Shootout: SmartPhone Information Management

For the shootout this month I thought we should give the SmartPhone fans a little love.  I would probably agree that the SmartPhone market is declining and most of the focus of Windows Mobile is on the Professional side of the house, but it is still hard to beat the size and portability of a good SmartPhone.  With that said the limitations of the SmartPhone interface and the lack of a few features that are normally included in Professional devices means that having a good Personal Information Management (PIM) suite is even more important if you are rocking a BlackJack, Moto Q, or other windows mobile SmartPhone.

This month we will take a look at what makes a good PIM suite, and dive into a few of the better programs out there for helping you to keep your info, schedule, tasks, etc. in order.  The contenders for this round are Extreme Agenda (Birdsoft), Pocket Informant (WebIS), and Agenda One (Developer One).  During this article we will put them through their paces, look at what each of them has to offer, and give you some recommendations on where to put your money.

Personal Information Management was one of the biggest reasons why I jumped on the Windows Mobile interface back before there even was a SmartPhone category.  The features were very rudimentary when compared with what you can do today and the 3rd party software for this was not much better than the included apps.  I quickly outgrew the included applications and found that my new device, with the right software, would allow me to do more with my schedule than I could possibly do on paper or in my head.

Today though there are countless options available from 3rd party vendors, and in Windows Mobile 6 even the included apps are pretty good.  To me though there is no doubt that having a good program that can help me with my schedule and allow me to easily see what I have going on, where I need to be, and what I have to get done is the reason for having a SmartPhone in the first place.  My PIM is usually the first application installed on the device when I get it, and my calendar is the first thing I sync.

The Contenders

For this article we will take a look at what most people consider to the be three best apps out there for PIM functionality:  Birdsoft Extreme Agenda, WebIS Pocket Informant 8, and Developer One Agenda One v2.  There are quite a few other options on the market, but having used these three I can definitely say that they are at the front of the pack in terms of completeness and almost any other category you would want to see.

Birdsoft Extreme Agenda v3.0

Extreme Agenda is one of the newer additions to the SmartPhone PIM arena, and for being the new guy they have certainly done their homework and have put out a very compelling application.  They have even chosen to include a few features that you won’t find bundled with other products.  I’ll get into more about it in the review section but one of the best parts of this app is the inclusion of project functionality.  It is available in the MyTodayScreen store for $24.95 ($19.95 until July 15th) and a free trial is available as well.

WebIS Pocket Informant 8

Pocket Informant by WebIS has been around the longest of the three, and has definitely benefited by having more time in the market to refine it’s functionality and interface.  It is the most polished overall, and WebIS has certainly had a hand in defining the SmartPhone PIM market with its product.  The new version bring some interesting features with it, and the ability to link different parts of the application together makes this a must see.  You can get Pocket Informant from the MyTodayScreen store for $29.95, or you can also get the free trial and see what you think.

Developer One Agenda One

Developer One has been developing PIM products for different platforms for quite a while, and Agenda One is the latest iteration of their efforts.  To build this application they took some of the best parts of their earlier products, refined them, and added requested new features to come up with a very solid offering.  To find out more about this product you can take a look at the review I did for the Pocket PC version a few weeks ago.  Agenda One is available from the MyTodayScreen store for $29.95 and a free trial is also available in the store.

The Criteria

For this article I am going to look at a few of the criteria I would consider to be most important for an application used to help me keep my personal information (contacts, schedule, tasks, and other) straight and make it easier to manage my daily activities.  As always you may find any of these programs to work better for a certain situation than I would, and I can say after using each of them for a while that they are all very good programs and a big part of determining a winner is based on my own preferences.

But… just like in the shootouts of old; there can be only one winner so for each criteria I am going to grade each of the application on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being best in class and 1 representing that this feature needs some serious work.  The criteria I used in evaluating each of the products are:

