Wednesday, 24 January 2024, Bengaluru, India
Some people are devoted supporters of Microsoft Outlook for a reason. It integrates contacts, calendar events, and emails into a single app. However, Outlook is involved. Additionally, some find its complex UI intolerable.
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One of the more creative apps in the recent wave of calendar apps, Amie, integrates emails into its app so users can arrange meetings and check their availability for a particular assignment without constantly navigating between their calendar and email client.
After several years of private testing, the app’s 1.0 version includes this additional capability. Now, anyone can download the app and sign up without an invite code. Amie’s CEO and founder, Dennis Müller, informed me that the company removed its waitlist in response to Notion’s announcement of the Notion Calendar last week.
The option to create a Notion document and link it to an event is one of its few new integrations with Notion’s main app and service; this might be helpful for meeting notes. Users of Notion Calendar can also see a Notion database as a calendar, complete with deadlines and dates.
Adding inventiveness to the calendar application
The introduction of Notion Calendar has once again demonstrated that Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are not the only calendar software available. Additionally, individuals have various needs, just like with task management applications. There is space for multiple calendar apps and multiple task management apps.
And with that, we return to Amie. Nearly two years later, everything I said about the app remains accurate. It’s a well-designed product with many small details, creative interaction model interpretations, and lovely animations.
Remind yourself that the calendar app Amie is linked to your Google account. After signing up, the business imports and shows your Google Calendar events in a conventional calendar format.
Amie, however, has her unique perspective on the calendar. A lot of people organize things that aren’t events. They serve as a weekly schedule of tasks that they must do.
Amie allows you to manage your to-do list because of this. You can create tasks in the left column without giving it any thought. It’s similar to appending a new bullet point to an ongoing list; the deadline isn’t anything to worry about immediately.
Amie performs admirably when used alone but excels when combined with other employees. Every user gets a unique profile card, and Amie allows you to see when a colleague is free easily by simply swiping over their photo in the sidebar. Additionally, Amie allows for multiple accounts, which is helpful if you want to view your personal and business calendars in one app.
Users can also create links that resemble Calendly to communicate their availability to other users. An email conversation can be started by pasting the URL that the software makes. You may now send emails straight from the app because Amie also syncs your calendar with your email inbox.
Although Amie’s email integration is a little rudimentary, it works well enough to write new emails and view your most recent chats. “We designed it with Apple CarPlay in mind. We aim to attain the same level of productivity there, where you can see everything you’re interested in,” Müller stated.
The left column is also home to the email inbox. It is an additional to-do list that updates automatically when new emails are received. Clicking on an email lets you read it and immediately respond in Amie.
The split-screen feature on mobile makes viewing your calendar and email quite pleasurable. You can drag and drop the divider in the center of the screen to see more of your calendar or inbox.
More significantly, since many people view emails as tasks, you can drag an email into the calendar and set a time and date for responding to it or taking other action based on its contents.
The capacity to use AI to locate time for your to-do list automatically is the other significant new feature that will soon be accessible to premium customers.
Numerous businesses are attempting to reimagine the calendar in addition to the Notion Calendar. If you utilize Apple devices, there are Fantastical, Rise, Routine, Daybridge, Motion, and Akiflow.
Fourteen employees are working on Amie, and the business has raised $8 million. So, let’s see if it can differentiate itself from the competition in 2024 and turn into “a one-in-a-million product,” as Dennis Müller, the founder of Amie, told me.
(Information Source: Techcrunch.com)
