Fantastical – A Natural Language Calendar App

At the beginning of 2015 we (not so boldly) predicted that this was the year that we would see applications that use a more natural interface such as speech and pen input.  Here is one cool new program that could guide our CCMS development plans.

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On March 25, 2015 Wired.com posted an article: “Fantastical2 is a Crazy – Powerful Calendar App for your Mac”.  Well I am a sucker for a good headline and so I checked out the article.  They note that the app is different than most Mac programs in that it uses a full screen interface but that it is “laid out similarly to most calendar apps you’ve seen”.  So no surprise there.

But the article continues that it is the user interface that makes the program powerful by being able to enter simple interactions such as “Check-in with Joe at 2” and it schedules it.  And, Fantastical has a “language-recognition tool”.  For example just saying “‘alert 15’ at the end of your event title, you can program it to tell you 15 minutes ahead of your meeting to, you know, leave for your meeting”.

So how great would it be for the CCMS scheduling section to be able to interact with the judge in the courtroom by voice?  The judge could ask something like “schedule the next hearing for this case two weeks from today” and the program would ideally respond.  It now sounds like this is possible and therefore, it is worthwhile thinking about this technology in our future plans.

Fantastical's home website is: https://flexibits.com/fantastical-iphone 

Last, another more detailed review article on Fantastical 2 forthe iPhone was published in MacWorld.