• Installation: This is your standard ease of installation, installation properties, and space required by each of the contenders. 
• Configuration and Setup:  This is probably the hardest part of the review.  Since each of the applications are dealing with personal information almost every user is going to want to see the information differently.  To grade this section we will look at ease of configuration for the standard installation, and then further look at how easy it is to customize and setup a more individualized experience. 
• Interface Usability and Presentation:  This feature was very important since this is a SmartPhone based review.  The SmartPhone platform does not have as many input option as Professional (Pocket PC) devices do so a clunky interface becomes very irritating quickly and can sometimes mean the difference between an application that I keep and use and one that I won’t even dig into.  Even if the features are great, if I can’t use the application productively it defeats the purpose. 
• Information Accessibility:  This is a measure of how the information is presented and accessed as well as how difficult it is to input and take action on new information entered directly through the device.  Information syncing is also considered here but the majority of this is controlled by Outlook and ActiveSync so differences are hard to gauge
• Quality and Completeness of Included Views:  If you are looking for a PIM app to supplement or replace the existing functionality you are probably looking for something that has better features or nicer views than Pocket Outlook so this is a section that tries to evaluate how the application fares in comparison to Pocket Outlook as well as the other competitors. 
• Application Integration:  This includes both the integration within this application as well as integration with other parts of the operating system and any other apps that would use the functionality provided by the application.  One thing that is important to me is to have a well integrated app suite.  This is one place where having everything provided by the hardware manufacturer provides some value and where I think some other platforms provide a better solution. 

Evaluation

It’s high noon at MyTodayScreen and the contenders are lined up and ready to square off.  Who will come out on top… we’ll find out shortly, but one thing I can guarantee is that all of the contenders brought the heavy artillery for this one.

Installation

Each of the three applications were all available for some sort of trial period which is a good plus, and all of them were full featured trials which will allow you to do your own evaluation if you want.  They also all provided a direct device installation (.cab file) or a setup program you can use to install through ActiveSync.  Each of the three allowed installation directly to the device or to the storage card during installation, but with an application as integral as this one I would definitely install directly to the device if you have the space to use.  Another nice touch was that all competitors  provided was the ability to keep your settings on the phone when uninstalling the application; although the wording was a bit different on them.   Some asked if you wanted to keep your settings and some asked if you wanted to delete them so make sure you read the screen to make sure you get the right outcome.

 

 

 

For this criteria the only thing that really differed between the competitors was how much space each took on the device.  This is not really a good way to determine a winner since each is providing more or less functionality and is using the space differently, but Extreme Agenda definitely outshined the competition here by using the least amount of space (by a wide margin) and as we go on you will see that they made the most of it with the features we will talk about later.

 

Extreme Agenda space needed: 1392kb

 

Agenda One space needed: 2872kb

 

Pocket Informant space needed 3576kb

Criteria Scores:

Extreme Agenda: 5

Agenda One: 4

Pocket Informant: 3

Overall Score after one event

Extreme Agenda: 5

Agenda One: 4

Pocket Informant: 3

 

Configuration and Setup:

Each program installed with a default setup and provided a base configuration to get you up and running quickly.  This is a nice touch as I find that with a program like this I need a week or two before I really know how I want to configure things.  After using each program for a week I set out to try and fit each one into my own method of use.  One thing I will say is that I did not configure each one identically and part of that had to do with the individual programs and how the configurations were setup.  I was a bit surprised by this and at the end of each evaluation I really noticed how much different each one worked.  I attribute most of this to the focus of the individual program and the way in which you accomplish things in each of them.

The out of the box experience is very important here; this one area can make or break a program and no matter how well you can configure the software if the first few times you use it are clunky and not setup well the product can lose its audience quickly. 

Pocket Informant won this hands down.   Whether it is due to them having so much time to refine the product or whether it was because the others didn’t give as much thought to the out of the box experience there was no comparison here.  Pocket Informant starts with a bit more “enabled” by default and many of the features I use were there without having to dig into the configuration at all. 

Agenda One was a distant second, but

Extreme Agenda was not far behind Agenda One. 

For ease of configuration I found Extreme Agenda to be the easiest to setup with only one configuration menu and a selector allowing you to move from section to section for option groups.  Also the options were the relevant and easy to understand no matter where you came from in the application which made it easy to know where I was in the menu system. 

 

As I said in my PPC review for Agenda One there was an avalanche of options in the program (which scored well in the next section) that made configuration a bit difficult until I started a trial and error method of finding what I liked.

 

 

I liked Pocket Informant’s configuration interface the best but the neverending hierarchy that was mostly dependent on where you are in the app left me constantly jumping through menus to get all of my setting configured.  There didn’t seem to be that many options in each section either so I am not sure why they chose to segregate the options so deeply and think it could have won this section easily if they had a shallower hierarchy.

