Just what is Tungle.me, and what is it going to be? Check out this video we put together with the team at Epipheo.
Interested in the future of Tungle.me? Check out the Calendar of the Future project.
Social CRM from Gist – Now with Tungle!
Gist is a very cool app that gives you a full profile of your contacts, their companies and how you’re connected. You can use the app on the web, or plug it into your inbox, browser or mobile device.
Got an email from Dave? Gist will tell you who Dave is, where he works, what’s new at his company, how you know each other and where you can find him across the web (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Today, Gist announced some new features including Tungle.me integration. Gist now pulls in Tungle.me profiles of your contacts, and provides you with a quick link to see their availability and schedule meetings with them.
So now you know who Dave is, where he is, how you know him, what’s new, when he’s free, and can easily book a meeting with him. And all you had to do was open the email. Pretty exciting stuff!
Posted in Partnerships
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The Personal Side of Tungle: How to balance your work-life schedule
There’s a discussion happening on Quora right now – When it comes to semi-professional and personal relationships, “Is asking someone to use Tungle.me an interpersonal power play?”
Several people have chimed in, including Robert Scoble who wrote, “Yes, but the tradeoff for convenience is worth it.”
In building Tungle, our goal was to help busy professionals easily schedule meetings inside or outside the organization, regardless of calendar type or time zone.
You look at the whole picture of what’s happening in your life.
Our primary focus was, and still is, professionals. But as we all know, our personal and professional lives often overlap.
When scheduling a sales meeting, you don’t just look at your work schedule; you look at your personal schedule too – dinners with friends, kids’ soccer games and school events, doctor’s appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
Tungle is a natural fit for personal engagements.
Think back to the last time you met friends or colleagues for drinks after work. Everyone has different office hours, personal commitments and commuting times. Finding a day and time that suits even just three people can result in over 20 emails back and forth nailing down a time. Tungle gets that done in one to two emails.
And there’s calendar sharing.
The work-home overlap can lead to scheduling conflicts with spouses, friends and other family members. Often, you’ll have a corporate calendar for professional commitments that your family can’t access.
Tungle allows you to share calendars with others, regardless of calendar type. Let’s say your company has you on Outlook and your husband or wife is on Google. Tungle will let you share, and even allow you to access that shared information from your iPhone or BlackBerry.
The next time you think you have time for that late-in-the-day conference call, you’ll have a reminder that your spouse has something going on and you need to be home with the kids.
Tungle will evolve to make your life easier.
Our primary focus will continue to be professionals, but with an emphasis on helping you manage all your time – not just office hours.
It’s all part of our “Calendar of the Future” plan that you can learn more about here.
We’d like to know
How does (or doesn’t) Tungle fit into your personal life today? What would make it a better fit?
Also, how does your calendar fit into your personal life? Do you manage separate calendars, or keep it all on one? Are you sharing your personal calendar? Factoring personal commitments into professional scheduling?
We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Posted in The Tungle Way, Using Tungle
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The Power of 3: How to Get it All Done
When you look at your to-do list, do your insides turn into a tangled mess of anxiety?
That’s probably because you put EVERYTHING on it. It’s overwhelming. And feeling like you might drown is not conducive to accomplishing anything.
The problem could be that visually your list is too big.
What if there were only 3 things on that list? Would you feel better?
“The brain finds it relatively easy to grasp threes […]. Push that marginally up to four and the brain gets confused about where to look and what to do” (source: psychotactics.com – great article on the power of three here).
If looking at just 4 things can send your brain into a tizzy, imagine what your list of 47 things is doing.
“But just 3 things?” you ask, “I have way more than 3 things to get done.”
Yes, but you probably won’t get them done today. Especially if you’re smothered by a 10lb to-do list.
Here’s the Plan:
Each morning (or night before, if that’s your thing) list the top 3 things you absolutely have to get done that day. Then do them.
You can do other things throughout the day, but come closing time those 3 things must be done.
If you’re not comfortable with just 3 things for the day, try listing 3 things to do before lunch, then 3 to do after lunch.
But I Need Longer Term Goals!
