Doodle Blog

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

TechCrunch opened voting for the best European startups today. Doodle is nominated as “Best Bootstrapped Startup”. Whatever that means exactly: All Doodle users – vote for us now!

And while you’re at it, please vote for our friends at Wuala, too. (They’re in a different category.)

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

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.

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