CalendarReview

I want to  wish you a merry Christmas. Thanks for reading CalendarReview. If I missed something that you would have liked to see on CalendarReview or you want to contribute something to this blog please let me.

VueSoft has announced the release of VueMinder Calendar Pro 6.0.0, expanding its already impressive list of features by adding full 2-way Google Calendar sync. Google Calendars can be easily added with just a few clicks, and any changes made while offline will automatically sync.

When combined with VueMinder Calendar’s other features, this allows a user to perform many tasks that, until now, were difficult to perform or required several programs. For example, an Excel spreadsheet of event information can be quickly imported into VueMinder Calendar and automatically synced with Google Calendar. The reverse can also be done, taking your Google Calendar events and exporting them to Excel through VueMinder Calendar’s easy-to-use interface.

For those people wanting to keep Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar in sync, but require automatic and instantaneous syncing, instead of the minimum 10 minute interval of the Google Calendar Sync tool, VueMinder Calendar Pro is the answer. It allows the same calendar to be synced simultaneously with both Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, whenever a change is detected. It all happens quickly and quietly in the background.

And, for people frustrated with the limited number of options available when printing from Google Calendar, VueMinder Calendar Pro adds a huge variety of print layouts and settings, as well as a print preview window that dynamically updates as the various print layout settings are adjusted.

The latest release of VueMinder Calendar Pro also provides a number of other innovative improvements, such as “desktop alert” reminders color-coded to match the associated event. These can now be pinned to any location on the screen. It’s sort of a mash up of sticky notes and reminders, and is seriously cool.

VueMinder Calendar Pro is offered as a free 30-day trial and can be downloaded or purchased online at http://www.vueminder.com. A scaled down version, VueMinder Calendar Lite, is completely free for both personal and business use.

Techcrunch reports that Google Calendar is testing a preview function of the scheduling feature. Gcal will show the schedules of each of the people you’ve invited to the event, and the proposed time for your event will appear as a semi-transparent blue box so you can quickly see where you might have conflicts.

KeepandShare’s unique online web calendar keeps getting better.  A major recent upgrade added  rich text editing, making their ‘free text’ calendar boxes even more powerful.   Users can now format and style all the text in their calendar with fonts, bold face etc.     Google continues to place the KeepandShare calendar on page 1 for free 2010 calendar.    The rich text editing combines with KeepandShare’s slick & well formatted PDF printing to provide a calendar unique in its focus on giving users complete control over what appears in each day box and how it’s formatted.    Mind you, this calendar isn’t for everyone – it doesn’t have ‘time slots’ or synch with other calendars – instead, it’s focused on free text entry, making it very easy to use and flexible.

Remember the Milk (“The best way to manage your tasks”) gave up their beta status. When  Remember The Milk was launched four years ago the owners had the idea that they would leave beta once they were ‘done’.  An app like RtM will never be done  since there are so many exciting things to develop so they decided to finally leave beta.

Via CalendarSwamp I came across this Microsoft announcement . MS will open up it’s .pst file format. If you ever dug into your system file looking for the place where Outlook stores your email, contact and calendar you must have seen this .pst file format. Only Outlook understands it so you can’t use it for exporting anything. Sometimes that can be a pain. Apparently as of Office 2010 wil open up this fileformat allowing developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice.

ServiceU Corporation (http://www.ServiceU.com) has added social networking features to its popular web-based software tools, EventU and TransactU, that allow users to share activities and involvements across social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.

“We have the privilege of serving many highly innovative organizations. This is just another example of the way we partner with our clients to make them as successful as possible,” said Tim Whitehorn, president and CEO of ServiceU Corporation. “Given the exponential growth of social networking, we wanted to give our clients the ability to quickly and easily share the events and causes that they care about with their social networking friends and followers.”

ServiceU has added social networking buttons to the EventU event listings and the TransactU donation and event registration pages. Organizations can choose from more than 100 social networking site icons and display as many as they want on their pages.

As website patrons view an event listing or donation page on an organization’s website, they can simply click the social networking icons to share the link to their favorite social networking site or service. This eliminates the need to cut and paste links into Facebook or other sites. With one click, users can share links simply with very little effort.

