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Here at TimeBridge, we’re thrilled to have a panel that’s being considered for the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. The panel is called “Improved Efficiency: Making Your Office More Web 2.0 App-etizing” and will will address how Web 2.0 tools are replacing the formerly Microsoft-monopolized modern workplace and bridging the gap between traditional applications and the efficiency needed from everyday applications.

Please make sure to vote for our panel here!

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Over the past few months, we’ve been excited to see growth in the number of users (now more than 70,000!) as well as the increasing variety of user groups emerging, all embracing TimeBridge for its efficiency and simplicity in scheduling. It’s come as no surprise, then, that many of our users are educators.

Besides keeping strict class schedules, educators must also carve out time for students and fellow faculty and the task of finding mutually convenient meeting times can be a frustrating process. With hectic days and small budgets, an increasing number of educators are turning to the cost and time efficient Web 2.0 offerings such as TimeBridge, Twitter and Remember the Milk to coordinate their busy schedules and get other things done efficiently.

For one of the users out there in the educational system, teacher-blogger, Vicki Davis of Camilla, Georgia, TimeBridge has proved instrumental in some large educational endeavors beyond the basic day-to-day scheduling.
Vicki, who teaches 8th-12th graders is the founder of the Horizon Project which aims to bring students together from classrooms all over the world for discussion and research in a global forum. One challenge that arose in the beginnings of the project was finding a time when all of the participating teachers from time zones like Australia, Qatar and Bangladesh, could make plans for the project. The dilemma of scheduling across time zones is what led Vicki to introduce TimeBridge as a collaborative tool.
“These projects would really not be possible without TimeBridge because we would not be able to get together to plan and strategize,” says Vicki.

For Dustin Brentlinger, Dean of Students at Heidelberg College in Ohio, meetings with students are a common part of his day. Coordinating these meetings were often a challenge by email and phone with students who often forgot or ignored his calls and emails. According to Dustin, TimeBridge allows him to better communicate and coordinate with students who are more comfortable communicating digitally.
We’re very excited that TimeBridge is finding such use in the educational sector and hope that more teachers be able to find ease in managing their often complicated and intricate schedules.
 

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When we first conceived the idea for TimeBridge, our focus was on finding ways to use the latest the web offered to make people’s daily lives easier. We thought “busy professionals” would definitely get the most value and would be the highest volume users, but didn’t define it much further than that. But since we launched the product about six months ago, it’s been fascinating to see how diverse our user base has become. We have seen a number of groups adapting TimeBridge quicker than others, including the usual suspects like sales and marketing pros, but one that has risen up quite unexpectedly is religious leaders–specifically pastors!

Over the past few months we’ve seen lots of excitement around the value TimeBridge is delivering to parishioners and community members. Bob Hyatt, the author of PastorHacks, mentioned back in January that he was trying online scheduling tools to ease the process of organizing Elder meetings and blogged recently about how he is using TimeBridge. Bob particularly liked the calendar integration:

“TimeBridge syncs with Google Calendar, so- when I suggested some proposed times for our next Elder shindig, within minutes, those times automatically got blocked out and labeled (tentative) on my iCal. Pretty dang slick.”

Bob was actually turned onto TimeBridge by another minister blogger, Bill Reichart, author of Ministry Best Practices. Bill likes our price tag: “It’s a simple, free service that helps people set up meetings. It acts like a personal scheduling assistant (something I don’t have in my church budget to pay for!)”

Bill’s post on Ministry Best Practices also turned Corry Miller of the Church Communications Pro blog into a believer (pardon the pun).It’s no surprise that scheduling is a problem for clergymen, and Pastor Andy Arnold discusses the need for a solution like TimeBridge on his blog, Pastor Andy’s Ponderings.

We’ve even seen the pastoral conversation about TimeBridge taken beyond blogs—Pastor John Owen Butler tweeted about how he uses it to schedule pastoral visits.  Who knew that pastors were so cutting edge?

