The act of sending invitations has come a long way since the days of horse carried mail. We now communicate regularly with emails and instant messages. We have always enjoyed exchanging stories, sharing food, entertaining each other and celebrating festive occasions. But when it comes to organizing the simplest of get-togethers like a weekend movie or dinner outing, it can become an agonizing affair. Just getting everyone on the same page with the time and place can bring your plans to a screeching halt.

Making Plans

These days email usually ends up being the way to make plans and bounce ideas off one another. However, if you have ever been part of one of these group email exchanges, you know how complex they can get. Your best friend's new idea for a venue just got buried inside the heated argument over the weekend that best suits everyone. Instant messaging and phone calls don't work either, as not everyone is on-line and available to chat at the same time. In the end, you end up having to track the differing moods of the people and their suggestions. Worst still, you end up bearing the brunt of their dissatisfaction if something "doesn't work for them". Now there is a place that blends the leisurely pace of email with the "instantness" of IM, and it will make organizing your event a pleasant and social experience.

Introducing the First Presence Enabled Invitation Management Service

PurpleTrail is a brand new way to organize and manage parties, get-togethers, events and meetings. It is the first ever event organizer that lets you create, invite and evolve plans along with your friends, colleagues and family in true web 2.0 style. It brings together the best of the collaboration principles - building consensus, voting for place and time choices, personal feedback - all into one page and lets you manage them efficiently. PurpleTrail also has open choices for event time like "Evening", "Sometime next week", that allow you to sow a seed for an event and see it grow!

PurpleTrail also adds a very interesting twist to your event management by providing a true instant messaging experience for your event members, complete with presence information and persistence. All the discussions and suggestions are saved within the event details, so as you invite more people to an event they can come up to speed in a jiffy.

Do it in style

PurpleTrail does not let anything come between you and your event - not even itself! You can personalize your event the way you want it by choosing from hundreds of available themes. The themes are fresh, colorful and are an absolute treat to the user. In less than five minutes you can make a great-looking event page and invite people in style. You can also map an address from this page and print out professional-looking invitations that will leave an impression in the minds of people. Not only that, you can upload pictures and images to your event page before and after the party and it comes right in your event page to give it an unforgettable look that all the event members will enjoy.

PartyTrail

PurpleTrail also has a complete section dedicated to party ideas & games. The section is complete with hundreds of party ideas neatly categorized and ordered by holidays and occasions. If you thought you weren't impulsive, think again, because after reading an article or two you might just end up throwing a party!

Anytime and Anywhere Communication

PurpleTrail is also available on platforms other than the web. If you are the kind of person who enjoys a slick product on your PC, you are sure to enjoy the PurpleTrail Desktop Application that gives you access to all the great features of PurpleTrail without having to be glued to your browser. Much like the web interface, you are notified of all the viewpoints and discussions that happen in your event as they unfold in real time.

PurpleTrail is also available for your mobile device as both a standalone application in Symbian OS (a J2ME client is coming soon) as well as on your mobile web browser. The mobile browser interface makes efficient use of the limited space and capability of the browser to give you all the important information regarding your event in just a few screens. The standalone application keeps you informed about your event with instant notifications when you receive chat messages or updates.

The only address book you'll ever need

PurpleTrail makes it really easy for you to pick your contacts and send out your party invitations. You can do a one-time import of your address books from different communities like Yahoo!, Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, Google and AIM, and merge duplicate entries across all of them. You can even upload your mobile phone-book from the PurpleTrail mobile application and you can lay claim to having a truly central address book. Your PurpleTrail address book can be accessed anywhere - on the web, from your desktop and from your mobile phones and PDAs.

Security and Privacy

All this comes with a strong commitment to your privacy and security. All of your passwords are encrypted and sent over a secured communication channel. You control your public profile and choose to show, hide or block events to anyone. You can even chat with a fellow event member who you have not yet met without worrying about your privacy and personal settings being compromised.

PurpleTrail is built by the team at MangoSpring.

The MangoSpring team comes with rich experience of building highly usable web and mobile applications. MangoSpring is focused on building communication and collaboration (group) products that work seamlessly across devices (mobile/desktop), mediums (IM, Email, SMS) and communities (Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Gtalk, Facebook, MySpace, Blogs).