schedule

I'm always privy to simple, one-shot tools that get the job done. ScheduleOnce is a good example of a meeting scheduling tool that's been designed with this in mind. The free service is set up to help you reach a consensus on a meeting time for multiple parties based on open time slots. Each user has access to a calendar, and depending on how open the meeting's creator has left the schedule, users can go in and note times they're free, or accept any slot that's already been noted as open. The app takes time … Read more

The Internet fridge I saw at CES doesn't do what I want it to do. It does not know when I am running out of milk. It does not sniff out the moldy cheese hiding behind the mustard to tell me it's time to throw it out. What the Internet fridge does is this: It has a mounting bracket and a power port on its front so you can install fridge-centric devices.

Stay with me here.

Whirlpool makes the refrigerator in question. I really don't expect you're going to buy one. Another company, Data Evolution, makes … Read more

I wrote favorably about the idea of TimeBridge last year. It's a service that's supposed to make scheduling meetings less of pain in the neck, by letting an organizer send out several proposed times for a meeting, and then coordinating the replies of attendees until everyone agrees on a single time, at which point it will lock in the agreed-on time for everyone and release the tentative hold it had on the alternate spots.

The service is now in public beta (finally), and I've been using it to schedule meetings. The upshot: It works great.

What I … Read more

During football season, there are really only two times of day: game time, and the lame 164 or so hours a week when your team isn't playing.

Finally, there's a watch that realizes this. The Pro Sports Schedule Watch comes preloaded with your favorite NFL or MLB team's season schedule.

These $130 watches aren't one-year wonders, either. The USB-compatible watch can download future schedules from the Web, so you'll always have the current schedule on your wrist.

When it's game time, the watch plays "The Star Spangled Banner" for football games or &… Read more

I hate scheduling, especially with people not in my company. The back-and-forth e-mails and phone calls are maddening. I have eagerly tried many solutions to this hassle, none of which did what I needed, and I've been awaiting what I thought was the holy grail of time finders, TimeBridge, since I wrote it up last year.

TimeBridge is still in deep, dark, private beta, but there's another schedule helper that just popped up, iPolipo.

iPolipo integrates with Outlook. It knows what times you are available by synchronizing with your calendar, and then it lets you block open times … Read more

Chores are an unfortunate side effect of domestic existence. Things need to be done, people need to do them, and dolling out who does what, and when can lead to an exasperating amount of effort for parents, roommates, and authoritarians. Everyone has their own system, and many rely on a piece of paper, or in some cases a homemade Wheel of Fortune-like spinner that decides whose fate it is to clean the upstairs bathroom or scoop up the dog poop from the back yard.

ChoreBuster is a service that mixes these two ideas, providing a free, Web-based scheduling tool that can also randomize who has to do a chore.

As administrator, you can create your family or chore participants one by one and begin building a chore list. You can set recurring chores, on a daily, weekly, or custom basis, along with adding odd one-time chores as they come up. This schedule is then made available to everyone online, and can be easily printed out to get stuck on the fridge or other common area. There are also e-mail reminders, a mobile version of the site, along with a Yahoo! Widget that can show each user what they're supposed to do that day.

After testing out the site this morning, my one qualm is that adding several tasks and assigning them is cumbersome, more so than it would be to simply open up a spreadsheet and start writing things down. Maybe I'm just used to scheduling things in Google Calendar and Outlook, but I found it took too many steps. However, for power users, and those looking to really dig deep and add 30 or more tasks--I can see learning ChoreBuster's management system paying off. With enough effort and foresight, you can set it up to swap up tasks on a daily basis continuously for several months with little or no effort on your part.

ChoreBuster could be a lifesaver for big families, and large communal group living situations like fraternities, sororities, and summer camps. It also offers some great integration features for a free service like the e-mail reports and the desktop widget.… Read more

Moms often end up feeling like their brain plays the role of the family "hard drive," especially when it comes to scheduling. Someone has to know exactly what, where and when each family member needs to be. Moms get frustrated when they have to do it all, and Dads feel left out of the process when they might like to be involved.

I've looked for a tool to manage this family scheduling and communication, which can often add up to a job as complex as managing a business team. But the products I've found have been … Read more

Speaking of scheduling, the team at the slick party invitation site MyPunchBowl continues to make up for past transgressions. While the initial release didn't let people invited to a party see who else was invited, an update in March fixed that, adding features that let the organizer control visibility into the invitation list. And today's update goes even further: it helps you pick a good date for your event by throwing options out to the invited guests.

MyPunchBowl's new "Pick a Date" feature is much more than an ultrasimple group time finder like Doodle (review), though. While users can indicate which times (chosen by the host) work for them, they can also denote certain options as "better." The MyPunchBowl Pick-a-Date feature shows other invitees where the "betters" are flocking, and it doesn't show the less-liked responses. This puts a social pressure on the guests: people can see what the crowd, on the whole, prefers, and people who come late to the scheduling activity will be more likely to adjust their own schedules accordingly. However, MyPunchBowl does keep track of all the nonpreferred times, and will move an event to one of those times if it makes sense for the group at large.

Moreover, MyPunchBowl allows the organizer to denote certain individuals as VIPs. These guests' preferences carry much more weight than everybody else's. That makes a lot of sense: If you're throwing a party for a particular person, you can denote that person (and his or her entourage, family, etc.) as VIPs, and the system will make sure their scheduling needs are met before the other invited guests.

It's also worth noting that the Pick-a-Date feature is not the same as the event invitation. I found this initially confusing, but it makes sense: before you craft your invitation, you want to get the date selected. It's part of the "life cycle of event planning," as MyPunchBowl founder Matt Douglas explains.

In sum: MyPunchBowl is damn clever. And getting cleverer.

Keep reading for a video from Douglas that explains the new feature.

… Read more

Dear Microsoft,

What the heck is wrong with you people?

Let me ask you the question another way. When I set up a birthday in Outlook, what makes you think that when the time zone changes, a birthday should move forward or back accordingly? But that's just what happened when I got my automated patch for the new daylight-savings time. Between March 11 and April 1, all my appointments moved back one hour. My father-in-law's birthday became a 24-hour event that takes place from 1 a.m. on March 21 to 1 a.m. on March 22. Since … Read more