Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, web 2.0

Need to schedule a meeting with a group of people spread out across multiple offices in multiple time zones? When is Good offers a simple web-based interface for scheduling meetings or events.

The organizer just needs to choose a group of times when they are free and enter their email address. When is Good will send you an email with a URL that you can share with other attendees. Each participant will see just the list of times you’ve already flagged as good, and they can highlight the times that work for them. Their responses will be sent back to the organizer, making the process of planning a meeting a lot simpler.

If participants are in different time zones, just click the “use time zones” option when setting up your schedule. And if you visit the page on a mobile device or web browser that doesn’t support Flash, you’ll get a simpler HTML-only page.

[Thanks Keith Harris!]

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Filed under: Law, Marketing and advertising

After taking an initial look at American Apparel (AMEX: APP), I cautioned investors that CEO Dov Charney’s interesting management style — which apparently includes public masturbation, sexual relations with employees, and posing nude for magazines — might present a problem as the company makes the transition from private to public.

Then the company drew some fire for its ad campaign touting immigration reform. I questioned whether it was appropriate for a public company to be using shareholder capital for an ad campaign that advanced the CEO’s political views.

Now the strange saga of American Apparel gets a little more bizarre: Director Woody Allen has sued the company for $10 million, alleging that it used a pic of him dressed as a rabbi on billboard ads without his consent. Check out this post from The Jewish newspaper Daily Forward for more background/funny commentary on the picture choice.

The lawsuit alleges (subscription required) hat “Allen was unaware that AAI was going to utilize his image on its billboard and Web site. Allen was not contacted, nor did he in any way give his consent to the use of his image and likeness, and he was not in any way compensated for the same, either prior to the infringement or thereafter.”

Very interesting. If American Apparel violated Allen’s rights in depicting him in its advertisements, it could be further evidence of the unorthodox — some would state unprofessional — management style of the company. It might also raise additional concerns about American Apparel’s legal counsel and controls.

That stated, the company’s big growth — fourth quarter same store sales growth of 40% — might make the stock worth a look anyway.

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Filed under: Windows Mobile, Productivity, Commercial, Mobile Minute

Text entry on mobile devices has always been a bit of a conundrum. Hardware keyboards take up an awful lot of space on cellphones and PDAs, and they’re kind of hard to use unless you’ve spent some time working out your thumbs. On-screen keyboards usually require a stylus or incredibly small fingers, and require you to poke out the letters one at a time.

While there are a few applications that do a pretty good job of speeding up text entry using predictive text and innovative keyboard layouts, there are plenty of other applications that seem like a good idea until you try them and realize that they really don’t save you much time. We’re not quite ready to throw SlideIt into either camp. But we’re not entirely convinced that you save a ton of time by dragging your stylus across the screen instead of picking it up to move it a fraction of an inch.

The concept is pretty easy. SlideIT presents you with a small on-screen keyboard, and you can make words by dragging the stylus from one letter to the next without picking it up. Theoretically you’ll be able to remember the shapes of words you write frequently, allowing you to draw them faster. For characters that aren’t included on the keyboard, you can use the Graffiti box next to the keyboard. And for long words, SlideIt offers predictive text suggestions.

There’s a free demo available for Windows Mobile 2003 and newer devices. A full license will cost you $40.

[via MobilitySite]

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