These high-tech pastors are really onto something. Scheduling has become a nightmare for virtually everyone, not just regular office folk; and we’re excited that people are really embracing what TimeBridge is all about. Hallelujah!

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Today is a big day for TimeBridge – we’re announcing that we now have over 50,000 users (since we launched in December 2007), with more than 6,000 companies represented. I am really excited to see this kind of momentum and see our vision of TimeBridge making life so much easier for so many busy people coming to fruition. To think that TimeBridge was just an idea not so long ago… very satisfying!

As more and more busy professionals turn to TimeBridge to make scheduling meetings easier, we’ve seen it start to spread virally within organizations and become a company wide standard for coordinating calendars and bringing people together.

We’ve noticed that TimeBridge is particularly useful for small businesses who don’t want to spend a ton of cash (or headache) on Microsoft Exchange or any other heavyweight solutions which may not even be really necessary, and it allows their employees to use a Mac or a Windows PC or whatever they like and still be able to schedule effective with each other.

One example we talk about in today’s announcement is Apogee Search, an Austin-based search-marketing firm. What was once a significant time drain and source of frustration for Apogee is now a problem of the past thanks to TimeBridge’s Outlook- and Google integrated scheduling application. Apogee Search’s director of client services likes TimeBridge so much in fact, he has started using it with his friends and family outside work!

After analyzing our user data, we have found that nearly half of new TimeBridge users are individuals at companies like Apogee Search. Atlantic Research Group, a clinical research management company, and FastPivot, an e-commerce design agency, are two other small businesses that had similar scheduling issues as Apogee and have since solved them by making TimeBridge a standard, companywide solution. This is but a small set of the kind of activity and adoption we’re seeing from our user base, but thought they were good examples to showcase how people and businesses are embracing what TimeBridge is all about.

If you want to get your company started on TimeBridge give us a call: (866) 585-5104 or email mybusiness@timebridge.com

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You might have noticed that we’re hiring here at TimeBridge - check out our careers page! To help us fill these positions, I have engaged a couple of recruiters. The scheduling process to interview candidates has always been a pain, especially with multiple candidates for multiple openings, but TimeBridge has enabled us to make it extremely simple. After I review the resumes from the recruiters, the next step is often a phone screen. All the recruiter has to do is look at my personal availability link, give the candidate a choice of times when I’m available, and shoot me back an email to confirm. No back and forth, no long email negotiation to find a time that works for both of us – it’s great!

If you have a situation where our service has simplified your life, post a comment to our blog – we’d love to hear how you’re using TimeBridge!

P.S. – if you’re interested in one of these positions, shoot us a resume at jobs@timebridge.com.

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This month Gartner released their “Cool Vendors in the High-Performance Workplace, 2008” report, and TimeBridge is part of the cool crowd.

The report lists vendors Gartner analysts have chosen for being able to provide a way of engaging the right people in the right places in the right ways at the right times, which is exactly what TimeBridge is all about. We just want to make it as simple as possible to get people together at the best and easiest time for everyone.

Brian Prentice, the Gartner analyst who included TimeBridge in the report says: “Anyone who either keeps an electronic diary or deals with someone who does and who currently has to, or maybe some day might have to arrange meetings with people outside their network has a vested interest in seeing the frustrating lack of integration between calendaring and scheduling systems resolved.”

I couldn’t agree more, and TimeBridge is here to help.

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Didn’t think scheduling could get any easier?

Well it did.

Today we announced two new features in our Personal Scheduling Manager that aim to further simplify the hassle that goes into scheduling a meeting.

First, TimeBridge now let you share your calendar publicly through a personal availability link or badge.

If you wonder how busy (or free) I am here is my badge, feel free to click on it:

What is this?