“We feel that this is going to be a tremendous opportunity for outreach,” says Whitehorn. “People naturally want to share causes and events they care about with people in their lives—both in person and online. With more people communicating through online networks, these tools will make for easier sharing and help churches and nonprofits reach a wider audience.”

For more information on ServiceU, organizations can call (866) 709-7421 or go www.ServiceU.com or email sales@serviceu.com to find out more on how ServiceU can help make serving other simplified. To follow ServiceU on Twitter, visit: http://twitter.com/serviceucorp.

About ServiceU Corporation
Since 1999, ServiceU Corporation has been the trusted solution for providing software that helps churches, schools and nonprofits simplify and automate administrative processes by moving them online. ServiceU’s core product line includes: EventU™ for event, resource, and facility management through web-based calendar scheduling software; EventU Green™ is an add-on to EventU that automates facility heating and cooling (HVAC) online based on a facility’s events schedule; TransactU™ provides secure online donation, payment, and event registration tools; TicketU™ provides online ticket sales, box office management, and theater software.

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Exchange groupcalendar is a plugin for exchange server. It provides central scheduling and overview of groups of users from public calendar folders. Additional client side tools available like the above gridview. It works with entourage too. More info on http://www.exchangegroupcalendar.com

Active Data Calendar also launches ability to update personal calendars automatically.

(Bethlehem, PA – Oct. 14, 2009) – Tapping into the ability to perform event marketing across social networks, Active Data Calendar has added the capability to publish and share events across social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and others through the AddThis® interface. Event marketers can take advantage of organic social media penetration without the overhead of redundant keystrokes and paid advertising.

Calendar visitors can easily share events with all of their friends and followers across multiple networks, who can then share it with their own Web 2.0 networks. Another new feature allows for visitors to subscribe for automatic updates of events by category to their personal calendar, such as Outlook, Google, Notes, GroupWise, and others. “Everything revolves around dates and times. The expansion of our Active Data Calendar product suite into a publish once, everywhere you want model addresses the need for proactive information retrieval for content that everyone takes for granted – date related info,” said Susan Yee, CEO of Active Data Exchange.

New features in the Active Data Calendar 3.9 suite of products include:

• Social media integration using AddThis®, which allows site visitors to add event data to 150+ social media sites
  • Choose which social media sites visitors can use to share events with the AddThis® interface
  • Customize the look of the AddThis® interface including colors, buttons, menus, etc.
• Support for dynamic iCal subscription feeds of event data
  • Automatically add event data from any calendar view to iCal compatible personal calendar software (MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, etc.)
  • Changes made in Active Data Calendar will automatically be reflected on all personal calendars that are subscribed to that iCal feed (http://webcal)
• Available integration with the payment gateway TouchNet
• Payment tracking and associated workflow for payments by cash and check
• Facility keyword searching and improvements to automated workflow e-mails in the Open Entry Module

Active Data Calendar 3.9 is compatible with the latest Microsoft® technologies including Windows 7® and Microsoft Server 2008 R2® and has been given the “Front Runner” status by Microsoft® to signify early adoption of the latest Microsoft® technologies.

Active Data Calendar is a web-based calendar program that allows for events to be published, managed, and promoted on the Calendar itself, other web sites, social media outlets, portals, intranets, SharePoint sites, Student Information Systems (SIS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and other web-enabled enterprise technologies. Available extended capabilities include creating custom event registration forms and accepting registration fees online, booking facilities with specific features and resources for your event, and internal-only calendars to communicate and align key internal dates, deadlines, milestones, and events.

About Active Data Exchange
Active Data Exchange has been providing enterprise web-based event marketing and facilities scheduling software, email and text message broadcasting solutions and information broadcasting solutions for education, healthcare, government and corporate organizations since 1999. Products and services include Active Data Calendar, Active Data Communicator, and Active Data Syndicator. Clients include New York City Department of Education, Drexel University,  Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network, Minnesota Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Baylor College of Medicine, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, National Government Services, North Carolina State University, Temple University and others. Active Data Exchange is a PA certified Minority and Woman Owned Business and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. For more information, please visit www.activedatax.com.

CONTACT: SUSAN YEE
Phone:  (610)997-8100
Email:  syee@activedatax.com

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