Evidently the newest craze to sweep academia is doodling.  Okay, not doodling exactly, but Doodle scheduling according to a colleague of mine.  In an effort to escape their Outlook calendars, some groups are starting to use  Doodle to schedule meetings.   Doodle is essentially a polling service that has been spun to act as a calendar tool as well as a polling device.  While this isn’t the same as having your Outlook calendar on a system where anyone can schedule meetings for you any time of the day or night without your say so, some could see  Doodle as a democratizing force in which all potential meeting participants vote on convenient meeting times.  Whether this leads to a democratic utopia or to an anarchic riot is probably in the eye of the beholder.

Doodle is definitely a simple tool, which of course, can be both good and bad.  It doesn’t track your polls for you, I didn’t see the ability to embed polls, and the graphics aren’t particularly fancy.  However, the interface is super-easy to use, and there’s no log in!  Oh, and if you’re wondering about the .ch extension - that’s Switzerland for those who like to patronize sites from around the world.