Doodle Blog

We are happy to announce the winners of the Doodle API Contest today! Doodlendar, an application that integrates Doodle’s scheduling system with Google Calendar, developed by two students at the ETH Zurich, won first prize. Second and third prizes went to Manymoon (USA) and DoodleZack (Austria). Winners were chosen by a jury of web pros out of eight approved applications from six different countries.

“It’s great to see that working on an own project gets such appreciation,” said the winners Michael Schaufelberger (white shirt) and Stephan Merkli (blue shirt) yesterday at the “award ceremony”. Instead of the original prize, a trip to Zurich, they decided to take the cash prize: “Cash is easier to divide by the two of us… (Is it really? – see photo) … and we aren’t too worried about finding a way to spend it.”

Doodle CEO Michael Naef (black shirt) presents our API competition winners with first prize

With Doodlendar (introduction) one can use Doodle to schedule events in Google Calendar. Doodle’s meeting time options are added as tentative events in Google Calendar. As soon as a poll is closed and a definite time slot is chosen – this will be saved as the only appointment in the calendar. “Doodlendar is a useful and smooth marriage of Doodle and the widely-used calendar app. I love the side-by-side calendar to poll view,” jury member Gina Trapani (Founding Editor of Smarterware and Lifehacker) said about the winning application.

The runner-up, social productivity application Manymoon with ManyDoodle, commented: “We are excited to be using Doodle’s API to add the ability to schedule events within Manymoon. Our customers are already using our Doodle integration to schedule business events every day,” said co-founder Amit Kulkarni.

A big “Thank you!” to all participants and special thanks to the jury and our sponsors! 

• Sun Startup Essentials
• NOKIA
• Zurich Tourism
• Victorinox

This week is Work Wise Week in the UK and many firms will be looking to deploy or increase homeworking strategies for employees. Companies, however, should look beyond purely connectivity and security issues to make remote working a success. “Applications such as online scheduling tools should form part of the overall technology armoury as part of a cultural change in the way companies view remote working”, said Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK. Read more in our press release! Making homeworking work better: Streamlining with Web platforms essential, Doodle says

Update: Mario Lopez Ramos won the free Jazoon ‘09 ticket. Congratulations!

Jazoon’09 – The International Conference on Java Technology –  will take place in Zurich, Switzerland from 22 to 25 June 2009. Doodle is also involved:

• Paul and David will have a session on OAuth on Thursday.
• Doodle is an official partner and provides Branded Doodle for the conference organizers.
• Most importantly, you will get a 20% discount on your conference pass (saving CHF 362) if you register for Jazoon via Doodle. To do so, simply enter your name and e-mail address in our form. The form will be open until May 31st. We will also draw one free full conference pass among all the people who register. So there’s another good reason to register.