Fair enough. What 3 projects do you need to complete this month or week? Have a master list of those 3 things.
As you’re making your daily lists, make sure that each item (or at least 2 out of 3) is related to a goal on your master list.
Baby Steps Cover Great Strides
I don’t know if that’s an actual saying. If not, I’m coining it now. 3 things a day may seem like a drop in the bucket when you’ve got a to-do list as long as your arm. But you’d be amazed how quickly those bundles of 3 add up.
Try it for a week and see for yourself.
Have a unique to-do list tip or idea? Share it in the comments!
Posted in Productivity & Time Management
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A Look Forward Into 2011
2010 was a big year at Tungle. We’re proud of what’s been accomplished. More importantly, we’re excited about the stage that’s been set for 2011 and what that means for you.
You may remember a video series we released in 2010 called The Calendar of the Future. In 2010 we planned it out. We reached out to the industry and to you, our users for feedback and ideas. In 2011, we start building it.
Here is a look forward at what 2011 will look like at Tungle:
Connecting you to your network
Email is no longer the be all and end all of connecting. More and more, people are connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Quora and other social networks. But once you connect with someone, what next?
We will begin to answer that question through integrations with various other networks. The goal is to give you simple, efficient ways to connect with your true network – not just your address book.
Expanding the community
Today, we spend a lot of time in the Support Community and on Twitter. You can find Tungle on Facebook as well.
In 2011, expect to see Tungle in a lot more places. We’ll be enhancing our Facebook page (you’ll notice it’s already been hooked up to the Support Community), increasing our LinkedIn presence and looking into new social channels for integration.
We’ll also be giving you more opportunity to connect with the Tungle team through webinars and live Q&A sessions.
Our goal is to be available to you wherever you want to connect.
Building Insight
You have given your calendar a lot of information about yourself. But what is that doing for you? Other than telling you where you need to be and when…not much.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your calendar could help you optimize your time, instead of just track it?
In 2011, we’ll start bringing you tools to help you understand how your time is being used, and what you can do to optimize it.
Growing the team
To accomplish these goals, we’ll need to add more players to our already strong and dedicated team.
This month, we’ve already welcomed three new members in QA and web development. During the first quarter, we plan to add at least two more Tunglers to the family.
Do you know anyone in the Montreal or Waterloo areas who’d love to be part of the team? Send them here.
Posted in The Tungle Way
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To All Startup Entrepreneurs
It’s been a while since I took the time to write an unrelated blog post. 5 years almost. When I last did it, it was on my newly purchased Dell laptop. I am now a Mac user. I am writing this post from my iPad.
When I started this venture, Microsoft was our main competition. Google calendar was in its early days and SAAS based services were in their infancy. Facebook was relatively unknown and Google and Skype were the poster child web companies.
The landscape has changed – but in reality, things haven’t changed. Over 5 years, I’ve been lucky to meet good friends, and had to say goodbye to others. We’ve raised close to $7M and still have cash to spare. We’ve been “almost” acquired 3 times – and each time decided to keep on building a great company.
Too many times, we missed deadlines because we were overly optimistic, but many times, we had to make critical decisions that changed the landscape of our business for the better. We never put on rose coloured glasses when looking at results and evaluated our assets at different intersections. Although we could have never imagined the road that we took to get where we are, the underlying vision never changed.
I’ve been supported by great people financially but, more importantly, emotionally. I’ve had countless sleepless nights, but always believed in our ability to make things happen. I sometimes didn’t listen to my gut, but always had to rectify these mistakes along the way.
I’ve worn my company t-shirt too many times, but always wore it with pride. I am grateful for my team members, I am grateful for my users. I am lucky. I am tired and I sometimes can’t sleep, but I realize that I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I do not know what 2011 will yield, but I can promise it’s going to be back-breaking fun.
Thanks for listening, and I wish everyone a fantastic 2011.
Posted in The Tungle Way
9 Comments
Guest Post from Matthew Kopjak: Why Tungle is good for Startups
FindTheBest.com Business Development Associate Matt Kopjak is a young entrepreneur who spent his college days coming up with new venture ideas when he wasn’t studying Economics or Accounting. Matt is living in Santa Barbara California and has previously interned at Merrill Lynch in Global Wealth Management and E/W Capital Group, a boutique Investment Banking firm.
