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Pical – iPhone 24 hour calendar plannning

Pical is an iPhone app that uses the 24 hour dial to help you plan your calendar.

Timezones 2048x2048

From the app’s description:

A visual calendar to help focus your day. Calendar events are displayed on a 24h clock dial, representing the entire day. Easily keep track of upcoming events with a time-remaining countdown display in the center of the dial.

Two calendar groups: The dial is split into two rings, so you can prioritize some calendars over others. For example, use the outer one for your own, and the inner one for your family members’ or colleagues’ schedules. Or just keep your work calendar and personal calendar separate.

Visualize time zones: Tap on the current time to pull up a visual display of customized time zones. Easily see what time of day it is for international friends and colleagues.

See when you’re free on any day of the month: A 24h dial is neatly split into four parts: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. In month view, you can see not only on which days you have appointments, but whether you’re free in the morning, or for lunch, or for dinner, on any particular day.

See where new events fit: When you add or edit an event, you’ll be shown when your other events are, so you can plan around them. Set appointment length instantly with our time slider.

A widget you won’t be able to live without: See your entire day on your home page, as soon as you unlock your phone, and how much time you have till your next event. Indispensable information, right at hand.

Link to the US App store

Dayview 2048x2048

As you can see from the screen shots, the execution of this concept is excellent throughout the application.

EventDuration

One interesting thing about this app is that it’s specifically targeted to ADHD sufferers – the app’s full name on the App Store is “PiCal – ADHD Clock + Calendar”. There are a couple of posts on this blog that highlight the utility of the simpler 24 hour design:

I do wonder whether this specific targeting to ADHD, good though it is, may deter others from benefiting from the improved usability of the 24 hour dial. I hope not.

One point to note: the app appears to be a subscription-only app: free to download, and then $3.49 per month, or $25 per year.

Visit Pical for more information.

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The Circa app and watching the Apple Watch

At their recent WorldWide Developers Conference, Apple again showed that they quite like the 24 hour watch face. Again, though, they’re not 100% convinced that the world is ready to tell the time on a 24-hour dial. This is as close as they’re going to get, this year at least:

Wwdc apple solar

It’s their new “solar face”, showing the position of the sun in the sky, (like a good old-fashioned medieval astronomical clock). They’ve also kept a 12-hour dial just to help you switch over to the 24 hour dial.

They already use the less error-prone design on current watches for selecting alarm times (when it’s important not to confuse 12am with 12pm:

IMG 0722

But if you want a more modern display suitable for your modern lifestyle, there’s a new iOS app that brings the 24 hour dial to your phone and your wrist. The app is called Circa, and it’s very well done.

Here’s the iPhone app:

Circa phone face

The coloured rings are the “office hours” for the time zone: you can change the names and hours for each one. You can add more cities easily. Notice the short white bars around the edge: these are the appointments taken automatically from your Calendar (if you give permission, of course!). The developer lives in Kiev, I think!

You can touch and move the single hour hand around, to find exact conversions between local and other time zones. You can also create new calendar events.

The Apple Watch app installs automatically when you install the iPhone app, and it’s more or less equivalent in functionality.

Circa watch face

It also lets you move the hour hand around (with your finger or using the digital crown) to see equivalent times in other zones. You can also add Circa as a complication on the other Apple watch faces.

The developer of Circa is Kostiantyn Zuiev.

(See also an earlier post looking at Alex Komarov’s development of an iPhone app.)