CD Han

Alright! Holidays all over and it is time to get serious with work. Just when you take out a full A4 size personal planner to jot down events and appointments, you noticed that there is something wrong in this picture.

Pens and papers in the 21st century? You got to be kidding me! Use smartphones for a change. On this month soft approach, PIM (Personal Information Manager) will be looked into. PIM functions pretty much like an organizer with more bling-bling incorporated into it. One can key in personal notes, addresses, task lists, significant calendar dates (birthdays, anniversaries, appointments or meeting), send email, instant message, fax communications, voicemail, project management features and even RSS/Atom feeds. Pretty neat huh?

If you have a Symbian phone, AquaCalender by Pocket Torch should be enlisted into your shopping basket. This software cover platforms S60, S80 and UIQ, that’s almost every Symbian platform.

What is so great about this AquaCalender compare to the organizer pre-installed in your mobile devices? The answer – sumptuous. Contacts, calendar, tasks, messages and even reminders are easy to look at and data can be accessed quickly.

The software provides T9 search and company field search which I find it very useful as I do not have a superb memory, especially names. Display options are extravagant, there are today view with tasks and messages, hour day and week view, month with details and four month view, period view, scalable fonts and zooming.

What makes AquaCalender a standout is the customization functions. One can make changes on color, icons, fonts and etc. Even Hotkeys can be created to gain quick access to frequent use information. If you are dealing with repetitive routines, the ability to create templates in this software can really help speed up your work.

All in all, functions mentioned above are just tip of the iceberg. One really has to experience it to appreciate its value. For more information, visit http://www.pockettorch.net/. The software is priced at USD19.95 for S60 and UIQ platforms. As for S80 platform, you will have to shell out USD24.95.

If you are using Windows Mobile smartphone, get acquainted with the Papyrus 1.3 by SBSH. This software can manage one’s busy life by providing a robust time management solution. Same as the AquaCalender, Papyrus 1.3 offers plenty of viewing options, ranging from daily view to task view.

My personal favourite will be the grid view as all important tasks, appointments or meetings in a week are shown in detail. But if you have a generous landscape screen on your smartphone, congratulations! Papyrus 1.3 will take advantage of that and upon switching to monthly view; you got a bird’s view on all the events that month.

Another special function offered in this software is its capability to filter one or more categories. For example if you decided to take a day off then filtering out all job-related schedules and tasks would be great while keeping the leisure, entertainment and family slots active.

It can be downloaded from http://www.sbsh.net/ for USD17.95 and to my surprise, it is also available in S60 platform. Just make sure you choose the correct category during download. Smartphones for Windows Mobile platform while Symbian 60 software option is meant for series 60, 3rd edition.

If you already gotten yourself Papyrus, then I would recommend Facade to go along with it. Develop under the same company - SBSH, Facade as the name suggest is the face of your PIM. It is a highly customizable tab-based Home screen plug-in for Smartphone devices (Window Mobiles Platform).

With Facade, you can view your upcoming appointments and tasks directly on your Smartphone Home screen, keeping you up to date on all your important appointments and tasks. The cool thing about Facade is that it comes with a launcher tab incorporating battery, memory and storage card skin-able meters for tracking smartphone system status. Though I doubt the usefulness and functionality of these meters but eye-candy won’t hurt. Well, sometimes phone is all about style! More information is available at http://www.sbsh.net/. The price for this face lift, USD14.95.

He cannot afford a sexy personal assistant so he will just have to make to do these software. Please send him a free secretary at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it