Pocket Informant from webIS is a personal information management app that lets you manage your calendar and contacts on mobile devices running iOS, Android, or BlackBerry OS.

Once upon a time the Windows Mobile app actually functioned as a complete replacement for Microsoft’s PIM apps by offering a contact manager as well. Now it looks like contact management is coming soon to the iOS app.

WebIS founder Alex Kac has posted a preview video showing Pocket Informant 2.0 on an iPhone. The biggest change is the new contact manager which lets you view contacts by name, or by category. You can also scroll through contacts by viewing large photos of each person in your address book (assuming you have photos associated with those people.

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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.

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 »

One of the most powerful, customizable calendar apps for Windows Mobile, iOS, and BlackBerry is now available for Google Android. After several months of beta testing, WebIS has officially launched Pocket Informant for Android. It’s available from the Android Market at an introductory price of $5.99.

The app offers month, day, week, and agenda calendar views and you can customize the look and feel of each. For instance you can choose whether to show text for appointments in the crowded month view on a tiny screen. And you can choose between a column week view which looks like the default Android calendar or a week view which gives each day a box and populates it with appointment text so you can see a whole week at a glance.

Aside from offering more control over the look and feel of your day, week, and month views, Pocket Informant also makes it easy to create and edit appointments — and offers a feature that is missing from Google’s calendar app for Android for some baffling reason: the ability to move an appointment between different Google calendars.

Pocket Informant also has an integrated task manager which allows you to sort apps by status, category, priority, or other criteria. If you like you can also configure the app to show tasks with due dates in the calendar view.

The Pocket Informant calendar can be synchronized with any or all of your Google Calendars, and you can configure the task manager to synchronize your data with web-based to do list Toodledo.

If you were using the beta version of Pocket Informant for Android, you’ll have to uninstall it before installing the full version. Some of your settings will still be saved though.

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A couple of popular mobile apps are on sale at deep discounts right now.

Tether is a popular BlackBerry app which lets you connect a phone to a PC or Mac to let you access your 3G internet connection from a computer — without necessarily letting your wireless carrier know what you’re up to and impose extra data charges.Normally Tether runs $49.99, but you can get it for a limited time for $24.99.

Pocket Informant is a popular calendar and task manager app for mobile devices. The iPhone and iPod touch version normally runs $12.99, but it’s currently available for $4.99 as part of a “MacWorld Expo Sale.”

Streaming music service Grooveshark, meanwhile is running a promotion where you can get a year’s worth of service for the price of a $20 T-shirt. While Grooveshark’s basic service lets you stream music on-demand or in playlists for free in a PC web browser, you need a subscription to use Grooveshark’s official mobile apps.

via Reddit

The basic purpose of the iPhone lock screen is to keep your device from turning on accidentally when it’s in your pocket. But that doesn’t mean that the only thing that matters on the screen is the “slide to unlock” switch at the bottom of the screen, as anyone who’s ever pulled their phone out of their pocket just to check the time can tell you.

While Apple doesn’t make it very easy to customize the lock screen, if you have a jailbroken iOS device you can install a nifty app called LockInfo which lets view Mail, Calendar, SMS, Phone, and other information on your lock screen. Just tap the power or Home button on your device to turn on the screen and you get an overview of your important information, no sliding required.

But what about tasks from a third party calendar/task app like Pocket Informant? No problem. While the developers of Pocket Informant aren’t officially supporting the project, a third party developer has developed a Pocket Informant plugin for LockInfo.

In order to use the widget, you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch with Pocket Informant and LockInfo installed. Then you can download the “Pocket Informant Tasks Plugin for LockInfo Native” plugin from the Cydia store to see tasks from PI on your lock screen.

via Pocket Informant founder Alex Kac’s blog

Pocket Informant is a contact and calendar app which offers far more customization options than the default Android calendar (and there is no default task/to do list for Android). The app was originally designed for Windows Mobile, but there are now versions for BlackBerry, iOS, and Android as well.

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The Android app hit the Android Market tonight and while it’s pretty awesome, it also feels a little like a beta app. It takes a little while to populate the different calendar views with appointments, and there’s no Home Screen widget, which seems like it would be pretty useful. Still, it’s without a doubt the most powerful calendar app available for Android at the moment. It’s also the only calendar app for Android I’ve found which lets you change which Google Calender an appointment is linked to after yoube already created an appointment.

That said, Pocket Informant pulls in data from all of your Google Calendars or lets you choose which calendars to display. There are day, week, month, and agenda views, with several different ways to display data on the week view. You can decide which day starts the week, decide whether to show mini-text in the month view, which may be of limited use on a tiny smartphone display, but it’s an option that few other calendar apps offer.

You can also change the theme colors by changing the colors for working and non-working hours, weekends, important, overdue, or unimportant tasks, or private data.

There’s also a task manager which you can use to create and organize tasks. If you set deadlines for your tasks you can choose to have them show up in your calendar. You can also synchronize the tasks with online task service Toodledo.

You can find more details at the Pocket Informant forum.

Pocket Informant Beta is available as a free download from the Android Market. The beta expires on January 24th. Hopefully by then there will either be a new beta or a full version of the app available for purchase.