Your Phone's Calendar Sucks (and What You Should Do About It)

by Jacob Smith, Director of Business Development

Let's face it; phone calendars aren't much fun. They're a lot of work to maintain, and very limited when it comes to plan-sharing and event discovery. Calendar sharing is cumbersome, and meeting invites are awkwardly formal between friends and loved ones.

As a result, finding out what’s coming up leaves most of us in a never-ending hunt for information. If you’re like most people, you spend a huge amount of time fishing for upcoming events: When is the next game? When does my favorite TV show premier? What concerts are coming up? When does my girlfriend have book club? You may check dozens of websites and read through piles of emails, or incessantly text your friends and family members just to find out what’s happening and when.

There's got to be a better way! What if your calendar just knew which upcoming events mattered to you most?

The Evolution of the Calendar

If you’re anything like me, you’re 100% hooked to your calendar. My calendar is a direct extension of my brain, and without it, I’d just be stumbling around aimlessly all day. Quite frankly, it's difficult to imagine a time before this essential tool.

Calendars have come a long way in a relatively short period on time. For a majority of the last century, paper calendars were the way to go. The on-the-go businessmen and women of the day would carry pocket-sized planners to keep track of their busy schedules. By the mid-90’s, computers had burst onto the scene, and slowly but surely digital calendars entered into the mix. Then came PDA’s and cell phones, merging the digital calendar experience with the frenzied, drive-thru-Starbucks needs of today’s businessperson.

Despite this revolutionary change in medium, the calendar itself has not changed much from a functionality standpoint.

Funky Functionality

Phone calendars are extremely limited. What you've essentially got is a pocketbook that lets you set reminders and send meeting invites. If you want to go beyond your day-to-day meetings and appointments, you're left scouring the Internet for information about what's upcoming.

Not to mention the social aspects of the calendar are a mess. Want to see what each of your friends are doing this weekend? Your options are as follows:

  1. Share calendars - Google Calendar and other major calendars offer "binary" or all-or-nothing 1-to-1 sharing. You can see NONE of your friend's events or you see ALL of them. But who really wants to share their entire calendar with all of their friends?
  2. Meeting invites - Unless you are inviting co-workers to a team meeting, this is the most awkward possible way to make plans.
  3. Text, call, or email - Time consuming, and potentially annoying.

None of these options really cut it, and consequently, life is full of missed opportunities. The concert we would have gone to. The season premier we would have watched. The party we wished we’d known about. It's 2013, and that's the best we can do??

The Calendar Revolution

UpTo is reinventing the mobile calendar as we know it. Your life is about so much more than just meetings and appointments, and your calendar should reflect that. You deserve a comprehensive, personalized view of what's upcoming.

The current system is broken. UpTo is here to fix it, and we’re just getting started. UpTo 2.0 is coming soon, and it will change the way you think about the word “calendar.”  It's time to get up, ditch your archaic sundial of a calendar, and join the revolution!

Share with a friend | Permalink