Startup life requires long hours, tough decisions and lots of time management. The last thing I want to do is waste time scheduling appointments. Tungle.me takes the stress out of scheduling. Their useful homepage video and charming “Welcome aboard” email makes learning about tungle a breeze.
I work at FindTheBest.com, a Santa Barbara, CA startup focused on bringing structure to the web. Like all startups, we’re bootstrapped for time, money and just about everything in between. We use Skype, Gmail and multiple interns to help us cut costs and increase production. I’m used to using other scheduling tools like Outlook, however, Tungle.me alleviates stress and saves time by allowing us to schedule internal company meetings or outside events in a matter of minutes. And the 30 day free trial period of premium features gives us a chance to try it out before we invest invaluable resources.
Posted in The Community Speaks
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The New Support is Built by You
Have you checked out the new Support page? There’s now a Tungle.me User Guide to answer all your questions!
But it’s more than a guide. It’s a conversation. We started with your most frequently asked questions. Then we hosted it on the community so that you could be directly involved in its evolution.
How does it work?
Visit the Support page and select one of the categories under the User Guide. Search for your question.
If it’s there, but you want more information, post a comment in that topic. We’ll reply as quickly as possible.
Didn’t find your question? Post it as a new topic and tag it with the category name (“groups” or “sharing”, for example).
We’ll reply and your question will become part of the User Guide for other Tunglers.
As we add or enhance features, we’ll update the guide. Our goal is to make sure you always have easy access to the information you need.
If there’s anything you’d like us to add to the guide, just start posting 
Posted in Using Tungle
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5 Common Email Blunders to Look Out For
It should go without saying: coherency is key. But again and again, we’re missing the mark when it comes to emails. It happens. You feel rushed, you want to reply quickly, too many thoughts are happening at once…
A good habit is proofreading before sending – the e-equivalent of thinking before speaking. When you do, look for these 5 common email blunders:
Ambiguous or Lengthy Subject Lines
Not good: Revisions
Not good: My comments regarding the document received from Bill last week
Good: Acme proposal revisions
TMI (Too much information)
Not deep dark secrets (though you should probably keep those out too), but unnecessary info. The stuff that leaves recipients wading through the muck to get to the core.
Good: We would like green headers.
Not good: We want something consistent with our branding that looks good with the surrounding colors, fonts, etc., so after much deliberation we’ve decided to go with green and would like this to be the color used for the headers.
TMI.
No Contact Info
This should be obvious, but it keeps popping up. If you’re asking someone to call you, include your phone number.
On a related note, some people might not immediately look at your signature. If your phone number is there, include a note like, “please use the number in my signature.”
Missing CTA (call to action)
What do you want your recipients to do? Is this just an fyi, or is there an action to take? Clarify.
Too many people
Does everyone on the list need to receive it? Pass on some email karma by helping others keep their inboxes clear.
Also make use of BCC. Anyone who only needs to receive it as an fyi, and can be spared the reply-alls, put in BCC.
When working with a group, or even one-on-one, but across company boundaries, coherency is key to getting things done.
Posted in Productivity & Time Management
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Taking a Thanksgiving Break? Don’t Forget to Tungle it!
What do turkey, thanks and Tungle have in common? Not just that they all start with T. They’re also important parts of the coming holiday weekend.
Many of you are planning a few extra days off for Thanksgiving. And no one wants a conference call booked right in the middle of turkey day.
Take a minute to block off your holiday time in Tungle, and you can let the tryptophan coma take over, worry-free.
Here’s how:
- Sign in and click the ‘Availability’ icon on the left
- Select ‘Daily Exceptions’
- Scroll to the days you’ll be gorging on green bean casserole and yams
- Paint over the times you’ll be busy / napping in the lazy boy
- Save
People visiting your page will have no idea you’re spending Monday morning in your feetie pajamas watching Die Hard. They just see that you’re not available for meetings.
Posted in Using Tungle
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