Review: Extreme Agenda

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I have been trying to review Extreme Agenda for Windows Mobile Professional almost since its initial release several months ago. This is a review which, quite frankly, has been giving me fits because it has been so difficult to write. Not because of anything in the program. In fact, as we will discuss, it is really a great program, which I have been eager to write about. The difficulty I have been experiencing is based upon Birdsoft’s insane development schedule. You see, every time I planned to start the review, I would get an email from Birdsoft telling me about the new features to be included in the next upgrade. Since I started reviewing it, they have had something like a dozen upgrades (OK, maybe that was a slight exaggeration), all of them with extremely worthwhile features. I finally found a way to defeat this problem, however, by convincing Birdsoft to give me an advance copy of the next version. As such, this review is based on the upcoming version 3.25.

OVERVIEW

A little history: When I first learned of Extreme Agenda a few months ago, my first thought was that Birdsoft was way behind the curve. Here they were, the newcomer in a world of established giants like Pocket Informant and AgendaFusion/Agenda One. How could they possibly hope to survive? Well, a post on Birdsoft’s blog put their position into a bit better perspective.

Development actually started in 2001 with a student planner called, “The Dog Ate It”. At that point, Birdsoft started investigating development of a full fledged PIM, but just let the idea fizzle. In their words:

I don’t know why I didn’t see it then and just take over the market in its infancy!? It parallels why I sat on a nearly complete Extreme Agenda later on, both mysteries in ‘what was I thinking?’

In June 2003, Birdsoft released Ulti-Planner, but by that time, the newcomer was the latecomer. The PIM wars had begun, and all Birdsoft could do was hope to stay out of the crossfire. Birdsoft tried their best, however, becoming the “cheap” alternative, with no upgrade costs. Even this, however, was too little too late. The real hammer for Ulti-Planner, however, was Windows Mobile 5. At the time, Birdsoft simply did not have the resources to convert it for the new Operating System in time to keep up with the others.

Ulti-planner languished for some time before Birdsoft picked up development again, converting it into a non-touch screen application. Just on the verge of completion, however, development simply stopped. Again, in their words:

Why I didnt just release UP for SP before Papyrus(the only other real SP integrated task and calendar solution) ever came out was a mystery to me. But another top notch developer did see the light around that time(I hope not by seeing my Beta Page??) and released a pretty good product in this gap(Papyrus). Developer One had some ok non-integrated offerings that were the only other real alternative, and I’m sure just an early experiment into the market. Why I didn’t just go for it then is beyond me…

So, it was not until June 2006, well after the market had been established, that Ulti-Planner, now renamed Extreme Agenda, was released for the Smartphone. Finally, in 2007, Extreme Agenda came full circle, landing where it was originally intended in 2003, on the Windows Mobile Professional platform. With this background in mind, we can turn our attention to Extreme Agenda 3.25 (Versions 1 and 2 were not released for touch screen devices.)

The Extreme Spinner: Every PIM application I have used or reviewed lately includes some finger friendly method of jumping between views. They are all nice and easy to use, but none of them are as much fun as the Extreme Spinner. The Spinner consists of eight items, arranged in a circle. Simply grab the one you want and spin it to the red box. From there, you can just tap the icon to jump directly to the selected view.

The best feature of the spinner, however, is that it is fully customizable. Any of the eight items in the default view (Today, Week, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Wallet, Search, and Notes) , can be replaced with:

• one of five additional views (Project, Bar Week, Dates, New Appointment, or New Task)
• Contact
• Application Shortcut
• URL
• Saved View

Heck, even the background colors of the spinner are fully customizable. Right off the bat, this makes Extreme Agenda stand out from the myriad of other (even more established) PIM programs. I have never used another PIM whose view selection contained such limitless possibilities. Usually, you are faced with either a fixed arrangement of buttons, or a menu of buttons from which to choose. The ability to add shortcuts, contacts, and URL’s makes the Extreme Agenda Spinner one of the easiest ways to access information from anywhere on your device. In fact, I found it to be so useful, I have encouraged Birdsoft repeatedly to tweak this spinner and develop it as a standalone Today Screen Plug-In.

Memory: With a few exceptions, Windows Mobile devices offer notoriously poor memory resources. By the time all of the “necessary” items are up and running on my Mogul, for example, I typically have between 15 and 20 MBs of program memory left. As such, every little bit counts, and PIM programs are notoriously memory hungry. When I reviewed Pocket Informant 8 over at Just Another Mobile Monday, I fawned over the fact that Pocket Informant’s memory footprint had dropped from 3.145 MBs to only 2.27 MBs. As such, you can imagine my amazement when I found that Extreme Agenda required only 1.31 MBs of program memory, by far the smallest and lightest PIM program I have ever used.

