Doodle Blog

Update August 3 2009: Doodle implements 3 improvements for the XING app

Doodle is launch partner of the new XING Partner Ecosystem. Being a social network, XING enables a number of interesting functions: XING members can recognize Doodle polls they have in common with others, they see the profile picture when someone participates in a poll, and they can invite XING contacts to a meeting with just one click. Starting today, Doodle can be easily installed as a XING application.

Picok is an open source “Personal Information Cockpit” built by LIIP. The latest version (1.0.1) added support for Doodle portlets. Read more about Picok on their web site: www.picok.ch

Picok Screenshot

Wow! Murphy hit us hard today. Two of our servers failed simultaneously. Other — non-related – problems made us hunt down the wrong causes for a while. In the end, Doodle was not available for quite some time today. We apologize for the downtime and the inconvience this has caused.

Here’s the good news:

• All systems are back online.
• There was no data loss whatsoever.
• We have used this opportunity to add another server and to optimize a number of system parameters to make sure that Doodle will run even more reliably and responsively in the future.
• We have contingency plans for a number of scenarios in place, and it’s reassuring to see that they work. We’ll just have to be even faster next time.

Facebook announced their Verified Apps program in early 2009 and we applied as one of the first applications. A few weeks ago, Facebook told us they would launch the program with an official announcement. However, they seem to have decided to silently launch the program: We never noticed anything official but our app is now wearing the verified badge.

Here’s what this means for the users of the app (from the Facebook FAQ):

Verified applications have passed a detailed Facebook review to confirm that the user experience they provide complies with Facebook policies. Verified applications have committed to be transparent about how they work and will respect you and your friends when they send communication on your behalf.

Because these applications have passed a review by Facebook, they are prioritized higher in the application directory and are highlighted by a green checkmark. A “Verified Apps” badge will appear on their Profile Pages as well.

Visit the Doodle app on Facebook

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

Doodle today publishes its first international study on scheduling: We surveyed 2500 managers and administrative professionals in the US, the UK, Germany, France and the Nordics.

Professionals spend almost five hours each week to arrange meetings and use predominantly traditional means of finding the best time to meet. Hence, they can significantly cut down on this wasted time by using a scheduling service such as Doodle and finding their meeting times in a much more efficient manner.

Read about the details in our press release and study report.

The Doodle API Contest ended last week. We’re excited that 8 applications from 6 countries were submitted, covering anything from mobile  and application integrations to mashups we’d never have thought of.

We will not yet reveal the submissions. First, our jury will determine the contest winners. We expect to announce the winners in early May. Here are the members of our jury:

• Suhas Gopinath, Young Global Leader, Founder and CEO, Globals Inc.
• Alexander Hüsing, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, deutsche-startups.de
• Manuel Jaffrin, Patrick Liechti, Sun Microsystems
• Oliver Reichenstein, Founder and CEO, Information Architects
• Gina Trapani, Founding Editor, Smarterware, Lifehacker

We are happy to announce that Doodle has surpassed the three million user mark globally (source: Google Analytics) with a growth up 167 per cent compared to this time last year. Read our press release for more number crunching.

Paul’s report from the Venture Leaders 2009 jury:

Last year, I had the privilege of being one of Switzerland’s twenty Venture Leaders. Here’s what I had to say at the end of the program: “I was worried that we would waste time on chitchatting and sipping cocktails. As it turned out, «venture leaders» is an intense business-training program that will help me much better face various challenges that still lie ahead for our company.”

Last Thursday (in Lausanne) and Friday (in Zurich), I was asked to serve on the jury to pick the next 20 Venture Leaders. Looking at Switzerland’s start-up scene, it’s hard to believe that the economy is not doing too well right now. Thirty-eight company founders or project members (when a university project has not resulted in a spin-off yet) pitched their case by giving a 10-minute talk followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. Biotech and medtech always sound like rocket science to me. But I was also in awe of several software engineers.

My fellow jurors and I had a very hard time limiting the number of entrepreneurs to take part in this year’s Venture Leaders program to twenty when at least twenty-five contestants would have deserved it. Here they are: Venture Leaders 2009. Congratulations!