For configuration completeness (or amount of useful options available) I have to give a tie to Agenda One and Pocket Informant.   They both provided a broad set of options for configuring just about anything and everything the programs offered.  Extreme Agenda did not have the multitude of options that the other two did but the options that were there did a fair job of customizing the program to what I was looking to do, and for the other two I found that I didn’t end up changing quite a bit.  Extreme Agenda did seem to have almost everything I wanted to change but was lacking in a couple of areas.

 

 

Pocket Informant also provided a menu option to completely customize any view creating a new view that is stored in the My Views section.  With this option you could completely redo the entire application to look and show exactly what you want from any point.  The only downside was that it added a few more clicks to get to your views.  This is a fair trade-off for the functionality that they offer. 

Criteria Scores:

Pocket Informant: 5

Agenda One: 3

Extreme Agenda: 3

Overall Score after two events

Extreme Agenda: 8

Pocket Informant: 8

Agenda One: 7

 

Interface Usability and Presentation

For this event we are going to see how well each takes advantage of the limitations of the SmartPhone input options and how well each does at presenting the information you need most.  We will also be evaluating how much effort is required by each to complete common tasks. 

Each of the three apps provides what I would call a navigation menu that is accessible from the left softkey.  This is a graphical menu in all cases and provides a way to activate each of the different views and sections contained in the app.  Each one works in a slightly different way but each were very good. 

 

I really liked the Extreme Agenda spinner, and found that when I wasn’t in a specific view that I would leave it on the spinner as a sort of home screen for the app.  The only odd part about their spinner was that there were a couple of views you had to use the softkey to get at (Time Line Week for instance), but the rest of the application was available. 

 

Pocket Informant was a solid second with their interface.  It had a nice 3d look to it and included links to anywhere you might want to go. 

 

Agenda One’s navigation menu did have one thing going for it that I liked which was that you could see the last view behind it, so if you forgot what you were looking for (like the day in question or appt name) you could usually see enough to remind you. 

Navigation for each application was fairly standard with little difference between them and not a whole lot of innovation.  For the most part each app used a master detail to navigate between views if you wanted to stay out of the navigation menu.  The only standout was with Pocket Informant where a click on a day in certain views would automatically bring you to a create menu for adding a new entry.  This is something that I thought would be standard for each so I am not sure if it is strong point of Pocket Informant or a weak point for the others.  In the other application the menu had to be used to create new entries on most all screens.  

In the presentation of the views it is tough to pick one over the others as there were things I liked about each one. 

 

For instance Extreme Agenda had a simpler look to it than the other applications with a bit less clutter which is a huge plus.  There were places where graphical features were hidden if they were not needed (like not showing the day timeline if there was nothing on that day) but the overall polish of the app was not as well done as the others. 

 

Agenda One definitely had the easiest views to read no matter what level you were trying to view.  They seemed to have a good handle on what fonts and text sizes to use in different places to make sure info was readable and complete, but at the expense of sometimes looking cluttered or like there was too much info being crammed into a single view. 

 

Pocket Informant seemed the most familiar right away though as I think they modeled a lot of their presentation after Outlook or other desktop PIM apps so there was no need to try determine what I was looking at and everything made sense at first glance.  The only problem I had here was that a lot of what they were showing was not as important on the phone as it would be at the desktop creating a bit more clutter and things that weren’t legible than I would have liked. 

Extreme Agenda also gets some credit here for their templates for new items.  This was pretty good although for review purposes I only tested the very basics of it.  I am sure to use the program all the time you could really get some mileage out of this feature if you have any kind of recurring tasks or appointments where you only change a very small amount of information. 

 

Criteria Scores:

Pocket Informant: 4

Extreme Agenda: 3

Agenda One: 2

Overall Score after two events

Pocket Informant: 12

Extreme Agenda: 11

Agenda One: 9

 

Information Accessibility

This section is all about how quickly and easily you can get to your information and  what you need to do to get there.  Since the whole reason for carrying your PIM data with you is so that you can get to it when you need it this criteria cannot be overstated. 

Both Pocket Informant and Agenda One provide direct integration (Extreme Agenda might, as well, but I couldn’t find where to apply it) with the OS as a replacement for the Pocket Outlook applications.  Pocket Informant does it by default upon installation, and Agenda One provides a prompt during installation asking if you would like to enable this feature.  That is a huge plus for me as it now allows the phone to access their enhanced views and functionality directly from the softkeys and integrated portions of the OS. 

