Agenda Today's 7-day agenda manager
The Agenda Today 7-day agenda manager corrects a glaring deficiency in the Pocket Outlook Calendar. In the Pocket Outlook Calendar, the standard week view does nothing but display blocks of time for appointments, forcing you to change views to see any specific information. I really hated this setup on the Palm-sized PC and had hoped that Microsoft would address this problem in the Pocket PC. Unfortunately, they did not, and the job was passed to third party developers.

Well, just as is the case with most "killer apps," Developer One designed the week view the way it should have been done in the first place. Just take a look at the difference for yourself. In Figure A, you see it done the old way.

FIGURE A


The Pocket Outlook Calendar does nothing but display blocks of time for appointments. Roll over picture for a larger image.

In Figure B, you see Agenda Today's far more informative display.

FIGURE B


Agenda Today delivers a week view as it should be. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Display buttons
The screen is broken into seven boxes: six small overview boxes and one large box for a more comprehensive display. Each box has the day and date clearly displayed in the bottom right corner. Simply tapping on this icon allows you to view that particular day in the large box.

Most of the display buttons are very familiar. For the most part, the navigation buttons are the same as their Pocket Outlook counterparts, which makes for a short learning curve. The Outlook icons at the bottom left hand corner of the screen seem very self-explanatory. Tapping the Calendar and Task icons takes you to those respective programs. The hammer and funnel icons also have fairly intuitive meanings. The hammer leads to the Tools menu, and the funnel leads to the Categories menu pictured in Figure C.

FIGURE C


The funnel icon opens the Categories menu. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Drag and drop functionality
This is where we uncover the first of some very creative and useful surprises. By tapping and dragging the Task icon, you can easily create a new Task on any day displayed. Just drop the task icon on the appropriate day and fill in the heading, as shown in Figure D. Pretty cool, huh?

FIGURE D


Drag and drop the Task icon to create a new Task Roll over picture for a larger image.

Tapping and dragging the Calendar icon does the same thing, the only difference being that you can also set the general time range of the appointment with the drag and drop method. Just move the icon back and forth in the top half of the chosen day box to set the start time and in the bottom half for the ending time. This is demonstrated in Figure E.

FIGURE E


Drag and drop the Calendar icon to set an appointment. Roll over picture for a larger image.

If you need to move an appointment or task, you can just drag and drop it to another day. I found these features to be very inventive on the part of Developer One. The only problem I encountered in this process was a slight slowdown when tapping the OK button after entering new information. This is a very small thing, but I hope to see faster performance in later versions.