While the default iOS calendar on the iPhone is no frills,
new calendar options are appearing in the App Store. Mynd Calendar
is a new free calendar app that recently launched. It’s built by a group of
former Good Technology employees, and it lets you integrate LinkedIn and your
Evernote account.

I’ve been running Mynd on my iPhone 5 for a few weeks now, since Max Wheeler and his development team graciously gave me access to
developer builds.

Inside Mynd

Mynd Calendar is a beautiful and elegant app. The opening
screen makes excellent use of the iPhone’s screen real estate to give you
instant access to calendar scheduling information. Figure A shows the Mynd
Calendar main screen:

Figure A

Mynd Calendar at a glance.

As somebody who utilizes calendar reminders, I
especially like how the main screen shows what’s next on my calendar and how
many events I have remaining before I call it quits for the day.

Tap on Day to get a view of your calendar for the day. The
color and calendar layout are very calming and affirming. Figure B shows the
Day view of the Mynd Calendar:

Figure B

Day view of the Mynd Calendar.

The calendar setup did pull up some old calendar data that I
thought I had long deleted from my personal Gmail account and business Google
Apps accounts. A check of each account couldn’t find the data. It was weird but
far from a showstopper to prevent me using this first generation app.

Tap on List from the main screen and a List view of your
calendar events will appear. The List view (Figure C) is an area where Mynd gets the design
just right, because it’s easy to tap on a List entry and bring up the event. 

Figure C

Mynd List view.

Tap on the plus sign [+] to open the Add Event screen. While the
Add Event screen doesn’t diverge much from the Add Event screen in the default
iOS calendar, it is very easy to enter calendar data into it.

When you open up an event from the Day or List view, you can
edit any of its information. If you want to take advantage of Mynd’s travel
time and alerts, you need to make sure the event has an address. Another
pleasant surprise and super convenient feature is one-tap access to conference
call phone numbers, including access codes.

Travel time

I tried out travel times in Mynd when I went to a trade show. The
the Mynd travel time predictor did a credible job of adjusting real time to
traffic in the Washington, DC, morning commute, but the developer reports it
can take up to a week for the app to learn your commute.

I came across an interesting issue dealing with travel time.
I had a meeting scheduled at a well-known bakery café that’s part of a
national chain. I didn’t have the address input as part of the meeting. Mynd
insisted that the meeting was at different location of the national
chain, not where the meeting was taking place.

Evernote and Mynd

If Evernote plays a role in your workflow, then you’ll be
happy to know that you can link the Mynd app to your Evernote account. Since
I’m a big Evernote user, it was a big draw for me to review this app.

When you link the app to your Evernote account, you have the
option to Attach a Note to the event. Optionally, you can choose a note or
create a note. The Attach Note feature is clean and well laid out. Mynd does
try to present some related notes (Figure D). However, I didn’t find the notes the app
returns to be very related to the given calendar event. Perhaps this is due to how I currently name
my notes. Nonetheless, I could see myself creating new notes using this feature. 

Figure D

Evernote notes available for a Mynd Event.

LinkedIn and Mynd

When you link your LinkedIn account to the Mynd app, you can
see information about other meeting attendees. I began to like this feature
after a round of product briefings and other meetings, because I got a quick
appreciation of being able to access the other attendee’s LinkedIn Profile
directly from Mynd.

Mynd Settings

Settings in the Mynd Calendar app are available from the
gear icon. Here are some of the Settings you can control:

  • Select Calendars
  • Linked Accounts
  • Directions
  • My Places

If you want to take advantage of travel time, make sure to
fill out your important addresses in My Places.

Conclusion

While I consider myself following a rigorous calendar
discipline, to get the most out of Mynd Calendar, you really need to
enter in addresses, contacts, and phone numbers for your
meetings and/or events.

Wheeler told me in an email that Mynd is going to remain
free as an app with a corporate-grade version coming available for purchase.
After flirting with both Tempo Calendar and Sunrise Calendar, I’m now happily using Mynd Calendar and look forward to seeing future
app updates.