Great article in the NY Times today - David Pogue writes of his family’s needs and why Google Calendar won’t do for him. He could well have been writing about Mediabee!
Instead, he ends up recommending software he’s used for years, which, for a family of 4 would cost $120*4 = $480!!
I emailed Pogue a couple of months ago, but it probably went into his bit-bucket.
Mediabee announces a new release of Family Dashboard, which makes it a lot easier for families and small groups to coordinate their activities. It sports a cool new look and offers better integration with your iPod, Yahoo, iCal, Microsoft Outlook, and RSS news. Now you can put your children’s daily schedules right on their iPods.
Westborough, MA (PRWEB) March 8, 2006 — Mediabee announced today V2, the next generation of Family Dashboard, their groundbreaking all-in-one organizer software that helps families and small groups coordinate all their scheduling and communication.
In recent times, a number of so-called Web 2.0 companies have cropped up with web-based calendar sharing solutions. Mediabee’s solution stands apart from the pack for its focus on the needs of busy moms and small business owners as “managers” of small teams. Mediabee’s solution provides the appropriate level of ease-of-use, sharing, and robustness for this target audience.
Mediabee was founded by Saro Saravanan, the former chief architect of Fidelity Investments’ retirement planning website. Saro and his team identified a number of real-life scenarios, such as the use of the wall calendar and day planner, homework notices and school work, and the situations relating to elder care and joint custody of children. They also worked with a large number of beta users in coming up with V2. The result is a clearly distinguished solution that can easily address these real-life needs.
As a downloadable application, it is an ideal “anchor” application for the kitchen computer in a broadband household. But you can still easily get to it from wherever you are using a browser or a phone.
With the newly released “copy to iPod” feature, each member of the family can download their contacts and calendars to their iPods. Also available is the ability to export Mediabee calendars and contacts to Yahoo, iCal, and VCF formats.
Another key feature of Mediabee is how easily community members can share specific schedules with each other. For example, let’s say you’re entering your daughter’s homework schedule into Mediabee. With just a couple of extra clicks, you can share that with everyone in your zipcode (or internationally, if that’s appropriate).
Mediabee is a free download, released under the “donationware” license. If you’re unable to see the picture included in this release, please use the following link: http://mediabee.com/pad/animated.gif.
About Mediabee
Mediabee was founded in 2002 by Saro Saravanan, the chief architect who launched Fidelity NetBenefits while he was at Fidelity Investments. A software industry veteran and serial entrepreneur, Saro’s unique focus on user experience helped him produce award-winning world-class products used by over 10 million users today.
A late 2003 study conducted by Cogent Research for Mediabee shows that 87% of households with PCs and PDAs still use wall calendars and day planners for coordinating their daily activities.
Mediabee’s mission is to bring to life the 21st century Wall Planner — an alternative solution that consumers would love to adopt — on PCs, cell phones, Internet TVs, plasma displays, security panels, set-top boxes, media centers, home gateways — whatever devices customers choose. To that end, we have created a platform-independent system with a flexible architecture. Mediabee’s passion to bring this product to market is driven by research, real-life user feedback, and rapid innovation.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Saro Saravanan
508-341-2042
707-222-0363 (fax)
http://mediabee.com
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This material will eventually be absorbed into help, but since the help doesn’t cover it now, I thought you might find it useful.
To import an ICS file, first click on List in the Buzz-It panel. Then, on the List Planner screen, click on Import and you’ll see the ICS file import dialog.
Kim Komando, popular radio talk show host on computers, has picked Mediabee as shareware of the week in November:
Theresa Hemsoth’s review of Mediabee in the article:
Getting it Together: Free and Low-Cost Organizing Software to Manage Your Messes
Thank you, Theresa! The version you reviewed is several months old. Check out V1.27 - it’s greatly improved!
I just came across David’s website. Here’s the review poem he wrote in the Jerusalem Post:
After 3 months in development, we’ve just released V1.27 with the following enhancements:
- Performance: Making entries is now blazing fast
- AOL, Gmail support/ removal of SMTP server requirement for email & cell phone reminders
- ICS file import
- Doubly-redundant backup of data
- Over 100 minor bugs fixed
This release is now available at
http://mediabee.com/download/Mediabee-1.27.exe
The Download Now link should be updated by Nov 9, 2005 - please use the above link until then.
After 3 months in development, we’re just about ready to release V1.27 with the following enhancements:
- Performance: Making entries is now blazing fast
- AOL, Gmail support/ removal of SMTP server requirement for email & cell phone reminders
- ICS file import
- Doubly-redundant backup of data
- Over 100 minor bugs fixed
A preview of this release is now available at
http://mediabee.com/download/Mediabee-1.27_11.exe
We’re making a few more minor enhancements for the full 1.27 release, but this is now stable and ready for those who can’t wait for the full 1.27 release.
