News release – JAN 19, 2015 Hamburg, Germany
Digital Wall Calendar:
Bye bye scheduling chaos – Hello Calou!
Transferring schedules and appointments by hand from your mobile phone to your wall calendar? Those days are over! The Hamburg-based start-up company “TECHNIKmanufaktur” has developed a device called the Calou, a wall calendar featuring an E-Paper display that is automatically synchronized with a smart phone. The device is scheduled to hit the market in the summer and be financed per crowdfunding.
A smart calendar
The Calou combines the advantages of a classic wall calendar made of paper with those of an electronic calendar, such as those provided by Google or iCloud. It is the first ever product of its sort. At the current time, there is no other competitive product like it on the market.
E-Paper instead of paper
With a Calou, you no longer have to write down dates, appointments, and other scheduling items and events. The Calou automatically synchronizes with all digital calendars and smart phones per Wi-Fi. It displays the calendar contents centrally. Schedules can also be entered manually directly on the device via the touchscreen. Serving as a display is an energy-saving e-paper screen much like those that are commonplace with eBook readers. Thanks to either rechargeable or normal batteries, the Calou doesn’t have you tangling about with any messy cables.
Everything at a glance
Every smart phone calendar is represented by a column in the Calou. This leads to a clear presentation of the stored information, for example, “Mother | Father | Child | Child”, as it is often the case with normal paper calendars.
The Calou’s encasement is round and made of wood. The front side of the device also serves as a magnet board and thus it serves as a bulletin board and calendar in one.
Apps from the store
The Android system well known from mobile phones serves as the operational system. As such, the user has access to the Google Play Store and can also install all sorts of various apps on the Calou.
You can also program your own individual apps for the Calou. With that, the Calou is open grounds for new technologies and developments such as cooking recipe or shopping list apps, news readers, a kitchen web-based radio (thanks to a built-in speaker system) and much more.
Versatility
The Calou is primarily being targeted for young couples, residential communities, and families with smart phones who want a common overview of appointments in their household. For them, the Calou offers a perfect alternative to paper calendars, because little work actually needs to be done by hand. The Calou is also very useful for companies, authorities, and other facilities, for example, in planning layouts for meeting rooms or keeping track of vacation periods.
The steps to come
The serial production of the Calou is standing ready on the starting line. The Calou is scheduled to be available for delivery in the summer of 2015. We are planning on starting a crowdfunding campaign to finance the first series. According to current planning, the starting date is scheduled for February 2015. As part of the crowdfunding campaign, those interested in the Calou can reserve one in advance for a special price that is far below what will later be the sales price. Any time you like, you can already register yourself at the www.mycalou.com website as interested purchaser in order to receive information only provided to advance purchasers.
The price of the device will be made public just in time for the start of the crowdfunding campaign and will come in at approximately the same price category as a netbook.
Our pre-series prototypes are fully functional. We’d be happy to demonstrate them as part of a visit, but cannot make any test devices available at this point in time.
About ourselves
The Calou is a product manufactured by TECHNIKmanufaktur Hamburg. The TECHNIKmanufaktur is a young start-up company from Hamburg that was founded by native ‘Bremian’ Hannes Dziggel at the beginning of 2014. His goal in this start-up was to make the Calou a reality. The Calou and its software were developed independently in Hamburg within a year without any financial support.
Additional information, video, and picture material:
- Website: www.mycalou.com
- Video: http://youtu.be/ErdP59OLw4M
- Pictures: >> Download (7,34 MB, Format: jpg, ZIP-File)
http://www.mycalou.com/pressrelease/pr1501-1/pictures-pr1501-1.zip
- this Text as PDF: >> Download PDF (0.15 MB)
http://www.mycalou.com/pressrelease/pr1501-1/pressrelease1501-1-en.pdf
Contact:
Mr. Hannes Dziggel
press@mycalou.com
Telephone +49 (0)40 22 82 10 340
Fax +49 (0)40 22 82 10 349
