I love Joel on Software (we use the wonderful Fogbugz here at Spongecell) – his recent post about the glut of calendars on the web has some interesting points, but it doesn’t capture the problem we are trying to solve. Eventually, Spongecell will address his specific features and corner cases – but for now we wanted to release an easy calendar with rudimentary mobile features. I think Spongecell succeeded at this.
Spongecell was built out of frustration with the status quo of calendaring. I’m disorganized and forgetful, and had several failed attempts to integrate calendaring into my life. Most involved a new gadget, web app or pad of paper – I’ve had a palm V, a Visor, a Treo, a hipster PDA (mini-moleskine) and at least three “ok now i’m really going to use yahoo calendar” moments. In the end, people don’t use calendars because they are cumbersome, painful and horribly unusable. Online calendars aren’t there when you need them, and the PDA is dying a slow death.
How do you fix this? I’m a believer in delivering new services using platforms and applications that people already have and know how to use. This means, no new desktop applications, no complex syntax (hint: syntax != natural language), no new mobile application to download and most importantly, no steep learning curves. These requirements make for a more challenging product to deliver, but a much more rewarding and accessible user experience.
At Spongecell we want to make your calendar easy to use and accessible when you need it.
I’m looking forward to additional features! I like what you have so far and think you guys are doing a great job.
I don’t agree that the PDA is dead just yet. I do feel, however, that integration with a PDA is important. I’ve accomplished this with SpongeCell and iCal.
OOPS! Edited my blog URL.
I think a stand-alone calender solution is kinda’ weak. Add a webservice API and I can tie this service w/ my email and other stuff. I like your “natural language” regexps. If I could run that within outlook email and stick appointments into sponge, it’d be more useful.
I’m very impressed – particularly with the mobile ‘next event’ item – ideally this should also offer ‘last’ as well, since if I’m running late for a meeting I want to know where to be, rather than the time of the film for tonight. Of course, to do this there is one crucial thing I would need – UK mobile support! Is this on the cards?
Hey, this looks great, but for the absence of the recurring event/appointment feature. Any idea when this will be along?
Also useful would be notifications sent by email, as I am based in Australia and assume you aren’t, hence the cell phone alert is unlikely to work, no?
Simon – Most UK mobile providers have shut down their email->sms gateway. We are looking at other ways of delivering reminders to mobile phones in the UK. Also, “now” and “current” will be making their way into way into sponge vernacular soon.
Graham – email notifications are currently available, just check the box next to “email” in the event editor. Recurrence is coming very very soon – currently in beta.
Marc
Nice calander! Wish you can add vcal as a publishing method, then I could import my calander into my palm. I would love to be able to sync my PDA with spongcell but don’t know how to do it.
Robert
I found that the Mozzila Sunbird 0.2 calendar will import Ical and export it as Vcal. But make sure you download the older 0.2 version becuase the newest release nologer has Vcal as an export option.
So far I’m impressed with the speed and ease of use. There is only one thing missing… color-coded categories for appointments/events (and preferably a customizable list of categories). I like to add various events to my calendar just to know when they fall, even if I end up not attending them. Having them color-coded by category makes it easy to know what events are there just FYI and what events are actually things on my schedule.
PDAs aren’t dying . . . If online calendar (& other web 2.0 apps as well) would integrate with Palm & windows mobile syncing options, they’d notice a significate jump in users!