Monthly Archives: October 2010

Smartphone and PDA calendars have been a big part of my life ever since Psion introduced the idea on the Psion 3. I quickly became more organised than ever before and from that moment have used a mobile calendar of one sort or another every day. From those early Psion days I moved to Palm OS and used Agendus heavily to manage my work and personal life and then dabbled with a few Windows Mobile offerings and finally the marvellous calendar setup on the BlackBerry’s. When I moved to an iPhone things quickly went downhill in the calendar stakes because the built in software was too basic and cumbersome for my needs. With Apple sticking to its guns and not allowing developers access to the calendar API I was stuck with a solution that was about as useful as a Symbian for PIM i.e. not very.

I was initially annoyed that Apple had neglected to include LED notifications, pre-set alarms and a calendar software setup that was usable for anyone who had a life to live. As time passed though I appreciated the lack of an LED alert and realised that I never needed one in the first place; less interruptions and more getting things done. However, the slowness of the calendar software and far too many clicks required to input a new appointment was painful and it was at best a solution that I coped with rather than benefited from. Pocket Informant gradually turned into an adequate replacement, but for me personally it was a solution that just didn’t fit the way my mind works. I am a visual person and an obvious overview of what is happening over the next few day’s works perfectly for me- enter Week Calendar.

Trevor recommended Week Calendar very strongly in his recent review and I was intrigued by what he had to say. I don’t normally follow recommendations, but something about the software appealed to me. £1.19 later I had a solution that works just as well as the original Psion calendar did for me, and it has taken more than a decade to get to that stage. Everything about the way it works is simple and efficient; from viewing a week’s worth of entries to adding new appointments to drilling down to the day view it all works in a couple of taps. It is in effect iCal for the mobile and I never expected something like this to work for me, especially because I don’t like iCal at all.

This isn’t a review of Week Calendar, but recognition of what it does. For those of you missing the glory days of Psion and Palm OS PIM this could well be the answer to your wishes, provided you own an iPhone of course.

For those of you who want a bit of nostalgia here is a brilliant article from Tom Munch from way back in 2000. It took me back through many of my PDA experiences and I am sure it will do the same for many of you.

Recently I raved about The Times online service and how well it worked on my desktop and iPhone. Well, after a couple of weeks I decided that I wasn’t using it enough to make the costs worthwhile so decided to cancel my subscription.

There is no obvious way to cancel the subscription on The Times website so I had to do a manual search for ‘cancel subscription’. I found the following buried a long way down the terms and conditions-

“To cancel your subscription please go to the “Contact Us” section, select the payment category and submit your details. You should note that this right of cancellation is lost in the event of you accessing any of the content accessible by Website Members only contained on a Website and you agree that you shall not have the benefit of that cancellation right.”

So, I then went to the contact page and fired up the online questions live link and received the following answer-

“Dear Mr McGill. We are sorry to hear that. You can cancel a subscription to The Times Online by sending us an e-mail at custserv@timesonline.co.uk, or calling us on 020 7711 1523 (0044 20 7711 1523 if you are outside the United Kingdom).”

So, I then wrote an email asking for the service to be cancelled and am awaiting confirmation. To be fair, the service has been polite and it only took a few minutes, but what about people who are not used to using the internet as much as I am (which is quite possible for a newspaper such as The Times)? It took me no time at all to setup the service and everything was automatic. When I want to do the opposite everything is manual and I have to go searching for the information I need.

This is a bug bear of mine and a tactic most companies use when you want to cancel a service. Sky is a classic example; add some new channels online and they are active without you needing to speak to anyone. Try to take those channels off at a later date and you have to phone them, at which point you are greeted by sales people who want to know why you are cancelling the channels. My stock reply of “None of your xxxx business” usually gets them cancelled in a few seconds.

I respect companies who make cancellation as easy as setting up because it shows that they have faith in their products. Companies who make these things difficult are looking only at the short term and losing trust from people who could conceivably return one day.