We have found that people are open to sharing their availability and would like to publish it publicly to help them coordinate and schedule meetings more easily. The TimeBridge public availability link or badge can be posted anywhere online including on a blog, Facebook page or email signature. Each link is unique and fully customizable, so get your personalized link now before somebody else does!

Not sure where you will be at the time of your meeting? Home? Office? Mobile? No worries… with just one click of a button our new free-conference calling system will create a unique bridge number right then and there. It’s fully integrated with the TimeBridge meeting invite you’re already familiar with, and populates itself in every TimeBridge communication and calendar item for that meeting. The days of scrambling for a dial-in right before your call are over. No credit card or signup is required.

Finally, we announced that TimeBridge is now a member of the Google Enterprise Professional Program. Google Apps users can now use TimeBridge to help schedule meetings with the Personal Scheduling Manager integrated directly into the suite of Google applications.

Since our launch in September, we are excited and proud to say that TimeBridge has now grown to 20,000 users! We’d like to thank all of the TimeBridge users and encourage you to tell your friends and colleagues about how TimeBridge finally makes scheduling easy – with free-conference calls, of course!

If you have not signed up yet - it is easy! Just click here.

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Kevin Tofel of PC World is loving TimeBridge. Yesterday, he published a great review of the Personal Scheduling Manager, and says, “TimeBridge is an effective meeting scheduler for people who don’t work in Microsoft-centric organizations–and for those who do.”

Kevin touches on an interesting topic: even though Microsoft users within the same organization have access to others’ free/busy information, TimeBridge still makes the scheduling process easier and more efficient than any Outlook calendaring tool. We’ve worked hard to identify where existing scheduling features (or lack thereof) in Outlook and other calendaring programs fall short, no matter whether they are being used within or outside and organization. As Kevin noted, there’s far more to it than just seeing your colleagues’ availability then sending an invite, and TimeBridge helps busy people through that complex process, painlessly.

Even more interesting, Kevin continues and says “TimeBridge lets a meeting organizer operate almost in “fire and forget” mode”. I am very happy to see him make that point, because it is core to our value proposition. TimeBridge allows you to offload all the mental stress related to scheduling meetings knowing that notifications will be sent if anything requires attention - whether related to a non-responsive attendee or to a conflict. We are trying to make TimeBridge into your very own personal assistant doing your meetings for you, driving stress-free productivity.

If you haven’t done so yet, try it here.

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Happy New Year! If you found returning to your office after a little R&R over the holiday season a bit hectic, we understand. Now that 2008 is here it seems like there are even more goals to meet, projects to kick-off, and friends to catch up with. Life is getting chaotic again! 

If you’re looking for ways to get more done in ’08, join our webcast this Friday to lean how TimeBridge can help save you time. This 30-minute “TimeBridge 101” webcast will quickly teach you how to: 

*  Save time with one-step scheduling by eliminating the e-mail back-and-forth associated with getting busy people together

*  Integrate TimeBridge with your existing Outlook or Google Calendar

*  Exchange your calendar availability across companies and calendaring systems

*  Save time scheduling both large and small meetings

*  Use tips and tricks that will make scheduling faster and easier 

It’s the perfect way to learn about TimeBridge. Hope you can join us! Space is limited so click here to register now.      

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Today we announced the general availability of TimeBridge – we are officially out of beta! We’d like to thank all of our beta users that gave us great feedback and suggestions. While we spent a lot of time breaking down the complex scheduling process to build a great product, putting the final touches on TimeBridge was a collaborative effort between us and the people using it everyday, and your feedback has been invaluable.

We also recently hit a big milestone and reached 11,000 12,000 users since our launch in September of this year. This growth is a testament to the fact that scheduling really is a mess and people want a good solution to this problem. While we believe we’ve solved the scheduling problem with TimeBridge, we are continuously working to make it as valuable and simple as possible, and we look forward to unveiling some new functionality and compatibilities in the next few months. We think you’ll like them.

In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming… we are really listening!

And now get that meeting nailed… 

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