Brandon recently did a short post letting us all know that his first iPhone app “ gCalWall “ had been accepted into the App Store. Yesterday, it made its appearance in the store.
Here ‘s a slice of the App Store description on what gCalWall does:
Your Google Calendar + Your Wallpaper = A useful lock screen! gCalWall was designed with simplicity in mind. The app itself is extremely easy to use. Pick your favorite image from your library (or take a new picture on the iPhone). Then once you’ve picked a text color and hit the save button the app goes to Google and pulls down your next 5 calendar events. gCalWall joins the events and the image together, and saves to the image library so you can use the picture on the lock screen. No more turn on, swipe, scroll back three pages, click on calendar, wait while it launches, and then hit the today button just to see your schedule. 7 clicks becomes one. Simple concept – but one which provides enormous benefit all in a small, easy to use package.
A bit of disclosure right up front here “ Brandon and I have been working together on mobile tech web sites for a couple of years now. He ‘s a great web colleague, one of the few ‘online friends ‘ I ‘ve had the pleasure to meet in person, and I count him as a good friend in real life, or whatever silly phrase means not just to trade tweets with.
So “ tons of potential for bias there “ get your grains of salt ready. I will just add though that one of the things I like best about Brandon is he ‘s very straight talking “ as in, he won ‘t just say an idea of mine is possibly not so great, he ‘ll say it is a complete load of shite and should be forgotten about immediately. And I always do my best to be the same way “ and certainly will do here.
Well, now that all that ‘s been said I like gCalWall “ and I really didn ‘t think I would when Brandon first mentioned it, because I ‘m not a heavy calendar user. I ‘m much more of a task-tracking person, and don ‘t tend to have a very full calendar “ as you may have guessed from my goofy little fake calendar entries in the screencap at the top of the post.
I like this concept though, now that I ‘ve had a chance to use it in both beta and final release form. And I can certainly see that if you have a more active calendar than mine, this will be even more useful for you.
The app works just as described, and is just as easy to use as described. When you first launch it, it tells you exactly what you need to to to get started
Once you ‘ve told the app where to find your Google Calendar, you just select a background image, choose your font color if you don ‘t want the default, and hit ‘Save ‘. This will deposit the combined image into your Camera Roll “ so you can just head over to the Photos app and choose to set the new image as your wallpaper.
There ‘s a handy ‘Use Last ‘ button (alongside the choices for snapping a new background image or choosing from your library) “ which is a big timesaver if you ‘re changing your image daily to keep a current view.
My only two wish list items so far for gCalWall “ and I have to hold my hand up and say I did not think of these during beta testing “ are a ‘Move and Resize ‘ option when choosing the background image, as you have in the Photos app, and some options for choosing where text is placed (top, middle, bottom or similar).
The App Store page states that the second of those is already being looked at for future versions. It also stresses “ just so there is no confusion “ that this app works *only* with your Google Calendar “ not with the iPhone ‘s built-in calendar app, or any others.
Just in case anyone is curious, the background image in the top-of-post screencap is called ‘Clavadista ‘, by nomono “ and is from the excellent poolga.com site.
Now my only immediate requirement for getting more mileage out of gCalWall is to have a busier calendar. Perhaps some of you could send me invites (even fake ones, by all means) to some of your appointments “ and I can fool the app into thinking I have a much busier life and / or more friends. 🙂
You can find gCalWall in the App Store now, for $1.99 “ and you might just want to watch out for a contest and promo codes offer here soon too
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS:
