Most smartphones with touchscreens have some sort of a lock screen that requires you to swipe a pattern or enter a passcode before you can start using your phone. This keeps you from accidentally making a phone call, deleting email messages, or topping your high score in Angry Birds if your screen accidentally turns on while your phone is in your pocket.

But it also means it takes a little longer to start using your device since you have to press a power button and make perform some sort of gesture before you see your home screen. On the other hand — why do you need to go to your home screen at all if all you want to do is check the time or peek at your calendar?

Most phones will show you the time at a glance even if you don’t unlock them first. Now if you have an Android phone you can also see some of your upcoming calendar appointments without unlocking your phone.

All you need is a free app called Lockscreen Calendar. It’s available for download from the Android Market.

The first time you run the app you can configure which of your Google calendars you want to display, how many appointments should be shown on the lock screen, and how to show the date.

There are also settings letting you decide how often the app should check for new appointments (measured in hours) and how far ahead it should look for appointments (measured in weeks).

You may not notice any appointments on your lock screen right away unless you click the “update now” button to get things started.

The app is still in beta, and I’ve noticed that while Lockscreen Calendar does a good job of detecting full-day appointments from my calendars it doesn’t seem to notice event scheduled for a specific time. It also doesn’t seem to list today’s appointments, instead showing event starting tomorrow. The developer also acknowledges that he hasn’t found a good way to find and display recurring appointments yet.

Certain devices may also not be able to display appointments on the lock screen including the Samsung Galaxy S and HTC devices with Sense software.

Lockscreen Calendar shows a lot of promise, but it’s still a work in progress. For now though, it’s one of the best ways to get a quick overview of upcoming appointments on your Android phone without much fuss.

A few days ago WebIS released a minor update to Pocket Informant which allowed the calendar and task manager application to run on tablets with Android 3.1 Honeycomb. But to be honest, all you get is the smartphone interface blown up to fit on a much larger display.

Now WebIS CEO Alex Kac says testing is underway for a major update which really will be designed with tablets in mind. The update is scheduled for a public launch around the end of July, but you can see a few screenshots in the Pocket Informant for Android forums.

There’s a new multi-pane view which you can use to look at multiple views at the same time. For instance, you can see a month or week view on the right and a multi-month view on the left. There are also tabs on the right for flipping between calendar and task views.

Pocket Informant 2.0 for iPhone is also in the works.

WebIS has released an update for Pocket Informant for Android which adds support for tablets running Google Android 3.1 Honeycomb. Unlike the default Google Calendar app that comes with Android, Pocket Informant bundles a To Do list with your calendar, allowing you to sync your appointments with Google Calendar and your tasks with ToodleDo.

Pocket Informant also allows allows you to see your month-at-a-glance calendar in a split-screen view, with appointment details in the bottom and a full month calendar filling out the top of the screen.

Honestly, on a phone, Pocket Informant does a much better job of organizing my information than Google Calendar. But the tablet interface looks like a blown up version of the smartphone version while the tablet version of Google Calendar has actually been redesigned to show you more information at a glance on the larger display.

While I’m a big fan of Pocket Informant on my phone, I’m not sure I’d spend the $9.99 on the app for a tablet. Fortunately if you pay once you can install Pocket Informant on multiple devices, so if you have a phone and a tablet and you’re already a Pocket Informant user, there’s no reason not try the latest version on your Motorola XOOM or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Apple will kill off the MobileMe service when iCloud fully launches later this year. That won’t be a problem for many users, since most of MobileMe’s features will be available for free as part of the iCloud service. But Apple published a new FAQ today looking at the transition from one cloud service to the next.

The good news is that like MobileMe, iCloud will offer web-based email, calendar, and contact access. The bad news is that iCloud users will not include three features from MobileMe: iWeb publishing, Gallery, and iDisk. If you want to salvage files saved to iDisk or keep web sites published to iWeb alive after June 30, 2012, you’ll need to download them or move them to another web host.

On the other hand, iCloud adds a number of new features including the ability to backup and restore your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, iTunes in the cloud, allowing you to download and sync your music collection on multiple devices, Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, and purchase history for books and apps you buy through iTunes, making it easy to re-download those items at any time.

Another big change between MobileMe and iCloud is that the former offers 20GB of online storage while iCloud users will only get 5GB for free. But Apple says users will be able to pay for additional storage if they need more space. Music, apps and books purchased from iTunes don’t count against the storage limit and neither do photos in your Photo Steam though.

via TechCrunch

Google has rolled out an update to Google Sync which offers new capabilities for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users who synchronize their Google data with their mobile device.

The update allows users to:

• Search for any message in their Gmail accounts using the iOS mail app, even if the messages haven’t been downloaded.
• Accept, decline, or edit appointments using the iOS calendar app.
• Use the “send mail as” feature when composing an email message, allowing you to choose from any email address linked to your account.

Google Sync is available as a free service, but you have to set it up on your mobile device. You can find instructions at the Google Mobile support site.

The default calendar for Google Android is a mobile version of Google Calendar which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means you can create appointments on the web and view them on your device, or vice versa — so you can access your calendar virtually anywhere. You can also view multiple calendars on your device. But there are some things the Android version of Google Calendar doesn’t do very well.

It doesn’t show text in the month view, just busy time. And the week view makes it difficult to see all your appointments at a glance. There are a few third party apps that address these shortcomings. My favorites are Business Calendar and Pocket Informant. But there’s also a new app called aCalendar. It’s not the most powerful or customizable app, but it has nice week and month views. And it’s free.

The app grabs data from Google Calendar and any new appointments you create will be saved to your Google account. You can flip between day, week, and month views by swiping left or right. And you can move forward and back in the calendar by swiping up and down.

There aren’t any advanced features such as the ability to move an appointment from one Google Calendar to another from the edit screen (something Pocket Informant allows). There’s also only a single home screen widget which shows an icon with the current date. But it’s hard to argue with the price.

It also took a little while to get used to the fact that when you swipe between views, you don’t automatically go to this week or today. Instead, the calendar shows the week or day that you swiped from. So if you’re looking at the month view and you want to switch to this week, you should start swiping your finger across the week you want to view in the calendar.

You can download aCalendar for Android 2.1 and up from the Android Market.

via aCalendar

Resarch in Motion has announced that it has acquired Tungle, makers of the Tungle.me online calendaring application. I first covered Tungle nearly three years ago when the company launched a service that lets you schedule meetings by comparing your Outlook calendar with the calendars of other users.

Over the past few years Tungle has added support for iCal, Google Calendar, LotusNotes, Windows Live and more services. Users can share their availability and schedule appointments on mobile devices, web-based calendars, or using desktop software.

Now it looks like we’ll start seeing Tungle-like services added to BlackBerry phones and tablets in the future, making it easier to schedule meetings from a mobile device.

It’s not yet clear what the move means for Tungle’s iPhone users or for those that had been hoping for the company’s upcoming Android app.

The folks behind the Pocket Informant calendar and task manager app for iOS are preparing to launch version 2.0. It will be available as a free upgrade for existing users.

The app has received a major graphic overhaul, and the developer has Read the rest of this entry »