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Scrybe, Calgoo, Tungle: How to connect and stay organized

Desktop tools at Under the Radar Office 2.0.

Erica Ogg Former Staff writer, CNET News
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur.
Erica Ogg
2 min read

Everyone is overcommitted, but we don't all have personal assistants. So getting organized quickly is a problem we'd all like to solve. Doing that without regard to your location is even better. Here at Under the Radar, several companies think they have a solution.

Scrybe

Scrybe's hook is making your calendar accessible everywhere. Scrybe is targeting an enterprise audience in need of organizing on the go. It makes your calendar accessible online and off, and users can see appointments in multiple time zones. It also acts as a destination for collected Web clippings. Be sure to check out the very cool demo that has made the rounds on YouTube.

Tungle

Tungle made its official debut here at UTR, launching its public beta today. Tungle is a downloadable plug-in for scheduling meetings with groups of people. Like the others, it works with all the usual calendar suspects--Google, Yahoo, Outlook, and iCal. Tungle hopes to reduce the flurry of e-mails normally required to set up a meeting between people. Using an instant-messenger style interface, users can invite others to join Tungle, then see their own schedules overlain with any number of others. It's handy for scheduling appointments with people who don't use the same calendar system.

Calgoo

Non-corporate folks need to meet up too, something Calgoohas zeroed in on. It's also an online and offline calendar syncing product, but this one targets people, such as families and small business users, "who don't have an Exchange server in their basement." You can use the Calgoo Web application to incorporate calendars--Google, Yahoo, Outlook, iCal--and those of others. Calgoo did have a slightly different twist: targeting gamers. Gamercal is a feature that will allow fans of massive role-playing games to schedule when to meet and which objectives they need to achieve. After all, planning when to hunt down alien armies and rescue the planet from nuclear annihilation can be a complicated endeavor--just like budget meetings.

The panel of judges, from Salesforce.com, Google and First Round Capital, was tough. Calgoo was the favorite--though not overwhelmingly--because it had the most distinct audience. But the judges all professed disliking how each product required a download. Are downloads history, the audience wondered? No, but it's a barrier if you haven't yet proven the value of your product. Not everyone is Skype, they cautioned. Judges also wanted to see a mobile element, which for now is a goal for the three companies listed, but not yet a reality.

See previous coverage: Scrybe and Calgoo