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"Your calendar is about to get a lot smarter. Tempo, a new context-aware calendar for the iPhone,  uses technology from SRI, the same company that created Siri. Tempo takes your run-of-the-mill calendar and makes it smarter, applying artificial intelligence to your entries to make them more detailed and much more useful.\n\u201CThe calendar is where life happens, and Tempo gives people more control over their day by enhancing their calendars in a meaningful way,\u201D says Raj Singh, founder and CEO of Tempo AI.\n\u201CWe've designed the experience to reduce the noise that\u2019s often associated with virtual assistants that push information to users out of context or intent. Tempo surfaces information and actions in your calendar in the context of the people you know, the places you are going, and the information you\u2019ll need.\u201D\nSingh demonstrated Tempo for me recently at SRI, and for the past few weeks, I've been using a beta build of the app. Here's a look at how the app works. \nStay on Schedule\n\nOn a basic level, Tempo works just as your regular calendar does. Similar to iPhone calendar all-star Fantastical, Tempo connects with your existing accounts and displays information about your schedule for the day in either a calendar or list view.\nEach entry provides the name and location of the event. Conference call-style meetings list the dial-in number. When done correctly, Tempo makes entering the passcode for those calls easier, by allowing you to input a series of numbers with just a single tap.\nConference calls with the app, however, were particularly maddening for me. I regularly virtually attend \u2014 via a conference call \u2014 a meeting held physically in New York City. Because the meeting is in both places, and the calendar entry reflects that, the automatic dialing feature for the conference line doesn't work for those meetings. A first world problem, but a problem nonetheless. \nContact information for each meeting attendee is pulled into Tempo from the contacts in your phone, including LinkedIn information. The LinkedIn information in particular can come in handy if you meet with a number of different people in a day and you want to brush up on someone\u2019s background quickly. \nDig a Little Deeper\nTempo really shines because of how much information it pulls into a particular calendar entry.\nOnce you connect Tempo to your email, the app pulls pertinent messages from your inbox into calendar entries. So if you\u2019re meeting with your VP of sales about your next big launch, all the emails about that launch might be pulled into the calendar entry for easy access.\nTempo can find and bring into your calendar related Word and Excel documents, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs you might have as email attachments, ensuring you have everything you need in the same place.\nIn my time demoing the app, Tempo was able to decipher some of my inbox messages and know what calendar entries were associated. But it was rarely able to pull into calendar entries all the emails I needed for meetings. Over time, as Tempo learned a bit more about me and my habits, that experience might change.\nIf you\u2019re driving to your meeting, Tempo will provide driving directions to your destination and estimated drive time. It'll even tell you where you\u2019re likely to find parking.\nFrom within the app you can also track the status of flights you have scheduled, a definite bonus for people who fly often.\nNeed to find a place to hold your next meeting? The app has built-in Foursquare and Yelp integration to make sure you find the perfect spot \u2014 or to help you learn a bit about a location you\u2019re headed to.\nStuck in Traffic\n\nI was excited about Tempo's ability to quickly tell everyone attending a meeting that I'm going to be late and when I'll arrive.\nAn \"I\u2019m Late\" button on the page for each meeting brings up a list of everyone who has RSVP\u2019d for the event.  From that list you can opt to notify a single recipient or the entire invite list that you\u2019re running behind schedule. \nA follow-up question asks you to specify how delayed you might be (options range from five to 30 minutes). Notifications can be sent via email or text message.\nMileage May Vary\n\nI\u2019ve been using the beta version of the app for the past few weeks, which as one might expect has had a few bumps. The calendar is certainly smarter than any of the alternatives on the market, but at the end of the day, just like Siri, it isn't quite a replacement for a personal assistant\nOverall, the app is an amazing look at the next generation of software, with extras that make it well worth consideration as a replacement for your current mobile calendar.\nAnxious to give it a try? You can download Tempo for free now from the App Store.\nLet us know what you think about the new smart calendar app in the comments.\nMashable composite. Image via iStockphoto, Talaj"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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