Doodle Blog

Thanks to your feedback, we decided to extend the video contest submission deadline by two weeks. The deadline for entering the contest and winning an attractive gift card for flights around the world is now July 8th. Feel free to contact us about the contest at videocontest@doodle.com!

Visit our contest page for more details!

Microsoft users with Internet Explorer’s latest version iE9 get some interesting new features like Pinned Sites. With Pinned Sites, you can get to your favorite sites directly from the Windows taskbar—without having to open Internet Explorer first. When you pin Doodle it will look like this:

Pinning Doodle in the Internet Explorer takes seconds: click the icon to the left of the web address in One Box, or the tab for the website, or the website’s icon on the New Tab page, and then drag it to the taskbar. That’s it. Once it’s pinned, it shows up as its own thumbnail, separate from Internet Explorer. Now all it takes is one click to start scheduling an event.

Further information: Microsoft product page

On 8 June, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour “test flight”. The goal of the World IPv6 Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

Doodle will also participate in the World IPv6 Day and run the service in “dual stack” mode – over IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously. We don’t expect any consequences for our users, any potential issues will be collected and published by the initiators of the test.

We’re happy to announce today that our popular MeetMe personal scheduling profile feature is now out of Beta. MeetMe simplifies the way in which two people decide on a meeting time to the same extent that Doodle originally simplified group scheduling. MeetMe is efficient and consensus-based, and it also works with a variety of calendar systems.

Furthermore, we improved the poll creation wizard for visually impaired individuals by making it more accessible for screen readers, plus we streamlined the login process for MyDoodle.

Do you love Doodle? Are you creative? If so, we need your help!

Doodle doesn’t have an official video that explains the principle of online scheduling and shows what’s possible with our service. Because of that, we’re launching a video contest that will run from May 24 – June 24, and if you think you can create a great video about Doodle, then you could win a CHF 5,000 (about €4,000 or $5,700) gift card for flights on Swiss International Air Lines and have your video featured prominently on our website!

Visit our contest page to participate!

We found this wonderful quote in the Associations Now magazine. Thanks Carol!

CEO to CEO: How does the one device you can’t live without help you do your job better?

A free-to-use program on the internet called Doodle has saved me countless hours trying to coordinate meetings across several time zones. There are so many meetings around conference time, in addition to regular meetings with speakers, panelists, committees, and the board. Doodle eliminates confusion, keeps perfect track of responses, results are visual, and you know immediately who hasn’t responded. I Doodle!

Carol L. Watkins
Executive Director, Nation Dental EDI Council

We asked 3,000 Internet users from Germany, the US, and France about the limits of their electronic calendars via a Toluna Quick Survey. We were most surprised by the fact that 58% of the users aren’t satisfied with the tool they have (see graph).

Users of electronic calendars (N=1,202 out of 3,000)

This quick survey demonstrates the difference between an electronic calendar and Doodle. Doodle is not a calendar, but instead, it connects and complements existing calendars in several ways:

• Multiple meeting proposals: Doodle enables friendly and efficient consensus-based scheduling.
• Calendar neutral: Doodle works across all calendar systems and even enables calendar sharing with contacts from different organizations and IT infrastructures.
• Groups and one-to-one: Doodle is perfectly designed to handle the coordination of large groups, but it also offers one-to-one scheduling through MeetMe.
• All in one place: Doodle meeting invitations can be answered directly in the calendar view instead of in your inbox (where meeting requests traditionally demand to be processed).

With Doodle’s calendar integrations, you can connect multiple calendars and activate and deactivate them as needed. These calendars could include data about the family schedule, the availability of your colleagues, the meeting room schedule, or public feeds that display information like national holidays.

Doodle fully connects with Google (via OAuth), Outlook (via a plugin and the new Exchange Connector), Lotus Notes (via a sidebar widget), and any online calendar that uses ICS feeds.

Doodle now offers full integration with the business world. The new Exchange Connector connects your Outlook calendar and address book via Outlook Web Access (OWA). The setup requires no installation, and the Exchange Connector is a great alternative to the existing Doodle Outlook Connector.

This new feature connects Outlook with Doodle and brings efficient scheduling along with an always synchronized calendar to employees of companies that provide an Exchange infrastructure and an Outlook Web Access interface.

Doodle‘s free calendar integrations work where common calendar systems are limited. You can read more about that in the following post: Is Doodle a Calendar

The Swiss publisher Tamedia is going to engage in Doodle and will take 49 percent of the shares that are a part of the leading online scheduling service. Synergies are seen in a partnership with the leading Swiss directory search.ch (www.search.ch) – a Tamedia affiliate – to strengthen Doodle’s position in its home market with regard to advertising and the SME sector. On the other hand, Tamedia will strive to expand its online portfolio with Doodle in an international way.

Doodle will remain unchanged in all major aspects, especially concerning the free service, the Premium accounts, and the advertising platform, both now and in the future. The operational lead will stay with Michael Näf and Paul E. Sevinç as co-owners, executive directors, and board members. Doodle’s team of 11 people will continue to work on the project at the Technopark in Zurich.

“We’re happy to announce this partial exit that allows us to benefit from synergies with Tamedia and gives us room to operate and grow independently and remain open for additional international partnerships,” said Doodle CEO Michael Näf. The details of the transaction will be submitted to the Swiss Federal Competition Commission and the parties agreed to keep them confidential.

Doodle has been mentioned in several books, and this just shows how popular Doodle is when it comes to productivity and calendaring.

Just take a look at the titles below:

The 4-Hour Workweek

by lifestyle guru Tim Ferris

The best free tool I’ve found for herding cats (multiple people) for scheduling without excessive e-mail.

SuperCompetent
by The Productivity Pro Laura Stack

Doodle makes scheduling transparent and flexible by engaging participants—regardless of whether they use online or offline calendars, paper planners, or no system at all.

The Social Media Bible
by social media experts Lon Safko and David K. Brake

This service is particularly easy to use, and even passes the “grandma test”—so easy your grandma can do it!

Upgrade your Life
by tech writer Gina Trapani

A simple Doodle poll can reduce email back-and-forth between multiple attendees and provide an easy, visual map of who can make it when to your event.

Eliminate the Chaos at Work
by organzing and productivity consultant Laura Leist

The Networked Nonprofit
by nonprofit experts Beth Kanter and Allison H. Fine