Since all three provide highly functional navigation menus allowing you to jump around from one view to another relatively easy this section really comes down to the two things I use my phone for most:  Setting and viewing appointments while I am out of the office, and completing tasks and gauging how much I have gotten done and still need to do.  These sorts of things are the basics of mobile PIM applications. 

The first thing any PIM has to have is a search function, and all three provide some level of search for things like appts, tasks, contacts, and notes. 

 

Extreme Agenda, and

 

Agenda One provided a comprehensive search that looked for the search term in all place at once.  This is a good option if your calendar is small or if you have no idea what category you are looking for, but with a large amount of data on your device it did take longer. 

 

Pocket Informant, on the other hand had a selection bar at the top which allows you to search through different categories of data and allowed me to select which of them I wanted to search.  This combined with their journal application made for a very good way to note and retrieve little bits of information I knew I would want later.  Overall the three products seemed to be complete in their results and fairly quick with my middle of the road amount of data. 

For quick glance retrieval of data I found that I liked the way Agenda One did categories and icons the best (once you get them configured).   Pocket Informant could have done an equally good job but their colorful base interface seemed to hide some of the category colors that my data had so I found myself going into the detail record a bit more than I liked.  I never did completely figure out Extreme Agenda’s method of color coding during my two week evaluation but from what I did see they were a bit lacking in the quick glance data section probably because of the simpler interface and lack of configuration options. 

One thing Pocket Informant did throughout most of it’s views was provide a little more data than the rest without completely destroying the interface.  For example, in the contact view the other two showed the Name and main phone number. Pocket Informant showed a bit more data with Company Name, and did a better job of choosing which data to show if the default number was not available.

Criteria Scores:

Pocket Informant: 4

Agenda One: 3

Extreme Agenda: 2

 

Overall Score after three events

Pocket Informant: 16

Extreme Agenda: 13

Agenda One: 12

Quality and Completeness of Included Views

Each of the reviewed application provide a fantastic upgrade to the included Pocket Outlook application, but if you are going to spend money on an upgrade I am looking for something that goes further and does it better.  Each of the apps contained the basics for enhancing and replacing the Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes that come with the device but some of them chose to include other applications that are not originally included like an eWallet application, Journal functionality, Events, and a Timeline. 

 

Pocket Informant added the most functionality and I thought the quality of their views was top notch.  Pocket Informant adds a Journal integration that gives some really nice functionality for managing all of your PIM data and keeping it all grouped for easy access.  The journal allows for filtering and grouping data as well as a weekly planning section for creating missions and goals that can integrate multiple points of data into a logical working group.  This makes it very easy to see how things are related and get to the related items quickly and with very little effort. 

The integration of goals is a very nice feature and a headline piece of functionality for this section.  Each goal can be broken down into steps that can relate to tasks and have contacts and appts related to it. I’ll be honest, during my evaluation I barely scratched the surface of what can be done with this feature but I was very intrigued by the level of functionality this feature provided and how it integrated all the different parts of the application.  Pocket Informant has a real leg up with this feature. 

Pocket Informant also provides a Timeline feature where you can create a view based on a category or group and have a weekly view of what fits into that data.  The timeline view also has composite data for everything that fits into the configured properties.  This feature could be good for seeing the total amount of time spent in meetings for a specific project or the total number of tasks associated with that honey-do list your special someone sticks you with.  That could be good for getting a free Sunday when football season rolls around. 

Pocket Informant also provides a way to track certain events based on groups or categories and have them shown under the events views.

 

 

Extreme Agenda does include an eWallet that the other applications sell as an add on.  It is not as full featured as some of the others but for an included app and free price point it worked fine for everything I wanted to store. 

 

Agenda One did provide some added functionality for linking things and creating groups that fell far short of what is provided by Pocket Informant, and didn’t have a way to handle notes.  I would expect to see them adding more features in the future as the app is only in v2 but at this point I felt it was sorely lacking in when compared to the competition. 

Criteria Scores:

Pocket Informant: 5

Agenda One: 3

Extreme Agenda: 2

 

Overall Score after four events

Pocket Informant: 21

Extreme Agenda: 15

Agenda One: 15

 

Application Integration

To excel at this criteria the integration between different parts of the application and the underlying OS is the key.  Another key is the integration of information between the desktop and device, as well as how that information is shared and accessible from each of the views.  Each of the applications provides the standard syncing between the desktop and the device for things like contacts, appointments, and tasks.  All of that is available from Pocket Outlook so again we are expecting more from our participants. 

