Matthew McNeely also demonstrated his service at the Web Innovator's Forum. Matt has built a service called Find Free Time. Find Free Time is very similar in purpose to Meet with Approval, which I wrote about previously during event week. Compared to Meet with Approval, Find Free Time has a slicker and easier to use interface. Picking available dates and times happens through a drag and drop interface instead of drop downs and text fields.

As with my verdict on Meet with Approval, Find Free Time should be baked right into Outlook. I'd recommend that Matt create a downloadable desktop app that accesses a web service, so that the originator of the meeting request never has to leave Outlook to coordinate meetings. Ideally, the software would allow people receiving the requests to suggest times right through Outlook too. In other words, I don't think the web based interface is going to work for most people. Obviously, however, a web based service is necessary to pass available times back and forth.

As I said in my review with Meet with Approval, I wouldn't use this service, unless it was baked into Outlook. Most of my meetings are 1 on 1s, which is very easy to do over email. On that once weekly occasion where I need to coordinate more than 2 people, I wouldn't force other people to learn how to use a new service. I'd just pick up the phone to coordinate.

Regarding a business model, I don't see an obvious one. Matt was considering a subscription, but as others like me have told him, I wouldn't pay for it. For me to use this with regularity, it'd have to built into Outlook. Not sure if I'd pay for that, though either. And with the rise of online calendars, I don't see this being a compelling stand alone app. Instead, I think it'll be a nice feature. Advertising could be a revenue stream. But, it'll be a long time before that scales up. I like that Matt is creating an API. But, I wonder why I'd integrate with an API if I could simply rebuild the data layer myself pretty quickly? I'd suggest open sourcing the application and providing consulting services to services that want to integrate the functionality into their service. Since the online calendar space is pretty hot, I could see a lot of software as a service companies paying Matt to aid in integration so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. Matt's background seems to be just that. Meanwhile, I'd continue building out the functionality and Outlook integration and offering a free service to consumers. Maybe throwing some ads on the site.