Greenwich, CT based Vivapop has launched a web based calendar and events management service that offers a very nice interface, cross platform bidirectional syncing and voice recognition for mobile access. Whether this or any web calendar stands a chance in the face of Google’s integration of GCal and GMail is always a question, but Vivapop’s niche audience and premium feature set makes it an interesting play.
Founded by Elizabeth Souther Tarbell, a former corporate financier, Vivapop has been in development for two years. By hand approving for publication calendars from participating organizations, offering premium functionality and highlighting ads from “high end” retailers, Vivapop is aimed to serve upper class New Englanders first and rich people everywhere in time.
The functionality is universally interesting though. Much like Google Calendar, multiple calendars can be managed with lots of Ajax and automatic updates pushed from publishers to subscribers. At launch the service is loaded with more than 100 public and private events calendars from organizations mostly in Greenwich, CT. Arts organizations, children’s activity centers and private schools dominate the list so far, but anyone anywhere can offer their organization’s calendar for publication.
What’s different about Vivapop besides the gated community? There are a number of little things like retail store listings and hours for participating metro areas and automatic time zone adjustments depending on your geographic location. The most interesting features here though are the automatic syncing and IVR.
VIvapop users can sync both ways between Vivapop and Outlook on the desktop, Blackberry and Treo. The next step will be to sync with all mobile phone calendars and subsequently iCal. That’s exciting. The company uses synchronization technology from Redwood City, California’s Funambol.
The second unique feature is the ability to write to your calendar by voice commands. Users can call a Vivapop number, enter their access code and then add calendar items by either touch tone or voice in response to prompts. Item date, title and type can be recognized by the IVR system, while event descriptions are recorded as a .wav file and placed on your calendar.
Accounts with Vivapop start at $1 for the first 30 days, followed by $9.99 per month for the basic service with Outlook syncing and $14.99 to include voice access. The service has a nice look and feel, has a powerful feature set and a clear, viable business model. I think it stands a good chance with its targeted audience.
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Seems like there’s a lot of web based/ajax calendar services already…
This is getting rediculous…how many online calendars do we need? And who wants to pay for such a basic function.
How does it compare to ScheduleWorld? It used funambol technology as well.
I use ScheduleWorld to sync Outlook / Google Calendar / iPod / Phone.
Thanks for that pointer engtech
scheduleworld looks like its ripping off Google’s design
Look at the sign in page and it looks amazingly similar to Google’s account sign in.
This sounds just like Trumba’s product and business model. Trumba has $14 million in funding from Kleiner and August. Good luck.
Trumba’s cool, but it’s quite a different bird.
I hear Web-based calendaring companies are going for a couple of hundred grand these days, so it’s just *killer* timing.
Hmm, once Microsoft gets their act together with Outlook & Outlook Web Access, we’ll see all these guys up on eBay.
Come on wanna-be calendar-entrepreneurs: most people stare at & struggle with Outlook for 8+ hours a day and they really don’t need yet another scheduling tool in their lives.
I personnally don’t want my schedule online. And not much else except my profile and resume.
ha!
they charge.
their done.
Wait! A WEB-BASED CALENDAR???
NO WAY MAN THAT IS AWESOME!!!!
Grumpy, grumpy! It’s a web based calendar with edited shared calendars, synching and IVR.
Yeh. Yeh. Web calendars are not a hot item these days and I agree that most pieople are not interested in sharing their life schedules with the world. But, this service is working on something bigger than just a web-based calendar, if you look at the interface and some of the unique features this looks like a start of bigger system that will allow for online collaboration tool with access to calendar based management as the core engine of the To-Be system.
Who am I to say… this is only a wild wild guess.
Cheers,
Saeed El-Darahali
Finally, a company from CT! Yes!
One of the reasons there is activity in this space is there are a couple of compelling ideas - subscribing to event feeds that populate my calendar - and bringing advertising inside the room - that is inside my personal calendar.
These efforts are working out the how and why and what aspect has takeup or not. Event feeds should happen.
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and bringing advertising inside the room - that is inside my personal calendar.
I live in CT and spent an hour with them today. The big deal here is that they are aggregating all local scheduling data. The power is that accuracy of the scheduling data that is being delivered to individuals as well as organizations.
Hear is the ideal example of vivapop at its best. Your a mom, with 4 children and a husband. Your children all go to different schools, so you’ve subscribed to their vivapop schedules. You like to do yoga so you subscribed to your gyms calendar to know when the classes are. Your husband volunteers at the red cross so you are always going to chairity events. She has set it up so the schools, the local gyms, and community organizations feed her their scheduling data. So if there are any changes to any of these schedules they are automatically updated in your calendar.
So if Juniors soccer game is rescheduled for thursday or your gym adds a new yoga class you automatically know cause update in your calendar.
Scheise! No one needs YAC (Yet Another Calendar) We need another better tools to manage our existing ones! AirSet or TimeBridge got it right.
I’m not going to get into the “YAC” debate - I don’t think there is one online calendar app that has truly got it right for me yet, otherwise I wouldn’t still be using iCal. Therefore I welcome newcomers to this genre.
However, seriously, what is up with the “Desire” feature…? I honestly can’t fathom even the most flimsy, tenuous link of how this is applicable to an online calendar app. As an onlooker who is giving the app 5 minutes of my time, it just seems like a bit of a lazy (and ill-fitting) method of monetising the app - even if that might not actually be the case.
Apart from that, the app is sound, and looks prettier than other online calendar offerings, IMO.
sorry, forgot the link:
http://demonstrations.vivapop.com/desire/
what is interesting for me is they are saying its a caledar for business?
this seems a little odd? still looks like a personal calendar to me?
I cant see how you can control the calendar as an authority (admin)?
Edit and audit members?
Create calendar channels for secure viewing of events based on security permissions?
Looks like you can share all your events or none. Let me know if I missed something though.
This is an area thats missing out there in the web2.0 sphere. All the calendars are aimed for personal use, Can someone please point me to a calendar that is designed for a secure group/business environment?