GekoNewCal 3 Makes Adding Appointments Finger Friendly

The default Windows Mobile appointment manager is rather dull and probably requires the use of a stylus for most. The lack of finger friendly support can become an annoyance, especially when trying to set an appointment on the go. Unless you’re running a newer version of TouchFLO 3D, you may have to encounter this outdated screen at some point. While other UIs do a good job of skinning the calendar, they often leave the appointment manager untouched. GekoNewCal may be the answer for users who want a nicer interface that isn’t stylus dependent.

GekoNewCal has been completely rewritten and re-released in the form of version 3.0. It uses a finger friendly layout for setting new appointments and has some graphical appeal too. The app launches quickly and jumps you right into setting up a new appointment. That means no extra menus to navigate just to add a new appointment to your calendar. From this screen, you’re able to set the subject, location, date, time, recurrence schedule, category, and notification alarm.

What’s nice about this application is that it uses a slot machine style kinetic picker for setting appointment dates and times. Also, it’s convenient for setting appointments quickly because you don’t have to set both start and end times. Instead, you simply select the appropriate starting date/time and then a time interval (up to 12 hrs, in 30 min. increments). The downside is that you can't set multi-day appointments. However, you can set repeating (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) and all day events. There’s also a way to send appointment invitations via SMS, but the contact must have the app installed as well. If the invite is accepted, the appointment information will be added to the addressee's calendar.

GekoNewCal is a great option if the interface you’re using has an awkward appointment tool. It’s also a good choice for those who want a quick and easy way of inputting new appointments without the hassle of multiple, complex menus. Unfortunately, GekoNewCal is not free and will set you back 3.99 €. We would've liked to see it bundled with GekoTask, which is set to release soon, for one low price. Get access to a full 15 day trial of GekoNewCal and read more about it at GekoNewmobile.

Changes in 3.0.3612 (Build 26610):

• New "Geko Style" look and improved ergonomy.
• Completely rewritten to achive the best ease of use.
• New kinetic picker for the selection of date.
• User-definable appointment categories.
• "All-day" event.
• Sending of invitations to meetings via customized SMS.
• Notification of invitation with "Accept", "Decline" and "Temptative" functions.
• Notification to the sender of the destinee's acceptance or refusal of the invitation.
• Automatic scheduling of accepted appointments in destinee's calendar.
• New kinetic list for the selection of destinees.
• Option to vibrate when buttons are pressed.
• Support of different screen resolutions (QVGA, VGA, WVGA in portrait mode) with automatic adjustment.
• Support of new graphical skins.
• New SetConfig program to set options (license code, language, skin, vibration).
• New management of event recurrence (none, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).
• Alarm setup starting from 5 minutes to 1 hour before the event.
• Multilingual support: menu for the language selection.