Scrybe - The Online Productivity Suite

We've heard for years that online apps would replace our offline ones, online spreadsheets, email readers, calendars, word processors, photo suites, and music collections. We have gotten closer but one of the big holdups with such apps is what will I do when there is no internet service available. Google Calendar is fine until you need to use it without the internet. That's why Scrybe looks interesting. It would allow you to use your calendar anywhere that has internet access but also allow you to use a perfectly synced offline version when the internet is not accessible. Since I use a laptop on the go and am without internet service in many places this would be ideal. Especially if it synced quietly in the background when I was back online. The video shows a lot of features but we will have to see if it lives up to the hype. Looks good so far.

Scrybe - the online productivity suite I'm dying to try

by Jason Clarke


In this era of worshipping at the temple of "The David" (Getting Things Done), there is no shortage of offline and online productivity suites. With that in mind, I rarely get all that excited about the new Web 2.0 offerings that get a bit of buzz here and there. But Scrybe appears to be different.

Way different.

Like wow different. Here, just watch:



Scrybe is an online organizer that is grounded in one word: context. The user interface is designed to always give the user context relating to the data they are dealing with. So if you're working in your calendar, you can fly up to a year view, or dig down all the way to a day view, and all of the related information is intelligently displayed so that you never lose track of where you are. Watching the video on their site, you immediately get a feeling of "that just makes sense". Google Calendar is good, but doesn't appear to be as good as this.

Before moving on to other features of the online organizer, I should stop for a moment and mention that while Scrybe is an online organizer, it's the first one to support the ability to work with it offline, seamlessly. You simply set your browser to offline mode, and navigate to your Scrybe account the way you would if you were online, and everything works exactly as it does online. As soon as you have an internet connection, your changes will synchronize back to your online account.

The video shows seamless importing of popular document formats like Excel, Word and Acrobat, and can take a list from Excel and turn it into a todo list immediately. Information from within Scrybe can also be exported back out to these popular formats.

The Todo list portion of Scrybe is also grounded in the concept of always maintaining context; a list for a specific project will contain items that are also related to dates, for example, as well as a parent category for Work, Home, or however else you choose to organize your todo lists. Todos can be viewed based on any of these contexts, as well as viewed by the date that reminders have been set for them. Think Backpack on steroids.

There is a note taking component to Scrybe as well, that seems somewhat similar to Google Notebook, but maintains connections to the other portions of the Scrybe organizer, therefore maintaining your frame of reference - yet again, it's about context.

Finally, Scrybe takes an interesting perspective when talking about synchronization: instead of worrying about how to interact with the myriad of devices that are out there, they simply provide intelligent printable templates that can be folded and tucked into your back pocket, so you can take all of the relevant information you need with you for the coming week. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, Scrybe is not yet available to try, but the site proudly proclaims that it will be launching in beta in October. Seeing that October is running out, it should be soon. We've been in contact with one of the co-founders, and understand that Scrybe will be running a closed beta initially. We've been promised a beta account during the closed beta period, so we'll certainly give our feedback when that happens. We'll also make sure to let you all know as soon as the public beta is available. For now, check out the video, and let us know in the comments if we're right to be as excited as we are.