The problem with most of the whiz-bang AI jibber-jabber we hear about these days, practically speaking, is that it generally tends to be a solution in search of a problem. It’s technology for the sake of technology—something that exists for the very sake of existing and gets thrown at every virtual wall to see what might stick.
The type of tech tool that really makes a difference is the kind that’s carefully crafted from the get-go to solve a real-world pain point and make our lives easier in a specific, tangible way.
The tool I have for you today does exactly that—and it isn’t the first time it’s wowed me and made a very real impact on my life.
This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence . Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!
A smarter way to share schedules
Now, fair warning: If you’ve been following my ramblings for long, the tool we’re talking about today may well sound familiar. That’s because, as I alluded to a second ago, it’s been impressing me and playing a genuine role in my life for many a month now.
➜ But the capability I want to show you is a brand-new feature that just arrived in the app a matter of days ago.
📅 The app is called Agenda Hero . When we’ve chatted about it before , we’ve focused on its ability to take anything you feed into it—screenshots, photos, PDFs, even entire paragraphs of pasted-over text—then extract all the relevant info and turn it into a collection of perfectly formatted events for your preferred calendar.
I use it all the time for that purpose. It’s such a smart time-saver .
⭐ And now, the same service has an equally clever way to create your own custom collections of dates to share with anyone—so they can see what’s coming and optionally add everything there into their own agenda with a couple of quick clicks.
👀 That means instead of sending along a document or PDF or even just an awkward email that everyone else then has to deal with, you can send a fully structured calendar that lets anyone add any or all of the included info into their calendar (or even print it out) with next to no effort—and without having to grant them access to your entire personal calendar.
⌚ The whole thing takes literally a minute or two to start using.
✅ You just sign into the Agenda Hero website using your Google account or any other email address, then click on the option to “Make a new calendar.”
The option to “Make a new calendar” is Agenda Hero’s newest trick.
That’ll take you to a monthlong calendar view where you can type or paste in any event info you want—or, tying into Agenda Hero’s existing powers, drop in a PDF, image, or screenshot to have the event info automatically extracted and formatted for you.
You can type or paste in event info on your own or drop in PDFs and images to have Agenda Hero extract the details for you.
Once you’ve got all your events added, you’ll see ’em in the calendar. And you can click any of ’em to edit or fine-tune it as you see fit.
It’s a ready-to-share calendar, with whatever you’ve added.
You can also click the Customize button toward the top of the screen to change all sorts of stuff about the calendar’s style and appearance—and even add in extra sources of info from an external calendar, if you want (though remember that with the service’s image-extracting power, you can just as easily snap a screenshot of your calendar and let Agenda Hero pick up all the pertinent event info from there).
Agenda Hero has lots of options for customizing and expanding any calendar you create.
Then, where the real magic comes in: Hit the Share button at the top of the screen, and you can share that exact calendar view with anyone else. They will be able to see that series of events—and that series of events alone—and save it, print it, add it all directly into their own regular calendar, or whatever the need may be.
☝️ With Agenda Hero’s free plan, you can share any calendar with up to two other people.
💸 If you pay a couple of bucks a month to upgrade to the service’s Plus plan, that limit bumps up to 250, and you can also create public links for even easier use.
Sharing a calendar is where Agenda Hero’s real magic comes in.
It’s an incredibly simple and powerful way to share multiple events and plans—whether we’re talkin’ travel details, a school or sports team calendar, a series of work-related meetings, or anything else imaginable.
In other words, it actually makes your life easier—and it’s delightfully easy to use, both for you and for anyone you’re sharing with.
That’s the type of tech tool I enjoy and appreciate. And it’s exactly the type of tech tool I actually use in my life—and that I hope you find to be every bit as useful.
Agenda Hero is mostly web-based , meaning it works in any browser and on any device without any downloads required. (You can download the optional Android and iOS apps and desktop Chrome extension , but they’re mostly just to facilitate faster sharing of screenshots and other such info into the service.)
It’s free to use in its base form, with an optional $30-per-year Plus plan that lifts certain limits and unlocks a variety of advanced options.
The service’s privacy policy says no personal calendar data is ever used for any manner of AI training or advertising, nor is it ever shared or sold in any way.
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