Designed for the iPhone: Pocket Informant 2008

http://www.pocketinformant.com/produ...formant_iphone

Features Include
Subject to Change for the Final 1.00 Release. Some features may be
pushed to 1.1.
General

* Integrated Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Search
* Customizable Settings
* Category Colors and Icons
* Over the air sync (1.0 or 1.1 feature - pushing hard for 1.0)
* Journaling (1.1 feature)
* Push Notifications of Alarms
* Full Landscape support

Calendar

* Calendar with Agenda, Day, Week, and Month Views
* Filmstrip Calendar View in Landscape mode takes advantage of the
landscape orientation to see your schedule details
* Inline Details of each day in the Month provides makes it much
easier to read what your schedule is on any given day
* Time Bars to quickly show your availability
* Quickly Slide between months with your finger
* Zoom into a month
* Drag and Drop Time/Date of appointments

Tasks

* Full Featured Task Management
* Default Smart Groups for All, Overdue, Due Today
* Customizable Smart Groups

Contacts

* Coverflow Contacts
* Picture List of Contacts
* Group by Company
* Create Appointments from a Contact

Designed for the iPhone

Pocket Informant was the first full PIM (personal information
management) for Windows Mobile in 2000 soon for the BlackBerry as
well. We have a long history of creating powerful and easy to use
solutions for mobile works. When we set out to design our iPhone
version we sat down and designed an application that iPhone users
could love. To be honest we are Apple fans here - all of our desktops,
laptops are Macs; our servers are XServes; some of us have even worked
at Apple in the past (recently and from the past)! So we know what Mac
OS X users like, expect, and deserve.

As such Pocket Informant for the iPhone is focused on making
productivity fun and easy, yet focused.

Tell me about the Sync

With the iPhone 2.0 OS Apple has created a great system for developers
to create something special, but they had to leave out a few key
things to get done in time. For example there is no supported access
to the Calendar Store of the device and of course there is no Tasks
databases of any kind. If either of these show up at some point we
will be ready to support them immediately and directly. Until then
Pocket Informant for the iPhone ships with its own databases for Tasks
and Appointments and we use the iPhone Contacts Store as it is now. To
sync this data requires a network connection and for us to provide
alarms we have to be able to send push notifications from a server.
With all those considerations in mind we designed a solution that is
flexible, easy to use, and secure.

Why use a server solution? Simple really. We know that alarms must be
as reliable as possible. Since there is no ability for third party
applications to set timed alarms on the iPhone currently we knew that
we needed a reliable running server to be able to register with and
send notifications to Apple's Push Notification Service.

We use the open source Funambol server and our own custom SyncML
clients on the desktop and iPhone to sync your Calendar, Tasks, and
Contacts (all optional) to our own trusted Xserve. We are using the
GPLed unmodified version of the server which means that Enterprises,
Small Businesses, or even individuals can run their own server and
simply point Pocket Informant and the desktop sync client to your own
server instead of ours.

How does it compare to the Windows Mobile version?

Pocket Informant for Windows Mobile took eight years+ to get to where
it is today. Eight years of feedback, hard work, and engineering to
build its multiple views, hundreds of settings, and actions. It would
not be practical for us to promise that the iPhone version will be
comparable to the Windows Mobile version on its first release or
anytime near it. Instead we have focused on the most important
features that the majority of our users ask for and provide that in
version 1.0. Then as we move along in future versions we will catch up
to the Windows Mobile feature-set and continue to keep parity with it.
Please also understand that feature parity does not mean that we lose
the unique features of the iPhone or succumb to feature-itis. We
consider feature-parity that which compares to what our users ask for
and what we feel best serves that market.