Today I bring news of a new application from SBSH Software, Calendar Touch. Well if your familiar with a SmartPhone application from SBSH called Papyrus, you would know that it is a complete calendar solution for windows mobile, non touch screen devices. Obviously a natural evolution for Papyrus, from a developers point of view, would be to enable it for windows mobile touch screen devices. Now a program with “Touch” in the title may seem to imply that this application is focused on finger friendliness, and could be misleading to many users, but I’ll let Amit from SBSH explain the naming of this product:

We could have used something like “SBSH Calendar Pro/Classic”, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that Microsoft couldn’t have chosen more confusing names to indicate the different device platforms. I believe that the naming and use of “Touch” to indicate that this is a touch-supporting device is pretty common by now and it is not an indication to “thumb-oriented-operation”

An interesting point of contention, that resulted in a dialogue, that will probably see Calendar Touch (CT) head down the “Finger” or “Thumb” friendly road in the future, but for now let’s have a look at Calendar Touch in it’s first release

I think I need to give you a little background on my application/PIM preferences before I dive into this review just so you know where I’m coming from. My initial and preferred PIM manager is Pocket Informant 2007. It was one of, and is still in my list of essential apps installed after a hard reset. It is fully updated to the last update supplied for it, before PI 2008. I didn’t feel the need to upgrade, as it took me quite a long time to master such an in depth program, configuration wise. So I’m happy to stick with it. Now I don’t need this sort of depth in a Calendar program at any time, but looking at calendar Touch I suddenly clicked, lot’s of people have much more complicated lives than mine, and this is why apps like this are out there

Installation

Most of the time when I talk about installing programs in a review, I say something like it’s fairly straight forward, because most of the time, you are not offered options during the install of a program on your device, other than where you install the program.  So now we get funky…

The image above is the default set up image I get considering my language settings, and you get the choice of replacing/ making the native PIM shortcuts point to Calendar Touch. A cautionary word here,selecting this option actually makes changes to the registry, and can only be reversed by editing the registry, or uninstalling the program. At this point, I should say, this is not an application for the uninitiated WinMo user.

One last step before we finish the install, you can choose to assign CT to one of the soft keys for easy access. Clearly, a well thought out install process, including some options that you would otherwise have to manually set up through the settings in the OS.

I did not favour these selections and chose to install without including these settings. Now we get to the straight forward part, registration was as easy as entering my email address and registration code. So let’s delve a bit deeper now that we’re all set up.

The App Proper

The first thing I noticed on starting CT for the first time was the slick UI, it’s really a pleasant looking application, and by default it works with whatever theme you are running. In the settings though, Colours gets it’s own option and your imagination is the limit for the looks of the UI.

Black Theme

Blue Theme

Of course the look of an application is important, and CT includes Five different formats to access and manipulate your information, with neat sliding transitions between screens and a couple of animated input fields like the date picker (below), or the variable pop out effect (above), which highlights any selected day or date.

( To view all of the different UI’s, select the thumbnails below for a larger pic )

	Monthly
Weekly	Daily
List view	Task view

What though is behind this interface, well out of the box CT is quite adequate, although if you are using an older device like me, (axim x51v) a lot of the bells and whistles compromise my system. So I found through the settings of TC that I could make it work for me anyway. Now the settings in CT are involved, and customisable for every view, you may want to use. The settings though are exhaustive, and take a bit of mastering if you haven’t been a long time user of the app.

Once you get familiar with the settings, it is relatively east to achieve a functional and consistent view across all of the UI views.

One thought here would be that I would like to see a way to “standardise” the look of all of the UI views from the general settings tab. A one stop shop for font size, animated effects, pop outs etc! one thing that will deter your average user here is the fact that every aspect of the application has to be configured individually.

Some of the settings are confusing, and not initially intuitive/obvious, but I’m sure in later releases these little problems will be addressed.

What Do I Really Think?

As with any third party PIM application, CT taps into your existing WinMo PIM database and ports it to it’s own interface. Of course the settings in CT allow you to manipulate your information, in about any way you want.

When it comes down to the nitty gritty though, you are still managing the same information, albeit with some great enhancements.

One thing that Calendar touch lets you do is filter your information to the umpteenth millionth time. Most of us wouldn’t have a schedule that would need us to categorise or filter our information more than three or four levels deep.

Considering that, and the fact that an application is never really complete, I’m really impressed with Calendar Touch. The Ease of new calendar/task creation, the ability to be customised to an extent that it will run on older devices and still offer really advanced UI capabilities like gesture support. Whilst looking good doing it.

I started off by telling you I was a PI fanboy, well it has served my needs, and I was comfortable with it, now I’ve been challenged! Whilst PI is a package that encapsulates all of your PIM in one app, CT is an app that is to become part of a suite that in my opinion will do the same thing. Give you an integrated PIM across your whole WinMo experience.

I’ve been privileged to  have access to the Beta of this application, and i would have to add that the development environment, makes me think this is really going to be a long term PIM preference for WinMo users.

Calendar Touch is available From SBSH Software for $24.95