Have you ever needed to coordinate a conference call, online chat, or Skype session with people in multiple time zones?  It’s a pain to calculate all the local times for everybody, especially with all that stuff related to daylight savings time.  And forget about it if someone wants to change the time!

It’s now so easy to deal with this situation with Presdo.

In the time editor, there’s a new checkbox called “Show local times to guests”.  Take a look:

Turn it on, and it shows you and your guests the local times happening for all guests for the event.

Let’s say you are on the west coast of the US, your friend Harry is in Paris, and Sally is in Hong Kong.  You want to schedule a conference call with them next Tuesday.  Here’s what enabling the checkbox would make the time of the event look like for you:

(6am is early, we know!)  And here’s what it would look like to Harry:

You get the idea!  Presdo shows the local times for you and everyone else involved in this event so you don’t have to do the math, and no one can complain they missed it by one hour!

Local times for guests can only be shown after they have been onto Presdo.  (You’ll see a message if some guests are new.)

So, do your part and invite them to that important meeting of yours using Presdo!

Do you travel?  Need to schedule an event during your trip that’s in another time zone?  Presdo now has much improved support for handling events in different time zones.

Let’s say you’re on the west coast, and you plan to travel to the east coast for a business trip.  You need to schedule a meeting for 10am EST with a business partner on the east coast.

Forget about having to do the math.  Just type “10am EST” when creating the event.  Presdo creates an event with a time of 10am, but the time will be 10am east coast time instead of 10am west coast time.  The event’s time zone is also set to the east coast time zone, which means all exchanges about times with your guest will be interpreted relative to east coast time.

If you are tracking multiple events with Presdo, and you have other events in west coast time and now a new event on east coast time, take a look at your upcoming events page:

See how Presdo keeps track of times in different time zones for you instead of confusingly shifting the times like on some calendars?

Presdo recognizes time zone designators after times, and it works for both US and worldwide time zones, including designators like “GMT+1″.

And there are a couple more ways to set an event’s time zone:

• Pick one from the time editor on the event page.  You can see a list of time zones for all worldwide locations.

• Pick a location for the event.  If the location is in another time zone, the event’s time zone is automatically changed to the time zone at the location.  It’s very cool.

While designators like “EST” are convenient for setting the time zone, they aren’t unique worldwide, so use the other ways if typing the designator isn’t working out for you.

There’s more information in our help on time zone support.

Can it get any easier?  Let us know!

By popular demand, we’ve increased the number of active events per user to 50.  Users have told us they are keeping more and more of their lives on Presdo.  We don’t mind helping out.

The Presdo team has been busy the last few weeks getting new features ready.  Stay tuned for some exciting announcements this Fall.

Here’s a tip for making life easier with Presdo.  Have you ever wanted to convert an email thread to an event invite and include all your friends from the email?  We’ve made it easier to do it, with the new “Add guests” user interface in Presdo.

When creating the event, just pop open the “Add guests” box and add as many names and email addresses into the box as you want.  You can even copy and paste the entire block of email addresses from an email message–names and all–into the box.

Presdo will take care of matching the names to email addresses, no problem.  Can it get any easier?  Check it out!

This week, we are announcing a really great enhancement to Presdo.  It’s now possible to create events within Presdo without a time, at least not at first.  Why is this good, especially when Presdo is all about making time with others?

That’s because some of you told us that you’d like to keep events around to remind yourself to do them later… but that you did not know exactly when later.  We couldn’t agree more with being able to do this.  And we took it even farther.

For example, it’s sometimes better to ask your guests “when” than to pick the time yourself, even though Presdo gives you a lot of flexibility in suggesting multiple times to guests.  If you’re open to meeting someone and it doesn’t matter when, or you know the other parties are busier than you, these are perfect occasions to use the un-timed event feature.  And of course, if you want to keep an un-timed event around for yourself to organize later, that’s fine.  Combined with Presdo’s new status enhancements, you’ll know which events will still need attention.

Here’s how it works.  When you create an event, just make sure the “decide later, ask guests first” option is selected in the WHEN section:

Presdo selects this option automatically if you don’t enter any time information when creating the event.

When your guests receive their invites, they answer “yes” or “no” as before and can optionally enter a time:

They can give a specific date and time, but of course, they could also offer choices like “Thursday or Friday night”.  Those suggestions come back to you, and like before, you decide the final time based on their suggestions.

The un-timed event is a perfect example of “less is more”.  By taking away the need to give a time in advance, it actually makes the product even better.  We think it’s a great enhancement, and we hope you think so too!

