Blik Calendar Widget BETA is on the market

[tdieckman]

So, none of the calendar/agenda widgets really did what I wanted - to just give me the information I needed in a quick to understand display.

First of all, I don't want a widget that needs to take up a lot of space. Secondly, I thought that all that text (start time, event text, date) just made it hard to easily comprehend what's coming up. Just showing the dates of events was also hard to figure out how many days away something is without having to do some mental arithmetic.

What I really wanted was to just see a little picture of each event in a week view or something similar. Well, that's what Blik does. It is a 1x4 widget that looks at your calendar events' text and figures out a graphic to use. It also displays the start time and pulls out a word or two that it determines is important.

For example, if you have a calendar event called "John Smith's birthday", then Blik will display a piece of cake with a candle in it and under it will display the word "John". If you have an event called "Staff meeting", then Blik will display a little meeting table picture and under it will display the start time and "Staff".

Here's a screenshot from earlier this month:

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You can see that I went to the dentist on the 5th which was also Cinco de Mayo. A friend of mine had a birthday on the 6th and, of course, on the 9th, it's Mother's Day. Hopefully you'll agree that this kind of display is a lot easier to understand than just a bunch of text. It also helps you realize how far away something is.

You can scroll the widget by pressing the ends to see further into the future (by default Blik reads the next 4 weeks of events). There are also settings that can be displayed by pressing in the center of the widget to get some options.

Here's my Android website where there is some information which I'll be adding to. I've just started putting together the FAQ page which will contain release notes as I make changes. JoeProgrammer

This BETA version will expire on May 30th, but I'll have the LITE version up by then or update the BETA to extend it longer if needed.

Comments are welcome. You can email me directly from the application itself by clicking on the center of the widget and then pressing on the "?" button to show the about page where there is a button to email the developer.

Thanks to anyone who gives my new app a try!

 

[Squiggy]

I like this idea a lot. How do I get a $ graphic to show up? I tried using "money" in the event description, but that didn't work.

 

[tdieckman]

I like this idea a lot. How do I get a $ graphic to show up? I tried using "money" in the event description, but that didn't work.

I've got a lot more graphics and rules to add before Blik is out of Beta. I thought I had "money" in the list, but it wasn't, so I added it.

The only money-related rules and graphics in the initial 0.9 version are "mortgage" and "rent".

Future plans are to allow users to add their own rules to add keywords to show specific graphics including overriding the built-in rules. This won't be added until after the initial 1.0 release though.

 

[Squiggy]

I've got a lot more graphics and rules to add before Blik is out of Beta. I thought I had "money" in the list, but it wasn't, so I added it.

The only money-related rules and graphics in the initial 0.9 version are "mortgage" and "rent".

Future plans are to allow users to add their own rules to add keywords to show specific graphics including overriding the built-in rules. This won't be added until after the initial 1.0 release though.

Great. I like the $ there because I charge clients on certain days.

 

[tdieckman]

Great. I like the $ there because I charge clients on certain days.

Besides "money", "cash", "check", "charge", are there any other keywords that you would want the money graphic to show up? "Bill" is really not a keyword that I can use since I don't want to match on someone named Bill!

 

[Squiggy]

Besides "money", "cash", "check", "charge", are there any other keywords that you would want the money graphic to show up? "Bill" is really not a keyword that I can use since I don't want to match on someone named Bill!

The only other ones would be pay or payment. Maybe an actual $ sign.

 

[tdieckman]

The only other ones would be pay or payment. Maybe an actual $ sign.

So here's a question about the word "pay": Say you have "Pay phone". Would you rather have a picture of a phone with "pay" under it or a picture of money with the word "phone" under it?

My list of graphics generally fall into three categories: 1) common events like "haircut", "movie", "breakfast", "mortgage", "rent", 2) holidays, and 3) everyday objects like "phone", "bird", "book".

Putting action words like "pay" would fit in the first category, but it ends up being very general. Towards the end of the rules, I have a few "catch-all" rules, and maybe that's where "pay" would go so that if no other rule was hit, then "pay" would display a picture of money and then the other text in the calendar event would be shown next to it. So if you have "pay phone bill", you will get a pic of a phone with the text "pay", but if you have "pay off Lenny", you'll get a pic of money with the text "Lenny".

 

[Squiggy]

As a standard consumer (and not a person who takes payments from clients), I'd say "Pay phone" should result in a picture of money with the word "phone" under it. I think your logic is completely sound, and the functionality you're describing would be perfectly acceptable in most instances.

What would work for me, as far as seeing dates where clients owe me money, is just a dollar sign and my client's name. Would be great if I typed in this event: "$ Client X" or "$650 due from Client" and saw the dollar signs in the calendar. Maybe "$" could trigger the dollar sign in the calendar.

 

[Squiggy]

Of course, "Payment to" and "Payment from" could trigger different graphics.