We’re happy to announce the release today of Mediabee V1.26. We’ve made the initial user experience, especially for new users, a little simpler, fixed a number of bugs, implemented a few user-requested features, especially in the address book, and finally implemented the syntax for monthly entries.
To make a monthly entry in V1.26 and above, do it as follows:
Car Payment, monthly;1, Jack
That reminds Jack that his monthly car payment is on the 1st of each month.
We always recommend upgrading to the latest version so you can be assured that known bugs will not affect your experience. Get the latest version from
http://mediabee.com/download/Mediabee-1.26.exe
If you’re interested in the thin client installer you can find it at
http://mediabee.com/download/Mediabee_Client-1.26.exe (NOTE: this requires a main Mediabee installation on the same network to work.)
A brand new look-and-feel, lots of bug fixes, and up-to-date help are the main features of version 1.25. All users are strongly advised to upgrade to this version, as a couple of bugs that were resulting in loss of data in the previous versions have been fixed.
The performance is better, and it is less demanding on the system as well.
The download.com link will be updated by end of day on July 16, 2005. Until then, please download the product from:
The latest version of Mediabee was just published today.
It’s fast, stable, easier on the eye, and a pleasure to work with - especially the new Buzz-ItTM Pad, which allows you to go to many different apps from one place with great ease.
Be sure to download it immediately, and don’t forget to tell everyone about Mediabee.
You can download the latest version from
We strongly recommend it! There are a couple of important fixes in there that will prevent your calendar from blanking out in some rare conditions. Not to mention that there are some cool UI and performance enhancements that you’ll love.
New features:
-Enhanced interface to improve navigation and usability of the application
-Overall improved performance
-Improved syntax error checking
-Ability to import an address book in Outlook CSV format (Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003 tested)
-Alternate ports can be specified to send email reminders from if your ISP blocks our default port
-Improved connectivity to jabber server for better registration and list sharing experience
-Improved list sharing
-Multiple bug fixes
Known issues
-Tasks that are checked off in the events calendar are not checked off in the dayplanner, the reverse is true as well
-The photo player has a tendency to get stuck when scrolling through your photo library
-When deleting events from a privately or publicly shared list from the
monthly or daily calendar view, the changes are not communicated to those who have subscribed to the list. If they are deleted from the listplanner screens, they are communicated to the subscribers
-If you make a change to the regular activities page, when you save it the issues you had previously checked off become unchecked
Over the weekend, we saw a great news item that raised our spirits: David Shamah, well-known journalist and software reviewer, wrote a great poem on Mediabee in The Jerusalem Post!
Here’s an excerpt:
What it comes down to, in my opinion, is ensuring that there is clear communication,
making sure everyone knows what to do is likely to cut down on frustration.
And with MediaBee, the program I discovered, organization is a vocation. When it comes to organizing tasks and assignments to get ready for Pessah, this app is a sensation!
MediaBee is an organizer, which can run on one computer, or within a home network, on many.
This program has many features to help organize tasks, whether one or twenty. For assignments that need to be carried out, confusion there will not be any.
And here’s a link to the article (registration required).
If you have the latest version of Mediabee - version 1.11 - please go ahead and click on the following link to see the great things you can do with the little Memo Pad on your left hand corner: http://mediabee.com/pilot/flash/MemoPadOverview.html
The Families and Work Institute says that overworking employees does more harm than good:
Among other things, this article details a study conducted by the the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families. Here’s a key excerpt:
“Researchers say now there are three jobs in the American family — two careers plus parenting — and only two people to accomplish them.”
Here’s
the article.
Just saw this great article in the Christian Science Monitor. Here’s an excerpt:
“I’m not sure they make a calendar large enough for us,” says Ms. Reiss of Newton, Mass., explaining that her life revolves around “two companies, three children, a spouse, a lot of community involvement, a social life, the kids’ social life, and volunteering in a soup kitchen every week.
And the link to the article:
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/0316/p11s01-lifp.html
Mediabee Web Access represents the beginnings of the second-generation of our user interface. You’ll see the changes here first and then they will also appear in the Mediabee Desktop Client at a later time. From a data perspective, Mediabee Desktop Client will provide you with richer views into your data for the time being - but eventually you won’t see much difference between the capabilities of the local client and the web access client.
We’ll quickly highlight the main features of Mediabee Web Access here. The philosophy that drives this user interface is “everything you need easily accessible from one place & updated in real-time”.
Get ready access to your home calendar from anywhere - with just a browser. And one-click access to your local (home) weather information.
Get Breaking Headlines from important news sources - updated every few minutes:
Get Health News from MedicinNet® - updated throughout the day - on medical topics of interest to you:
Surprise recipes of the day for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, of the low-carb, low-fat, and vegetarian kind - from some of the best sources:
The hottest deals on the net delivered to you fresh for the picking:
Instant access to the Family Calendar Blog:
We’re just warming up! The little search box on the corner can bring you some amazing stuff with the absolute minimum of effort!
More to come in a future article.