Comunicano

TUNGLE MEETING COORDINATOR NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE 5.4 MILLION iPhone™ USERS

iPhone™ users  can now easily enjoy fast and easy Tungle meeting coordination

MONTREAL,  May 28, 2008 – Tungle, the free business-class meeting co-ordination service that eliminates the wasted time and frustration of scheduling meetings among many busy people, continues to increase its network of users with the release of it new interface for iPhone™ users. Apple has so far sold 5.4 million iPhones worldwide, based on data from the end of Apple's fiscal second quarter, which ended in March.

Tungle is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that empowers users to coordinate meetings with anyone, across platforms – including iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, the BlackBerry and now the iPhone – as well as across organizations, time zones and even individuals not using Tungle. 

“Smart phone users have demanded a rich interface, real-time information and easy access to their busy calendars.” says Marc Gingras, Tungle CEO. “Tungle is a great fit for this audience. Extending our interface to iPhone™ users means they now have a simple to use and powerful tool to coordinate meetings quickly and efficiently anytime, anywhere away from their computer.”

With Tungle’s new iPhone interface, those checking email on their iPhone device can receive a Tungle meeting invitation with a link.  A click on the link launches a browsing session to the Tungle scheduling site formatted for their device.  There, they update their availability.  Once the meeting is booked, they receive a booked meeting confirmation, formatted for their iPhone calendar. 

The Tungle Beta Pilot

A free service, Tungle has been in open beta since April 16, 2008. Anyone who wants to start using Tungle, including the BlackBerry service, can simply visit www.tungle.com to download. The recently launched Tungle Outlook plug-in takes less than 30 seconds to install. It automatically synchronizes with users’ Outlook address books and calendars, eliminating any configuration or complicated setup. This information is kept secure and locally on the user’s machine, and is not uploaded or shared with anyone else or with Tungle. Its IM-like user interface makes it easy for users to understand and to start using within seconds.

About Tungle
Founded in 2006, Tungle is the company that makes meeting coordination fast and easy. It dramatically reduces the amount of communication required to find a suitable meeting time among many users, allowing anyone to share calendar views of availability without exposing preexisting meetings.  Tungle is the first meeting coordinator to work across organizations, independent of the calendar or groupware system(s) used. Its inherent speed, privacy and native communication with groupware clients makes it an ideal, free alternative for mid and small offices that don’t have the desire or resources to invest in an Exchange or Domino server.  Headquartered in Montreal, Tungle is funded by leading Canadian investors.  For more information, visit www.tungle.com.

Tungle and the Tungle logo are the property of Tungle Corporation. The iPhone and Apple families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Apple Inc.  All other names and brands are the property of their respective holders.

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TUNGLE REVIEWED IN FINANCIAL TIMES

Financial Times writer Paul Taylor has some very nice things to say about Tungle, which he says is his favorite meeting scheduler service. Paul notes that among its many attributes, "Tungle's instant messaging-style user interface makes it easy for users to understand and use straight away." Read the full story.

TUNGLE'S MARC GINGRAS ON ALEC SAUNDERS' SQUAWK BOX

Marc Gingras, CEO of Tungle, spoke today with Alec Saunders about Tungle's meeting scheduling service, now available on BlackBerry. Catch the Squawk Box podcast here.

TUNGLE MEETING COORDINATOR OPTIMIZED FOR BLACKBERRY

The Free, Business-Class Meeting Coordinator Reaches BlackBerry Users,
Making Scheduling Meetings with Busy, On-the-Move Professionals Easier Than Ever

MONTRÉAL–May 20, 2008—Tungle, the free business-class meeting co-ordination service that eliminates the wasted time and frustration of scheduling meetings among many busy people, has released a new version of its plug-in. The newest version of Tungle allows users to easily coordinate meetings for perhaps the very busiest people:  professionals on the go who don’t have time to open their laptops. Owners of BlackBerry® smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM), in addition to notebook and desktop users, can now easily manage and schedule meetings with Tungle.