Integration: Of course, no programs operate in a vacuum. Most of us have a myriad of different programs on our devices, some of which work well together and others do not. One of the most popular and useful programs to come to the Windows Mobile platform lately has been Mobile Shell from Spb Software House. Mobile Shell offered a completely new way to interact with your device. Among other fantastic features, it offered complete integration with a variety of programs, including replacing your device’s reliance upon Pocket Outlook with your selected PIM (as long as it was Pocket Informant or Agenda Fusion/Agenda One). When Mobile Shell 2 was released last month, however, this integration was badly broken. Thus far, there has been no indication from this functionality might be fixed (apparently it requires some action on the part of the PIM developer) This broken functionality has led to a fairly significant uproar over at the Mobile Shell forums. While WebIS and Developer One seemingly sat on their hands, Birdsoft leapt into action, developing a full integration module for Extreme Agenda.

I activated the integration and found that it worked flawlessly. The first thing it does is place all of the Extreme Agenda Views into the Organizer on the Mobile Shell Launcher Panel. Thus, directly from the Launcher Panel, you can access the Extreme Spinner, Calendar, Tasks, Wallet, Contacts, and Projects. You can even create a new appointment or task. Perfect.

More important than that, however, is the integration between Extreme Agenda and the Now Screen Panel. When you use the professional view (or display appointments in the classic view), all of the calendar functions are tied directly into Extreme Agenda, completely replacing Pocket Outlook. I was impressed by how well Extreme Agenda implemented this feature, but I was more impressed by the way they jumped to the front of the pack. Frustrated Mobile Shell users looking to replace Pocket Outlook need search no further than Extreme Agenda for the full integration they so desperately seek.

Views and Interface

Creating New Entries: As much as I enjoyed using Extreme Agenda to keep track of my appointments, tasks, and other personal information, I found creating new entries (appointments and tasks) and editing existing ones to be extremely unappealing. The interface design, which consists of a sequence of text entry fields, each of which jumps to a new screen, clearly betrays this program’s origin as a non-touch screen program. The design and layout of these screens, like other parts of the program, simply never felt like it fit on my Windows Mobile 6 Professional device. I really hope this will be redesigned to be laid out in a more natural fashion, which would fit the design of a touch screen device, while still being accessible to non-touch screen users. Specifically, there is no need to jump between screens. This information should all be contained and entered on the same screen. This is easily accomplished if the program utilizes a single screen, form layout, rather than a list of fields. Of course, this is not to say that the text entry is a complete mess. On the contrary, I really like Extreme Agenda, however, I thought that in order to best compete with some of the bigger programs, these screens could have been easier to use and more intuitive, without switching between multiple screen each time you need to make an entry.

Calendar: Once you have entered your information, it is time to get going. The heart — some might event say the command center — of any PIM is the calendar. The main purpose of these programs is to tell you what you have to do next, and on into the future. In order to replace all of your paper and pencil solutions, they must be able to show a myriad of different views. A good PIM can quickly and easily recreate any organizational structure you might devise (within reason, of course). I felt Extreme Agenda really excelled in this department.

Starting with the full month view, it is easy to look ahead to determine your schedule for long term planning purposes. At a glance, you can easily tell which days have appointments with the timeline in each calendar box. Birthdays and other special events are also denoted with an appropriate icon. Weekends are colored in blue, while the current day is green. This makes it extremely easy to orient yourself.

To see an expanded view of any day, just tap to highlight it. This will bring a list of the days’ events and tasks into the lower third of the screen. Heck, if it will help, you can even choose to show the next month’s calendar in the lower right corner. Double tapping on any date on the calendar will open the single day view.

The single day view shows an expanded view of all of the activities for the day. It is color coded to show whether an item is a special event, holiday, or appointment. The day’s events are arranged chronologically, with all day events at the beginning. This makes it easy to move through your day, while keeping an eye on what is coming up next. The only thing I did not like about this view was that it does not show any empty periods of time, and each appointment or event is the same size. While this makes it easy to fit all or most of the day’s information on a single screen, it also means there is no perspective. You cannot tell at a glance which appointments are longer or how much time there is between appointments. As such, I prefer a single day view which displays the entire day, including empty spaces, broken into 30 minute increments (at a minimum, this should have been an option). In this way, a longer appointment will utilize additional 30 minute increments, making it larger on the screen. Likewise, you can easily tell how much time there is between appointments, so you can plan which errands to run between meetings, or squeeze in some time for lunch. Sure, this display would require you to scroll through the day more, but this is a small tradeoff for the perspective it provides.