 

Extreme Agenda did a good job with the basics but when it came to integration the interface became a little cumbersome.  It did offer the ability to link between different data items, and to create projects that encompass multiple items, but the way this was accomplished was tedious and required creating each thing individually, and assigning it by hand.  When viewing projects and links it was also rather difficult compared to the other choices with no dedicated way to get to the projects and the project list was just a bulleted grouping of your data. 

 

Agenda One took integration to the next level with better grouping and the ability to group things a bit easier, but there were still not a lot of options for viewing projects.  The projects and groups were only used during standard display as a sort of visual cue as to the type or reference the data is used in.  The content linking was much the same and only really provided a way to see different data from a single context or from a different part of the application.  Neither of these were really actionable the way I would expect them to be and the integration was only visible from the device. 

 

Pocket Informant, on the other hand, offered a truly integrated set of features far beyond what you will find in any of the other options or from Pocket Outlook.  When data is assigned to a project or or linked between entries those properties are much more visible both on the specific data items and also from the extra views Pocket Informant provides.  Pocket Informant really understands integration and provides more than just a data viewing application.  Each of their additions are viewable and actionable in a way that will increase productivity for anyone whose personal information needs have outgrown the included programs. 

Criteria Scores:

Pocket Informant: 5

Agenda One  : 3

Extreme Agenda: 2

 

Overall Score after all events

Pocket Informant: 26

Agenda One: 18

Extreme Agenda: 17

Final Take

Although the final scores don’t seem as close as the products are in reality to each other the winner was definitely Pocket Informant.  The latest version of the award winning program from WebIS is definitely head and shoulders above the competition, and for good reason.  They have been at the PIM game for small devices for quite a while and their investment shows. 

The other competitors put up a valiant fight, and even though Pocket Informant is the pick of the group, each of these apps offers an experience that is miles ahead of Pocket Outlook (even in the newest version), and unless you are a PIM junkie like I am you won’t go wrong choosing any of them.  Each program had it’s advantages and disadvantages but the overall winner was clear. 

Birdsoft Extreme Agenda

This is probably the simplest of the three to use and configure with a good out of the box experience, and simple and straightforward configuration options.  It also did a very good job of keeping the interface simple and the data easy to view at a glance.  It was a bit lacking in some areas but I have a feeling it will become a more rounded application in the near future as Birdsoft continues to refine and add to this already fine application.  The #1 feature in my book is the inclusion of the Extreme Wallet section and can easily save you another $10 from the competitors.

It is available in the MyTodayScreen store for $24.95 ($19.95 through July 15th) and a free trial is available as well.

 

Developer One Agenda One

Agenda One has some pretty good roots in PIM apps with other applications Developer One has published through the years, and is a great application for those that have outgrown the included application and are looking for something that can help them take their productivity to the next level.  It doesn’t have all of the features that Pocket Informant does, but it is a solid application and does everything it says very well.  With the right configuration and paired with the right desktop setup this application will suit all but the most demanding of users.   Having only reached version 2 I would certainly expect this program to grow over the next couple of versions and I look for this application to give others in it’s category a real fun for the money in the near future.

Agenda One is available from the MyTodayScreen store for $29.95 and a free trial is also available in the store.

 

WebIS Pocket Informant  (WINNER!!!)

When WebIS says this program is the next generation in information management they really mean it and I have to agree completely.  The inclusion of features the competition doesn’t have and the way information can easily be linked and grouped into actionable nuggets is something even Outlook can’t offer.  Pocket Informant has been around the longest and won countless awards, but the surprising thing is that they haven’t rested on their laurels.  They continue to push the envelope with features you just can’t find anywhere else. 

Once you get past the initial configuration the sky really is the limit for what you can do with this application, and by the end of my evaluation I found myself looking up data on my phone rather than using Outlook (even if I was at my desk) because Outlook just couldn’t give me as good of a presentation as Pocket Informant did.  If your schedule is a mess and you want to take it to the next level to increase your productivity you can’t go wrong with Pocket Informant.

You can get Pocket Informant from the MyTodayScreen store for $29.95, or you can also download the free trial and see what you think.

Recap of the Action

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