Tungle is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that empowers users to coordinate meetings with anyone, across platforms—including iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes and now BlackBerry—as well as across organizations, time zones and even with people who are not using Tungle.

With Tungle’s new BlackBerry interface, professionals checking e-mail on their BlackBerry devices can receive Tungle meeting invitations with a link. A click on that link launches a WAP browsing session to the Tungle scheduling site, formatted for their devices’ displays. Once there, users can update their availability. After the meeting is booked, the user will receive a meeting confirmation, formatted for his or her BlackBerry calendar—all without having to open a laptop.

“Road warriors are probably the biggest scheduling challenge,” said Marc Gingras, CEO of Tungle. “They are rarely in front of their computers and are hard to reach when coordinators are trying to fix meeting times. If they carry BlackBerries, they can now quickly and easily respond to Tungle meeting invitations when they are on the go, in a matter of seconds.”

The Tungle Beta Pilot

A free service, Tungle has been in open beta since mid-April. To start using Tungle, including the BlackBerry service, users can visit www.tungle.com to download.  The recently launched Tungle Outlook plug-in takes less than 30 seconds to install. It automatically synchronizes with users’ Outlook address books and calendars, eliminating any configuration or complicated setup. This information is kept secure and locally on the user’s machine, and is not uploaded or shared with anyone else or with Tungle. Its IM-like user interface makes it easy for users to understand and to start using within seconds.

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Tungle and the Tungle logo are the property of Tungle Corporation. All other names and brands are the property of their respective holders.

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

About Tungle

Founded in 2006, Tungle makes meeting coordination fast and easy. It dramatically reduces the amount of communication required to find a suitable meeting time among many users, allowing anyone to share calendar views of availability without exposing preexisting meetings. Tungle works across organizations, independent of the calendar or groupware system(s) used. Its inherent speed, privacy and native communication with groupware clients makes it an ideal, free alternative for mid-and small offices that don’t have the desire or resources to invest in an Exchange or Domino server.  Headquartered in Montréal, Tungle is funded by leading Canadian investors. For more information, visit www.tungle.com.

ARE YOU READY TO TUNGLE? NEW TUNGLE MEETING COORDINATOR ENTERS OPEN BETA

Tungle tames the scheduling jungle by allowing Outlook users to coordinate meetings easily with anyone, even users of iCal, Google Calendar and Lotus Notes

MONTREAL, April 16, 2008 – For anyone who has ever had to face the headache and inefficiencies of scheduling a meeting using Outlook, relief is here.

Tungle, an upstart Montreal-based Web 2.0 software company and DEMOgod award winner, has launched its free beta pilot that eliminates the time drain and frustration of e-mailing back and forth and phone tag to schedule meetings among many busy people.

Tungle is a free service that dynamically allows users to see and share schedule availability without exposing the specific details of their existing appointments.  It’s a big-time timesaver for small business professionals, sales professionals, head hunters, administrators, information workers, meeting planners, project managers and all who need to schedule meetings for themselves, or others.

"Scheduling and coordinating meetings in today’s information-driven world is a huge headache,” said Chris Shipley, chairman of analyst firm Guidewire Group and executive producer of the DEMO conferences. "Tungle meets a genuine market need by fixing a very real and very time-consuming problem. It is a useful and practical tool that will greatly improve productivity for busy professionals.”

What is Tungle?

To make Tungle the scheduling application of choice when it launches on all platforms later this year, the company released today a full-featured solution for Microsoft Outlook users, both with or without Exchange. Microsoft Office, the most widely installed Office Suite, has a commanding installed base of 550 million users around the world.

Using Tungle, Outlook users can now share their free/busy calendars with any other Tungle user, across and between corporations, firewalls and timezones.  Sharing availability is as easy as adding a user to an instant messaging platform.  For small businesses, Tungle can save the pain and cost of installing an Exchange server and existing Exchange users can extend their corporate functionality outside the corporate firewall.

