Tungle.me has launched an interesting new service that uses social networking to make scheduling meetings online much easier. Doing this within the same company isn’t a problem with Microsoft Outlook on an Exchange email system because all employees can see each other’s busy calendar schedules and free times, but it’s a royal pain if you need to do this with someone outside your network. The more people involved with the meeting, the more difficult it becomes to schedule the meeting because of the increased amount of schedules to check. This usually leads to a ton of phone calls and emails circulating until an acceptable time is agreed upon.
There have been other online third party solutions such as TimeBridge, but they normally require you to join their service and you have to install some desktop software and require a fee in order to work. Tungle.Me avoids all of those things, although it is recommended that you install the Microsoft Outlook connector add-on for best results.
Here’s a short screencast of how Tungle.me works. It also includes a cool widget that you can embed on your blog or website.
Note: I’m hoping this service will work with our upcoming accounts, especially for large conventions and events that involve many schedules.