate job synchronizing between GMail and iCal but it doesn’t cover the gamut of Outlook, Lotus Notes or Entoutrage for Mac. There is a genuine market for this kind of tool. Charlie has been noodling in it for several years and his business makes a sensible income from providing the service on either an annual $25 or perpetual $65 license to more than 100,000 people.
Tungle endeavors to be broader, tackling the variations that can arise when synching between different calendar types and expanding functionality so that you can propose meetings with different groups of people without knowing their calendar type (provided it falls within the main ones outlines above.) In the latest release, the company has moved beyond what was very much an IM looking environment to one that is more calendar like. Today, it pitches Tungle as a ‘calendar accelerator.’
The chart above shows the main features. Here is a more complete list:
- Coordinate one-on-one or group meetings with anyone, even non Tungle users.
- Propose multiple time slots to avoid the ongoing back and forth emails/phone calls to find the one time that works for everyone.
- Prevent double-bookings with meeting invitations that dynamically update when they add new events to their calendar, so meeting conflicts are eliminated.
- Share their free/busy or detailed calendar across different companies and environments.
- Set up a personal Meet with MeTM link in their email signature or public profile (LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc), and allow others to view their availability and schedule meetings, without having to sign-up.
- Leverage smartphone (BlackBerry and iPhone) meeting invitation support – with no download required.
- Initiate meeting invitations and view shared calendars from their Outlook or Google Application.
- Enjoy automatic time zone detection that dynamically customizes meeting invitations for the recipient’s time zone.
I tried it out and it quickly imported my GCalendar and contacts. I wanted to schedule for today’s Budget coverage but the system insisted that I invite someone to the ‘appointment’ when all I want to do is block out a piece of time. That seems such a glaring omission that I was forced back to GCal in order to get the job done.
Where Tungle shines is in allowing you to select any random group of contacts and set up a series of proposed meeting dates. In essence, the last person on the list who makes a choice gets to pick which isn’t a bad thing. However, there didn’t seem to be any ‘death date’ notice required albeit the shared segment can be constantly updated from however many contacts are on the meeting request list. This allows the system to eliminate conflicts on the fly – a very neat trick.
Meeting requests are handled in email and another cool feature is that your correwspondents don’t need to have Tungle (although it helps is ’seeeing’ conflicts.) Having direct Blackberry and Smartphone integration is another bonus.
I don’t understand why this application is free of charge. The company says it will charge for premium features but I’m a bit stuck as to understanding where they can take this AND then charge. That leaves me with questions about the business model, given the company has taken some $6.5 million in funding. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to follow up to get an answer on this point though it is important, especially if the company does well in attracting plenty of users.
Even so, as the conference season gets into full swing and the calendar jams with appointments, I plan to see how Tungle performs when put under stress. Professionals should definitely give this one a work out. As it is free, the ‘cost’ is negligible while the time savings could be substantial for the busy advisor.
UPDATE from Charlie: One quick correction: Spanning Sync does sync Entourage, assuming you have Entourage syncing turned on. (Technically, we sync Google with the appropriately-acronymed Apple Sync Services database. Anything that stores data in there will be synced–like iCal, iTunes, Entourage, etc.)
Related articles by Zemanta
- Hypersync – part 2 (andrewdubber.com)
- Spanning Sync gets updated (macworld.com)
- Google syncing Gmail, Calendar with iPhone (infoworld.com)
- Offline Gmail Buzz (ghacks.net)
- Microsoft Exchange 2010 to address annoyances & mobility (seattlepi.com)
- How to synchronize Outlook and Apple iPhone or iPod touch? (ceoworld.biz)
- Software to Sync Android, Exchange Reduced 60% in Price (jkontherun.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e433702c-4f95-415b-a6ea-11c3879ea234)
