Time to clear up doubts -- therefore yes, development of a BlackBerry version of our award-winning, fully integrated, personal information manager Agendus is underway.  We are on target to launch it on July 15.

As with all our Agendus incarnations, the BlackBerry version will interconnect meetings, tasks and contacts.  Plus it’ll be easy-to-use and "ready-to-go, out-of-the-box." just as we like all our titles to be. 

Version 1.0 will carry a rather large number of Views (including Today View, Contact, Calendar and Task views), Over-the-Air (OTA) capability, Contact History, and more. 

We are building it with extensibility in mind, in order to be able to embed additional features and enhance current ones, based on the feedback we'll receive from users. We plan on using the same approach that we’ve used with most of our titles:  keeping a closed loop where direct user feedback is incorporated into future features being developed.

All this being said, if you own a BlackBerry phone and feel strongly about features and functionalities you’d like to see woven into Agendus for BlackBerry, please let us know.  You don't have to wait till July 15. Just head over to our forums, where we have a brand new section dedicated to Agendus for BlackBerry.

Also, if you’d like a heads-up on when it is released (including when the Beta version is available), all you have to do is subscribe to our BlackBerry release notification mailing list.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.  And, as always, please feel free to send in your feedback and suggestions!

Since Apple introduced the iPhone in Summer 2007 we have received a variety of inquiries as of if / when any of our titles, and Agendus in particular, would see the light on the iPhone.

Well, until last Thursday, we were a little hesitant due to the Web-based only nature of iPhone application development.  The thing is, the questions never stopped so when we saw that the SDK would allow native client development, we knew the iPhone was calling out to us.

Therefore -- to clear up any doubt -- yes, we started working on making titles available on the iPhone. As to which ones and when they'll be available, it's a bit early to tell, since we are investing a bit of time experimenting with this new platform trying to get a better understanding the best approach to take moving forward.

Nonetheless, we definitely plan on keeping you updated on our iPhone developments in a number of ways.  Please select from the following:

- Submit your email address to our new iPhone news & product availability mailing list

- Subscribe to this blog by adding the iampowered RSS feed to your favorite reader

- Sign-up on the iambic User Community where you can chat with us and other visitors who share an interest in the iPhone App Watch.

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to bringing to the iPhone valuable timesaving, productivity enhancing solutions that are straightforward-yet-powerful and feature-rich-yet-not-bloated.

Applications built using previous SDKs don't work correctly anymore using this newest one, and this prompted us to update our first two "goodies" for Android -- GoogHelper and Tipper, which you can find attached to this thread, along with a couple of screenshots.

The new builds are fully compatible with the latest Android SDK.

Wish to give them a spin? Head over to this thread on our User Community Forum to get the .apk along with installation instructions.

We recently shared our thoughts around the new Android mobile operating system with Hatem Yacoub over at openhandsetmagazine.com.

You can read more below or head over at openhandsetmagazine.com for the integral version. 

iambic is one of the already established mobile software companies that started developping for the Android platform. You have probably met with one of their Android applications GoogHelper or Tipper that we announced in previous posts . Adriano Chiaretta - Chief Operating and Information Officer at Iambic - accepted to answer our questions and share their development experience with Google Android.

Q1 : We have introduced iambic in the last weeks to OHM readers with GoogHelper and Tipper, What can we know more about the company ?

iambic was founded at the end of 1993. At the time, the company had two people developing solutions for one of the very first PDAs, the Apple Newton. Making it easy to do time and expense tracking while on the go was the primary focus. Later in 1994 the company expanded its area of focus to include personal information management (PIM). As a result, Action Names was born. Through the years, that application evolved to what is now Agendus, currently available for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, as well as Windows desktop PCs.

During the last few years, we expanded our portfolio of Windows Mobile applications — with the development of titles that had a broader reach in areas that include: personal productivity, including vehicle managers, health and diet applications, and call management and action taking. In a nutshell, our mission is to empower users to make the most out of their time wherever they are –on the go or at the desk–, through the creation of easy-to-use, yet powerfully customizable solutions.

The saying “form follows function” rings true for us. 

   "I need to track a certain value because I'm trying to accomplish this goal of mine.”

   “I want to get this item filed in this certain way because I need..."