Of course, the compromise between the month view and day view is the week view, or seven day view. This is the view I used most often, because it allows you to see far enough into the future, while also giving you a nice overview of each day’s events. Like I said, it is the perfect compromise between the previous two views. The selected day (usually today) will reside on top, utilizing the entire width of the screen. The next six days will then cascade down from there in two columns. The only thing I found was that it can be difficult to scroll from one week to the next in this view. You can use the D-pad, however, this is not an option which will generally occur to a lot of touch screen users. There should be a more obvious on-screen control to jump from one week to the next.

As an alternative, you can also view the week’s events in the bar week view. This will show each day in the week, with a timeline showing which periods of time are scheduled. While I really like this type of view, I found it a little hard to follow. For one thing, while the timeline bars were color coded by the type of activity, they were not color coded by category. Separation of events or coding by category would have made this view significantly more useful. Additionally, while the screen is broken up by day, the days are not subdivided by time. This made it difficult to tell what time of day an appointment in the timeline view was scheduled, or how long it would last. These drawbacks are partially resolved by tapping on any day in this view. Doing so will bring up a dialogue beneath the calendar displaying the day’s events. While this helped, it still defeats the at-a-glance benefit of that this view should provide. The purpose of a seven day bar view should be to quickly identify how much time you are spending on a particular category, project, or activity during the week. This view, while useful in its own right, does not really accomplish this goal.

The final view is the dates view. This will cascade all of your upcoming appointments and events into a single list, which is organized by date. This can be useful to see everything you have coming up over the course of the next few days, however, it was not a view which I found myself using frequently.

Tasks: The task list is probably the area which I used the most, and it is also the area which I felt could have benefited from a slight redesign. While it did fucntion exactly what it was supposed to: displaying my tasks in an organized sequence, I was a bit disappointed by the feel of this screen. It is one of many areas in Extreme Agenda, which I felt betrayed the program’s roots as a non-touch screen program. While I felt it was easy to follow this screen, and the options allow for quite a bit of customization, it simply did not feel at home on a touch screen device. It has the look and feel of an interface designed to be accessed with hardware controls, not a touch screen.

Double tap any task and you will be brought to the expanded view screen. I really did not find much use for this screen, however. Unless you have expanded notes to review, everything that can be done in this screen can also be done through the tap and hold context menu, which I found was much easier to access. Overall, while I found the tasks easy to use and navigate, I felt the interface should be redesigned to make it fit more comfortably on a touch screen device.

Contacts: The third piece of the PIM puzzle are contact, which I felt worked well enough in Extreme Agenda. Like many other areas in this program, it does not display a list of contacts, so much as a number of boxed fields, each of which contains a contact. In this case, unlike the tasks interface, this format seemed to work well for contacts. If there is a photo assigned to the contact, it will be displayed here as well.

Double tap any contact and you will be instantly taken to the expanded view for that specific contact. From here, you can call, email, text message, even IM with the contact. Although I found the interface to be less visually appealing than many address book and contact manager programs, I found the functionality was as good, if not better than any contact manager I have used on my device. It was easy to access the personal information for my contacts and I could quickly reach them in any manner I chose with just the tap of a single button. Many programs do not offer this kind of ease of use, and I really appreciated it in an all-in-one PIM program like Extreme Agenda.

Projects: Of course, while it is great to be able to manage your contacts, appointments and tasks, one of the things I have found in my professional life, is that my events rarely break themselves neatly into such categories. Frequently, I will undertake massive projects which involves numerous meetings, events, tasks, and other items. So, how can you keep this all organized and in one place? That is what Projects are for in Extreme Agenda. Simply create a project and you can link any contacts, appointments, or tasks (or even create sub-projects) within the project. This is a fantastic way of keeping your projects on task and moving in the right direction. And boy won’t that make your boss happy the next time you are up for a performance review or promotion.

Extreme Wallet: I have always thought that Personal Information Manager and Secure Information Manager (wallets) made perfect companions. Really, they both perform similar functions: organizing your important information. Yet, there has always been a wall of separation between the two. As such, I was incredibly pleased to find Birdsoft raising the first hammer and attacking this wall. Extreme Agenda is the only Personal Information Manager of which I am aware that includes a secure wallet component.

In order to access the secure wallet, you will need to enter the password (which you create when you open a new wallet file). From there, you will have access to a myriad of different card templates, including most major credit cards, software registration cards, website and passwords cards, and many more. Each card has entry fields which are specifically tailored to the necessary content.

Compared with some of the other major secure wallet programs, Extreme Wallet may have been lacking some of the bells and whistles such as card backgrounds and intricate graphics, however, I found the basic functions and security to be extremely comparable. Although I initially missed it, I am glad that Birdsoft wrote to tell me that there is a desktop companion which can be downloaded for free by all registered users of Extreme Agenda. You can find it here: http://www.birdsoft.biz/extremewallet.htm. Since I completely missed it on their website, I did not have a chance to fully test it out, but I am sure it is built with the same attention to lightweight full functionality as the rest of the program.

