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"This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.  The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.\nName: Tungle\nQuick Pitch: Tungle is a calendar accelerator that makes it easier to schedule meetings across organizations, calendar systems, and time zones.\tGenius Idea: Scheduling meetings and keeping abreast of people's availability is increasingly difficult as offices become more virtual and communication becomes more location-agnostic. Tungle is a great way to schedule or propose meeting times and to stay on top of your meetings and activities.Tungle's biggest asset is that it integrates seamlessly with Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal for Mac OS X and Entourage for Mac. Support for Lotus Notes is coming soon.\nTungle basically hooks into your existing calendar and keeps track of when you are busy and when you are free. That way, if someone wants to propose a meeting time to you, they can instantly select times that they know you aren't busy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\nAlthough signing up for a Tungle account certainly makes it easier to see who is available when and for what, you can invite or schedule meetings with people that don't have Tungle accounts easily. Those users get an e-mail with either a meeting date or a selection of times, confirm or select what time they can attend, and then both parties receive reminders before the meeting takes place.  As a Tungle user, that meeting is automatically updated to the calendar you have synced with Tungle.\nIf you set-up the Tungle.me service, you can offer up your available/busy times to outsiders, so they can see what is going on and schedule a meeting with you. The best part is, the details of your meetings are never revealed, it just shows that you are busy if you choose to make your availability information public.\nTungle also has a Facebook application and can integrate with Ning, Xing and LinkedIn.\t\nTungle for iPhone\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\nWhen I first played around with Tungle back in May, I was impressed. The latest Tungle addition \u2014 Tungle for iPhone (iTunes link) \u2014 really takes Tungle to a new level. \tYou can schedule meetings with contacts, view your contacts availability times as an overlay on your own calendar and easily see reminders for your meetings at a glance. The app is free and is a really nice addition to the Tungle service.\nIf you find yourself scheduling lots of meetings with people in or out of your network and often with different time zones, Tungle is definitely worth a try. It makes scheduling and managing meetings easy and it fits into your existing calendar workflow.\t\nSpark of Genius Series Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark\nBizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.\nEntrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the \"new CloudApp()\" contest - use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).\u201D"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/09/28/tungle/>