It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything about online scheduling apps, and that’s mostly because I think we’ve already covered the leading services in this category. (See our posts on Doodle, Tungle, Jiffle, and Acuity.)
No service quite fulfills my criteria for “The Ideal Academic App,” but Tungle and Doodle come pretty close. And now, these two services have developed a few new features that get them even closer.
Doodle has announced “a calendar view that enables users to directly start and answer meeting requests with all relevant information up to date at one place.” This means that you don’t have to toggle between looking at Doodle and looking at your calendear when you are requesting (or responding to requests for) an appointment. I like Doodle, and I’m glad to see them add this feature.
Tungle, however, is blowing Doodle (and other competitors) out of the water. They recently announced several nice new features (including a few that were mentioned in this ProfHacker comments thread). Additionally, if you have a web site that runs on WordPress or Typepad, you can now make use of a plugin to embed Tungle in one of your pages.
As I prepare for the upcoming academic year, I’m going to be spending time with Tungle, deciding how best to integrate it into my calendar workflow.
How about you? What kind of tools do you use when scheduling meetings with friends, colleagues, or students? Let us know in the comments.
[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by Joe Lanman]