Productive Organizer

One of the first reviewed application on Productive Organizer was Calengoo for iPhone and it has still been very popular. I got an email from Dominque, the guy behind Calengoo that he is coming up with the Android version!

Update: You can download the Beta App from the Android market. Search for “Calengoo”. It is free beta.

Now this is great news because most of the smartphone’s stock Calendar leaves a lot to be desired. I tried Calengoo on the iPhone and it’s the best offline sync Google Calendar app around.

Firstly, I urge you guys to read the iPhone review then. You can read the full review here as it discusses:

Ubiquitous Calendar Access – On platforms like iPhone and especially Android, which is based on Google’s apps, you can consolidate your calendar information on Google’s central DB.

Next time you do not need to care about what phone you have because whether its iPhone or Android or Windows Phone 7 you can gain access to it.

Auto-Backup of Calendar via Web Synchronization aka Offline mode – assess your calendars when you do not have an internet connection and automatically or manually sync your events and schedules when you have one.

Who is this app for?

For one, it is for people who use Google Calendar as their main calendar. It is easy for Android because, for Android to work you need a google account in the first place.

There is no need to do any more additional registration. Chances are your default Android calendar is already sync to Google Calendar.

This app is for folks who wants additional organization views and features that the stock calendar does not provide.

Swype Left and Right to navigate between, Days, Month and Week

I grew accustom to this feature on the iOS. Little things like this make life much easier when reviewing schedule.

I am glad that Calengoo for Android have this feature as well.

Colorful Day View Calendar

What you would like about Calengoo is that its usage of color follows that of Google Calendar but does it in a much better way then the stock calendar.

Stretchable Month Calendar View for detail viewing

One great feature about Calengoo that I enjoy on the iOS is that the month view is a big canvas that you can use multi-touch to expand and see what are a specific day’s things.

You are not constraint to just that small calendar like the stock calendar and you do not need to consistently switch between different calendar views.

You can use drag and drop to move one event from a day to another

This is by far a great feature that the stock app does not provide.

Set Pop-up, email and SMS reminders to your events.

These 5 reminders are:

1. Pop up notifications
2. Email
3. SMS Reminders (Set at Google Calendar Website in Settings Mobile Setup)

Customize font size and other calendar user experience

Last but not least, like Pocket Informant you can customize how each Day, Week Month and Agenda Calendar looks like to your liking.

Hey if you are gonna stare at your calendar so frequently, might as well configure them to the way that is pleasant to yourself. If font is too small, increase it if its too big reduce it.

Conclusion

Dominque really wants to create a calendar that is very functional and helpful for his user.

I have used his Calengoo on iOS for a long time and even though there are many competitors out there, you can trust that he will try his best to improve on it.

At iOS we received constant improvements and you could expect the same as well.

These 2 weeks, Google purchase 2 different startups. The likely strategy is to attain patented technology or competitive edge and build on to their current application.

Plannr

Plannr is a service (available via the website and a free iPhone app) that helps groups of people coordinate their plans by bringing together the multiple disparate scheduling and planning tools that we use (calendar, phone, contacts, email, maps, SMS, etc.) into a single application; it’s effectively a social calendaring application that also includes messaging and geolocation features.

Why Plannr? Why not other collaborative companies? The key to Plannr, is likely that it has a social tilt to it. Take a look at this:

The key to these collaborative tools success is that your friends do not face too much of a problem replying or registering to this service.

What Plannr did well is to use Facebook Connect to your friends. This is good since most of your friends is on Plannr.

Plannr currently doesn’t have an Android App, but really the reviews of this application doesn’t look very good.

BlindType

BlindType is a virtual keyboard that have not been released on any smartphones yet. Why buy Blind Type?

Take a look at its capabilities:

to compete with WebOS and iOS and a Qwerty based Blackberry, it is a great competitive edge to have a virtual keyboard that is better than the rest.

With BlindType it is entirely possible to have one that is better than the rest. but it is easy for the rest to catchup as well.

Introduction

I gotta give a shout out to Dominique from CalenGoo for facilitating this review. I would say out of all the intriguing software on the app store CalenGoo interest me the most.

I am big on planning and scheduling in a Getting Things Done kind of way and i make use of Google Calendar as my main calendar so it is natural that i would make it a criteria in choosing my GTD device.

In this review i would break down why this would rock more than the native Google Calendar sync and where it will not be that good in.

Why you would want to sync your calendar to google

Ubiquitous Calendar Assess

A good reason other than Appigo ToDo that sways me to the iPod Touch 2G was due to its ability to sync google calendars and contacts via exchange protocol from Google  to my iPod Touch.This means that you can assess to your events and schedule offline, you don’t need  a constant internet connection.

What this means also is that you make your google calendar your base where you house your events and schedule. If you are using an iPhone your calendar synchronize with it. If you are using an Android phone your Android phone calendar gets synchronize with it.

When you get home or in the office and want a better view of your calendar, you can view the same events and schedule from your desktop internet browser.

Auto-Backup of Calendar via web synchronization aka Offline Mode

Remember those windows mobile days where you need to put your windows mobile phone into a cradle and sync your contacts and calendars to your desktop through ActiveSync? Well in web 2.0 you don’t have to rely on that any more.

Offline mode for iPhone,Android and Adobe Air for desktop allows you to assess your calendars when you do not have an internet connection and automatically or manually synchronize your events and schedules when you have one.

In each device the application will make use of the local database in your iPhone. If there is an internet connection, the application will invoke a sync request to sync your data with the web database. What this means is that should you lose your phone, you will still have assess to your data as it is last sync this morning to the web.

Thus for this concept to work well your software must periodically poll to see if you have an internet connection, if it has, it will sync it.

Through iPhone Exchange services you are able to sync your calendar to google and will periodically update. It works very well and i am satisfied with it.

Continue after the break for review of CalenGoo with screenshots

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