–Eric

One of our users recently wrote in to tell us that he didn’t have an easy way to figure out which events still needed replies from guests.  We love reports like this because they tell us how to make the product better to everybody’s benefit.  And we’d like to be responsive to users as much as we can.

So we added an enhancement to the upcoming events page showing status next to each event whenever action is needed.

This status shows you when an event you have created is still in need of one or more replies from guests.  If you created an event and have not sent it out yet–perhaps because you are still figuring out details–Presdo also reminds you that invites still need to be sent out.  Of course, Presdo already reminds guests to reply to an event if they are still undecided on an event.

By the way, if you haven’t checked out the upcoming events page, it’s worth a closer look.  This page shows you all the, well, upcoming events you are a part of, whether created by you or invited to by someone else.  Whenever you have an upcoming event, go to this page by clicking the link in the header at the upper right.

To the user who gave us this feedback and enabled us to improve the product, thank you.  We’d love to hear more such suggestions.  To tell us about the gripe that will makes the most difference to you, tell us here.

You might have noticed that we have been adding many small enhancements to Presdo here and there to smooth the user experience.  The latest is the ability to save events to the calendar of Google Apps.

Any time you click the “Save to Calendar” button on an event, you’ll see a new fifth button, which allows you to save the event to Google Apps.  This function uses the same email address with which you signed up for Presdo to identify you to Google Apps. If you used another email address to sign up for Presdo, you can sign up for Presdo again or just let us know you want your email address on your Presdo account changed.

We received quite a lot of requests for this one, so we hope you find it useful!

Have you ever wanted to let a friend know that you were going to be late for a meeting, but you didn’t have their phone number handy?  How about calling your friend to get the best directions to their new place but realizing you didn’t have their number?  What if you planned an important meeting and somebody hasn’t arrived?

With Presdo’s new phone number feature, you can let friends know where to call you when there’s a problem during events.  You can easily find their phone numbers too.  Here’s how.

Go to your settings page and type in the phone number where you want to be reached.

Presdo takes care of the rest.  When you are invited to an event by someone and agree to attend, they see your phone number when hovering over your name on the event.

Your number is now shared with them anytime they plan another event with you.

Similarly, when you organize an event on Presdo, your phone number is automatically shared with all of your guests.

If you save Presdo events to your calendar, phone numbers are also included in the event details.

Easy enough?  Enter your phone number now.

The next time you organize an event with Presdo, encourage your friends to enter their phone number so you can reach them if needed.

If you want to save your own number into Presdo for future events and haven’t signed up for Presdo yet, it only takes a minute to sign up.

For many of us, a lot of time is spent on the phone talking to other people. Why not use Presdo to schedule these calls? Presdo isn’t just for face-to-face meetings. We’ve recently added an enhancement that makes it easy to schedule phone calls, and to remember where to call.

Take a look:

If you enter the above into Presdo, for example, Presdo will automatically save the phone number into the WHERE field of your event so you and your guest know where to call when the time comes (or who should call who!).

You don’t always have to enter the phone number when first creating the event. If you don’t know the number yet, just enter it later into the same WHERE field of your event.

So, the next time you need to schedule that call to touch base with an old friend or a conference call with a group, check out this feature!

One of the coolest features we don’t often get to talk about is the great way in which Presdo works with locations and events. Every time you create an event, you can save a location so everybody knows where to meet.

The Map link next to the address shows you on Google Maps where it is, and you can get directions too.

It’s very simple to enter a location when creating an event. If you already know it, you can just paste or type it in. Or better, you can also use Presdo’s location picker to recommend a place. When you’re creating or changing an event, just click Or, pick a location in the WHERE area.

You’ll see Presdo’s location picker.

We’d like to share some other tips with you for using it.

• You can change the type of places it shows by typing into the location picker’s Find box. For example, if you are looking for Japanese restaurants, try typing sushi to see nearby Japanese places. Of course, it’s not just limited to restaurants. Try typing AMC Theaters to find a nearby movie theater.

• You can also bookmark favorite areas to search. Click Near… and type a city like San Francisco or a zip code like 90210 to find places near these areas. The location picker will remember them so you can use them next time.

• When getting together with an out-of-touch friend or colleague who may have moved or changed jobs, how many times did you have to ask them, “where are you now”? Presdo makes finding a place near them easy. If your friends are already Presdo users, you can click on their names, like Near Cindy or Near Jake, to find locations near them. So, enter your own location into Presdo to be so invited, and encourage your friends to do so too!

• There’s even a convenient feature that finds locations about the same distance from everybody. Try clicking Near everyone to see what happens. Some people will ask, what happens if you’re in San Francisco and the other person is in New York? You’ll have to try it to see what happens!

–Eric