   "I like monitoring how changing this certain parameter over time affects this other one..."

   "I want to be reminded in a certain way about something, and I want to automatically have the reminder perform a certain action when it goes off…"

You get the idea.  The answers to many of these "needs" often show up in new software titles or as new features for titles currently in our portfolio.  The way we look at it, we aren’t the only ones with these sorts of needs – so the solutions we devise should be accessible to others, straightforward to implement and simple to use. 

For example, the need to manage appointments, or be reminded of things to get done, or recall when a certain event that occurred in one's schedule are addressed in Agendus. 

We just installed a nice little tool on our blog called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

GoogHelper for Android (1:42) - shows mobile shopping, news search and stock quote look-up.

Click here for more info and download about GoogHelper for Android.

Tipper for Android  (1:29) - shows a tip being calculated for a meal and the bill split between five people. A second example varies the amount, percent tip and number of payers.

Click here for more info and download about Tipper for Android.

Note:  YouTube defaults to the stretched (4:3) mode.  For these videos, you want to Toggle the screen adjustment button on the left.

How? Simple:

• head over to the newly launched mobility related site mobismartzone.com (where, to celebrate the launch and the partnership with iambic, we are sponsoring the giveaway of three Motorola H350 Bluetooth headsets)
• sign up for an account
• check back on March 1st to see if you're among the winners

Good luck!

We'd like to extend to all the visitors of the iambic blog our warmest wishes for a joyous and pleasant Holiday Season followed by a bright and prosperous 2008.

Thank you for choosing our products and services to fulfill your business and personal organization needs

Sincerely,

the iambic Team

Stay tuned for more news around Android coming from us in the next few months.

We recently received word that our Agendus for Palm OS Premier Edition is among the finalists for this year's Handango Champion Award. We are excited about the news and look forward to th e outcome!

Nominated Software

Application: Agendus for Palm OS Premier Edition
Category: Best Life Management
Platform: Palm OS

Winners will be announced September 26th, during the annual Handango Partner Summit.

By SmartPhoneToday Staff
April 11, 2007

iambic's Agendus, one of the most popular personal information managers (PIM) for the Palm OS, is now available for Windows Mobile Smartphones. These include Samusng’s BlackJack, Motorola's Q, T-Mobile's Dash and Cingular’s 3125. The software has been available for Pocket PC Phones, like the Treo 700wx and 750, since February.

Not sure if your Microsoft-based handset is a Windows Smartphone? If it doesn't have a touch screen, chances are it is a Smartphone and not a Pocket PC Phone.

Agendus 1.0 for Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition offers much of the same contacts, calendar, tasks, tools, wireless, and data/sync functionality (in addition to category colors, pictures, icons, and custom edit dialogs) that has made the Palm OS edition so popular over the years.

I thought I’d best illustrate this with a short video clip of how I do this on my Treo.

(sorry no audio notes, just text notes:)

Launching Agendus - my default view is the Agendus day view

To quickly create a new meeting, simply hit the “M” key, notice I have “Patients” as my default meeting category

I then scroll up to set the time of encounter (typing the number 15 quickly sets the start time as 1500, default meeting duration in my case is 10 minutes - but you can change this from Agendus’ preferences)

Back to the day view, you start typing the patients name, note how Agendus intelligently recalls other contacts in your database as you type.

If you navigate to the Contact icon on the right of the name and hit Select, you will be taken to the Contact view (John Doe’s in this case, and you’ll see I like to put in clinical details like Diagnosis in the Notes field)

Next just type in your meeting notes. I illustrate the use of Shortcut5 - just by typing “.adm” I get “admitted”
After typing your notes (or indeed any time later on) you may want to “Log” the notes (/L). By doing so, the meeting notes appear in the Notes field of the Contact, complete with a Date stamp.

Back in the Day view, its easy to create a follow-up schedule. Scroll down to the item, press and hold the centre of the Dpad and a list will pop-up, which includes the Schedule Follow Up option. I illustrate how easy it is to make a follow-up meeting.
The same pop-up list has also the Contact History which I find useful when trying to review previous and future appointments.

There you have it. A simple 2 minute video guide on how to use Agendus to manage your patient appointments.