Borange, a new app that just went live on Apple’s App Store, is looking to turn your iPhone into a casual social planner. The application effectively adds a basic calendar function to the iPhone’s address book, allowing users to view a timeline that details when their friends will be free to hang out that day. You can download the 99-cent application here.
Borange is very well designed, and feels like a natural extension to the address book. To get started, you scroll through your list of contacts, checking off the ones you’d like to send your availability information to (you can also send out mass notifications to groups or your entire contact list). Contacts that are Borange members will see your available times listed as part of a comprehensive timeline that also includes schedules from their other Borange-using friends.
Those contacts that aren’t using Borange will get their updates via SMS or Email, which include links to a map of your current location as well as your contact information. Borange is less impressive when you don’t have many friends using the iPhone app because the nifty timeline view becomes mostly useless, but it’s still an effective way to handle group messaging (and all outgoing SMS messages are free, as they are routed through Borange’s servers).
There are a number of other apps available on the iPhone that are also geared towards helping users pair up with friends, but most of them just use GPS to tell you when you’ve got a friend close by and leave the logistics up to you. Borange has less of an emphasis on geolocation and is instead focused on streamlining the invitation process, which could make it a worthy addition to your iPhone. And even if you can’t get your friends to start using the iPhone app, it still makes for a great free mass text-messaging service.
For more on Borange, check out their demo site.
Great example of leveraging personal information on the iPhone to build an application, which is simple and intuitive to use.
Borange got creative with the UI, and I like the hints of branding.
Awesome job, and Jason’s quote says it best, “…feels like a natural extension to the address book”.
I can see how this type of app could be used in large corporations to aid staff in setting up meetings between large (or even small) groups.
I personally like to use Borange when I’m commuting in my car to see if I can get select people to call me without having to play phone tag. Hard to know who else is free for a casual phone chat. “Call me in the next 30 minutes?”
Looking forward to releasing the next round of features.
–Mason
CEO and Co-founder, Borange Inc.
That may be incriminating for you after Jan 1 texting law goes into place, Mason…
Borange seems to be like the better-world equivalent to Outlook Calendar’s view availability tool…
Yes, after Jan 1, please pull to the side of the road before boranging.
Not in my state.
May be some schills here, but looks good. Now for the privacy policy.
(Yes, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m pretty sure I do know that Jeff from college.)
Here’s the Borange privacy policy:
https://www.bor...nge.com/privacy
Unlike more than a few iPhone social apps, Borange does not scrape your address book nor see any more information than is strictly necessary to make a minimalist “Address Book 2.0″ type social network operate. It only sends names and addresses, and only when they are used. The names of your contacts are not even shown to the other contacts you are available to.
–Mason
CEO and Co-founder, Borange Inc.
I like their corporate web site. It’s nice, clear and yet simple.
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I’ve been testing Borange for a little while now with a couple of friends and it’s fun and easy. Now that the cat’s out the bag I’m looking forward to boranging more with more peops and seeing bigger and bigger lists of who’s available for what when. Congrats to Mason and team. Borange rhymes with awesome!
TechCrunch is almost iCrunch now
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Yes, after Jan 1, please pull to the side of the road before boranging.