Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Blurring the lines between online and offline
byScybe is the new kid on the block for productivity tools, but offers a twist many have been clamoring for. You can use it offline as well as online. Built using Flash and currently providing only a calendar and task list, Scrybe works pretty well. Normally applications like this don’t interest me much because I’ve never been much of a slave to my calendar (plus the lack of attention makes to-do lists laughable in my case). Scrybe, on the other hand, is just interesting enough that I want to see what else is in store.
Sites built using Flash always worry me, but Flash can make a good option when building applications and it’s used very nicely in this case. You get all the zooming, sliding and fancy UI tricks to make the eye-candy crowd go “Oooooo” while still having something that works nice for the rest of us. Adding events to the calendar was very easy. Just type in “Meeting with blog team at 10am” and there you go. Once entered, you can set all your options for recurrence and reminders if you want.
The first thing that stuck out to me was the fact that there was no way to access my information other than being in Scrybe itself. After a little clicking around, I found the sharing option that is “coming soon.” It looks like iCal, hCal, RSS, SSE and Email will all be options to interact with your data outside of Scrybe. In fact, there is a lot “coming soon” about Scrybe, nearly most of it really. There is an “Upcoming Modules” link which brings you to a page full of empty modules that you can drag around, but there is nothing in them.
Oh yeah, like a lot of things these days, Scrybe is in private beta if you couldn’t tell already. The wait was short for the invite, but if you’re happy using something else, I’d wait until they’ve polished it up a little bit more. You might be impressed with what they’ve done so far (it is very nice to use), but you’ll definitely feel Scrybe is coming up short when you can’t do too much with it yet. In the meantime, hop on over to their site and view the Overview Video on the homepage. By the time it’s over, you’ll probably end up signing up for the beta trial anyway.
