New Kindle calendar app
For those of you who only want to read books on your Kindle, you can stop here. 
For those of you who want to make the Kindle a more robust device, read on.
Calendar Pro
from Jujuba Software
$0.99 at time of writing
Let’s say you want the Kindle to be the only device you carry around with you.
This new utility app brings one of the capabilities I’ve seen requested many times…a scheduler.
It’s important on the Kindle to try to make the interface easy to use. The inherent slowness of E Ink means that using the 5-way to get around and having to page through to get somewhere difficult…this app does a nice job of getting around those problems by using keyboard shortcuts.
For example, the Next Page button moves you to the next day…that’s what you would expect.
However, Alt+Next Page goes to the next week, and Shift+Next Page goes to the next month. That’s thinking ahead, and will reduce battery usage.
Each mode (Go To Today, the calendar view; Agenda the list view) has its own Help.
When you get to a place where you would type numbers, it shows you the Alt letter combinations at the bottom of the screen.
You can view by day, month, or year.
I generally found it easy to read and easy to use.
There are a few enhancements I’d like to see in future editions:
- Recurring events
- Search events
- Date formatting (so that dates can be displayed day/month/year, instead of just month/day/year…especially in the agenda view
Overall, it’s serviceable…and that’s good. The look of it was clean. For those of you who want a calendar, it’s worth the ninety-nine cents.
Oh, one thing I have to say: don’t be thrown off by the reviews! There’s one five-star review…and one of the strangest, most unfair 1-star reviews I’ve seen. The reviewer hasn’t tried the app…and rated it 1-star because they can’t get apps in Canada! I actually commented the review, because I hope the reviewer deletes it. I don’t think it is unreasonable to be upset about not being to get the app, but to take that out on the app publishers is…misplaced. Many people want to state their annoyance publicly, and that can be done…but this kind of thing belongs in a forum, not where it reduces hurts an innocent bystander. Does it hurt the publisher to give them an undeserved 1-star review? Yes! Some people search by average review, and this drops the app from a five to a three (at time of writing).
Bonus note: new free game or the Kindle
As with other Active Content titles, these don’t work on the K1, but do work on K2s, K3s, and the KDX. They don’t work in reader apps, and I assume they can’t be purchased outside the US.
You can buy one once and share it with all compatible devices on the account.
If you try either of them, feel free to let me know what you think.
For information on more active content, see this category.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
April 30, 2011 at 2:42 pm |
So when do we get Angry Birds?
April 30, 2011 at 4:40 pm |
Thanks for writing, wvstampman!
Tough to do with E Ink, but the NOOK Color just got Angry Birds.
I think we get it when/if Amazon releases a tablet…
Otherwise…um, we have Aristophanes’ The Birds….that’s the same thing, right?
April 30, 2011 at 4:06 pm |
I bought Calendar Pro last night, and quickly figured out how to enter events. Thank you for the additional short cuts for next week and next month; I will practice using them. Since my Kindle now goes almost everywhere with me, and I don’t have a smart phone, I anticipate much use of the Calendar Pro.
April 30, 2011 at 4:42 pm |
Thanks for writing, amy.!
Great! To find more shortcuts, you can do Menu-Help when you are in the different screens.
May 2, 2011 at 11:34 am |
YES! YES! YES!
With this and Notepad I now have replaced two of the four function buttons of my beloved Palm Pilot.
Yet to see: A decent address book and a task list.
Personally I think functions this simple should have been built in.
May 2, 2011 at 12:18 pm |
Thanks for writing, JJ!
I’m glad you’re getting the additional functions you want.
I would guess we’ll get apps for the other two.
I think that not having those functions may have been an advantage for the product establishing itself.
It was iintroduced as a reading device, which for some people is an escape from those exact activities.
Second, the Kindle 1 hasn’t gotten these apps, and is probably incapable of doing them.
Third, E Ink just can’t do those as well as a backlit screen at this time. The calendar app on the Kindle is good, but it’s not accessing my Google calendar on my SmartPhone.
June 23, 2011 at 3:16 am |
[...] blows the Jujuba Software version out of the water, in my opinion. It has two of the features I thought were missing in that one: [...]