Doodle Blog

We just finished putting our August release online. Here are the major improvements:

• Extended calendar integration: You were already able to subscribe to the Doodle ICS feed to keep your calendar up-to-date with the latest Doodle information. Starting today, you can also import your calendar information into your MyDoodle account and have Doodle suggest your availabilities based on your calendar whenever you need to fill in a poll. This feature requires you to open a MyDoodle account; afterwards, you will be able to add your calendar feed here.
• Locations: We introduced an optional feature that allows you to specify an event’s location. The feature is based on Google Maps internationally and on Local.ch in Switzerland.
• Improved XING app: Our Doodle XING app was launched only recently and is already among the most popular apps on XING. As a consequence, we get lots of feedback, and we take it seriously by introducing the following improvements: 1) Users can now merge their XING Doodle account with their normal Doodle account and see the combined dashboard in both worlds. 2) Poll participants can easily be found and invited using the new contact search with auto-completion. 3) Additional participants can be invited even after a poll has been set up. To the Doodle XING app…
• More payment methods: We’ve incorporated Moneybookers and are now able to offer many additional and more convenient payment options to our Branded Doodle customers who want to use Doodle for their business, e.g. many credit cards, bank transfer, etc.

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

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.

Update (Feb 24): One of our free tickets goes to Oscar, congratulations and have fun at the conference! Apparently, nobody else was ready to share his or her story after Oscar told his sad story. We’ll give our second free ticket to whoever is next to tell us his/her Doodle story in the comments section.

This year’s Plugg conference will take place on 12 March in Brussels. Doodle is a Plugg media partner and is giving away 2 free tickets! Here’s what you have to do to win one of the tickets:

1. Organize an event with Doodle.
2. Take a screenshot of the resulting Doodle poll.
3. Take some pictures of the event.
4. Upload the screenshot and the pictures to some freely accessible web space (e.g., your personal web site or blog, our friends at Wuala’s space, Flickr,  PBWiki, Wikispaces, …).
5. Tell your story as a comment to this blog post and include the link. Don’t forget to enter your correct e-mail address (it won’t be shown with the comment). Deadline: 23 February 2009 24:00 EST.

The Doodle team (at its sole discretion) will then choose the best (most original, funny, touching, …) 2 stories and announce the winners until 27 February 2009.

(Any comments that are illegal, infringing, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive, profane, or otherwise objectionable will be deleted and disqualified.)

Plugg is a one-day conference with a clear focus on celebrating entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe and raising global awareness for those European start-ups in the Web / Mobile 2.0 field that stand out in the crop. 

Plugg also runs a Start-ups Rally, a launch platform for emerging start-ups looking for early-stage funding and trade press, tech blogger and early-adopter attention. A selection of 20 start-ups with strong roots in Europe will be carefully picked by a jury of renowned industry professionals out of the submitted companies. The deadline is tomorrow, Feb 4th!

Doodle is a Plugg media partner — we’re helping them getting the word out.

The Sun Startup Essentials program is designed to help startups get off the ground fast, at lower cost, primed for rapid growth and success. Sun supports startups with hardware, software, training, and support. The partnership with Sun is an obvious step for Doodle because major components of our technical architecture are maintained by Sun: Java and MySQL.

VIJFtv is a Belgian TV channel (owned by ProSiebenSat1 Media). They launched a new show called “Komen Eten” yesterday. The show is about people inviting each other to dinner and is accompanied by a web site with pictures, videos, recipes — and Komen Eten Doodle!

Komen Eten Doodle nicely showcases the possibilities of a partnership with Doodle: Our branding features allow the site to be adapted to the look and feel of the overall concept. Doodle’s viral character enables a partner to expose new users to their brand. And the whole partnership was set up in a matter of hours.