“Sharing free/busy calendars is the first step toward helping users easily coordinate meetings,” said Marc Gingras, CEO and founder of Tungle.  “We have always been amazed at how complicated and costly existing solutions can be.  Tungle brings simplicity and savings to this process.  Our second step was then to leverage the availability of users to build the ultimate scheduling tool.  We call it Tungle Spaces.”

Tungle Spaces is the easiest way to coordinate meetings with anyone, across platforms – including iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, etc. – organizations, time zones and even with people who are not using Tungle. 

Tungle users select and highlight available timeslots in their calendars to share them with meeting invitees on a temporary webpage called the Tungle Space.  As time passes, Tungle automatically updates the organizers’ availability as their calendars fill up, thus eliminating the need for constant e-mail “ping pong” and the likelihood of double booking a meeting.  Meeting invitees access this webpage and can update their availability or book the meeting.

“Our closed beta users have raved about the simplicity of coordinating meetings with Tungle Spaces.  Some have even called it addictive,” said Gingras.  “It takes them five seconds to create the Tungle Space and then they just sit back and let Tungle do the work.  Before they know it, Tungle informs them that the meeting is booked and their calendars are automatically updated.”

Tungle is a full-featured solution. Key features include:

• One-click free/busy calendar sharing within and across organizations, firewalls, and networks
• Tungle Space to coordinate meetings with anyone, non-Tungle users on iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes and any other calendaring platform
• Automatic time zone detection
• Automatic meeting invitations in the groupware format familiar to each invitee
• Create Tungle Spaces with the  availability of colleagues and co-workers pre-populated
• Coordinate meetings between individuals, without taking part in the meeting (i.e., Admin Assistant)
• Full integration with Outlook scheduling tools, including AutoPick Next and Free/Busy view in Outlook scheduling pane
• Update and History tracking
• Tungle Space management
• Multiple e-mail account support
• Latest security and encryption techniques including public key encryption, digital signatures and symmetric encryption algorithms

The Tungle Beta Pilot

“Our goal with the Tungle beta pilot is to make Tungle reflect the unique and slightly different needs that users of each calendaring program have, so we address them when Tungle is made generally available later this year,” said Gingras. “We decided to not limit our beta to a number of users.  Anyone who wants it can get it.  We figured the more people use it, the more feedback we will get to fine-tune our solution for the Google Calendar and MAC platforms.”

How To Start Using Tungle

Available now, the Tungle Outlook plug in takes less than 30 seconds to install (http://www.tungle.com).  It automatically synchronizes with users’ Outlook address books and calendars, eliminating any configuration or complicated setup.  This information is kept secure and locally on the user’s machine; it is not uploaded or shared with anyone else or with Tungle.  Its IM-like user interface makes it easy for users to understand and start coordinating meetings in seconds.

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About Tungle
Founded in 2006, Tungle is the company that makes meeting coordination fast and easy. It reduces the amount of communication required to find a suitable meeting time among many, allowing anyone to share calendar views of availability without exposing preexisting meetings.  Tungle is the first meeting coordinator to work across organizations, independent of the calendar or groupware system(s) used. Its inherent speed, privacy and native communication with groupware clients makes it an ideal, free alternative for small offices that don’t have the desire or resources to invest in an Exchange or Domino server.  Headquartered in Montreal, Tungle is funded by leading Canadian investors.  For more information, visit www.tungle.com.

TUNGLE'S MARC GINGRAS CHATS WITH ALEC SAUNDERS ON SQUAWK BOX

Alec Saunders interviewed Tungle's Marc Gingras on the Squawk Box podcast. Tungle is the Montreal-based Web 2.0 company whose service eliminates the time drain and frustration of setting up meetings among many busy people. Check out Alec and Marc's conversation here.