Notes: I have to admit that I have never been one to use my PIM to make notes. If I wanted to write notes on my device, then I would probably use a more robust program like Evernote or PhatNotes. That being said, I found the notes were extremely easy to access and create.

One thing I really liked about the Notes View is that it maintains the file structure on your device, making it easy to locate notes, no matter where you have stored them.

To create a new note, simply give your note a name and then you can select from the myriad of templates. These templates are great because they offer templates for a number of the more common notes you might make, such as phone messages or to do lists. You can even choose a template which allows you to store your notes in MS Word format for transfer to your desktop computer.

Other Features

One of the great things about Extreme Agenda are the numerous “extras” which are included in the package. These features are not required in order to use the main features of the program, however, they can make the program considerably more enjoyable. These include gesture controls, Locate With Google Maps, and Auto Update.

Gesture Controls: One of the biggest features to hit the Pocket PC lately is gesture control. Everyone seems to be getting more finger flicking friendly, and the truth is: I love it.

Extreme Agenda is no exception to this trend. Flick your finger to scroll from one week to the next, change appointment times, even scroll through long lists of contacts and tasks. The best use of gesture controls came in the date and time setting screens for appointments and tasks. Large blocks denote each number in the date or time. Flick your finger up to move forward, and down to move backward. This worked extremely well, and made setting the dates and times of my appointments easy and fun (well, at least more fun than watching paint dry).

Although I really like gesture controls, and I think they fit well with the program, this I do think Birdsoft could focus more on this area to continue to improve the gesture controls. At times, they are inconsistent and did not work well. The same gesture might control different actions on different screens, while different gestures might control the same action. At times it almost seems haphazard and there were some gestures which I was simply fortunate enough to stumble upon. At the same time, the sensitivity of the gestures is also inconsistent. On some screens, a tiny swipe sends things scrolling away, on others, it took a long slow drag to make anything happen. I love the idea of finger gesture controls in this program and Birdsoft is certainly heading in the right direction, however, the implementation is less than adequate. This is one area, however, which I am certain will continue to be improved in future versions of the program.

Locate With Google Maps: You are in a strange city, trying to find you associate’s office. All of the streets are one way in the wrong direction, and you have no idea where you are. You’re ten minutes from the meeting time and completely lost. You could call…but how would that look to your new boss? What to do? I suppose you could just go ahead and slink on home. Kiss that promotion goodbye.

Well, Extreme Agenda offers a new option, Locate With Google Maps. Assuming you have downloaded the free Google Maps application to your device, you can simply tap this button from with your contact card and almost instantly you will be looking at a map of the area, centered on your contact’s address.

This is one of my favorite features of Extreme Agenda, and it is one I have never seen in another PIM program. The only problem is that it works only with contacts. I wish it would work with appointments as well, so that I could find the location of a meeting by simply opening the appointment information. This is a rather small complaint, however, for a feature which simply blew my mind the first time I saw it.

Auto Update: As I mentioned, earlier, Birdsoft might as well be a coding machine. No sooner have I loaded one version, than he is already prepping me for the next update. Fortunately for me, and all users, this minor (but feature packed) upgrades are all free. No only that, they are relatively easy to find an install using the auto update feature.

The hardest part about upgrading, in fact, was simply finding the auto-upgrade feature, which is buried deep within the menus. To access it, go into the options, and then tap Menu again from the options. There, you will find the Check for Updates feature. This really should have been more accessible and easier to find. As much as I enjoy the ease of simply downloading the new update directly from my device, many users will likely never stumble upon it. I hope Birdsoft moves it to a significantly more visible location.

Conclusion: Anytime you look at an industry with an established powerhouse, it is easy to scoff at the apparent newcomer. And I will admit, the first time I saw Extreme Agenda, I expected it to fall well short of my experiences with Pocket Informant and Agenda Fusion. I was wrong…and, frankly, I was impressed. Extreme Agenda is every bit as powerful and feature rich as the most powerful PIM programs, and has the added bonus of the Extreme Spinner and Extreme Wallet, two features which really make this program stand out among the more established competition. Sure, there is room for improvement, but that only means the company will have more great things to come.

What I Like: Extremely feature rich PIM. Includes built in secure wallet. Locate With Google Maps is a real bonus. I love (love) the Extreme Spinner.

What Needs Improvement: Check for Updates is buried in the menus, Gestures are inconsistent and do not work well. Interface has a distinctively non-touch screen feel to it.

Vital Stats:

Name: Extreme Agenda

Version: 3.25 Beta

Developer: Birdsoft

Trial: 10 days

Price: $24.95

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