Horizon Calendar 2.0 Brings Natural Language Input And Other Major Improvements
April 25, 2013
Horizon Calendar, the app that is both a calendar app and a weather app at the same time, has just received its big 2.0 update.
Released by Applause Code just last February, Horizon Calendar is neither an ordinary calendar app nor a run-of-the-mill weather app.
What makes Horizon Calendar unique is that it fetches the weather data for all of your calendar events within the next couple of weeks. What's more, the weather data fetched are specific to the locations of your events.
Like most other 2.0 updates, Horizon Calendar 2.0 delivers a number of significant improvements.
One of the more notable improvements in Horizon Calendar 2.0 is natural language parsing (NLP) with intelligent lookup. Available for English only, NLP lets you create an event in the app using, well, natural language. And with intelligent lookup, it also lets you quickly enter an event by choosing from the app's relevant autocomplete suggestions.
For example, to add an event for this year's WWDC, you can just enter "WWDC at Moscone West, San Francisco, CA June 10 to 14." Note that Horizon Calendar's intelligent lookup, which is powered by Google, is able to autocomplete the location of the venue.
Another notable improvement in the new version of the app is Check the Weather integration. Provided you have Check the Weather installed, you may tap on a weather icon on the right side of an event cell in the day view to be taken to the full forecast in Check the Weather. Otherwise, doing so just opens the Edit Event screen.
Other enhancements in the new version of the app include:
Optimized for iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 6.0 or later, Horizon Calendar 2.0 is available now in the App Store as a free update or as a new $1.99 download. In her review of the app here on AppAdvice, Christine praised Horizon Calendar for combining two different things and actually doing it well. "However, my biggest pet peeve," she wrote, "is the icon. From the way the icon looks, Horizon Calendar looks to be just another weather app, but it's not. Perhaps if they could integrate something about a calendar, or time even, with weather, it would make a better icon." Well, what do you know — it seems that Applause Code has followed Christine's recommendation. Horizon Calendar 2.0 also introduces a new app icon. Designed by Twitterrific developer The Iconfactory, the new icon does suggest that Horizon Calendar is a calendar app and a weather app in one. [gallery link="file" order="DESC"]
- More weather details. Access Humidity, Wind Speed, and Feels Like Temperature by tapping on a weather panel in the day view.
- New landscape year view allows you to quickly navigate to future dates.
- Added the option to view the day of the month in the app icon badge.
- Localization in Spanish, German, Italian, and French (except for NLP).
- Much improved accessibility support.
- Countless bug fixes and UI polish.
