Marin Magazine - August 2014

In Marin / CURRENTS

Digital Datebook

Summer is coming to a close, and “busy” could describe all of us. With so many places to go and things to do, sometimes you need more than a simple to-do list and less than an infinte collection of calendars. These four apps — favorites among the tech set — will streamline your schedule, culling appointments and other relevant digital information into one place, even if your head is in several. C.V. P.

TEMPO This smart calendar is like having a personal assistant in your pocket — a psychic personal assistant. The app compiles emails, contacts and locations to anticipate your needs, making sure you are never late to a meeting again. Or, if you are, that your coworkers will be notified. tempo.ai

SUNRISE Sunrise works with your Google Calendar, iCloud or Microsoft Exchange to combine all your scheduling into one easy-to-navigate app. Look over coworkers’ calendars, add Facebook events, tag locations and switch time zones seamlessly. calendar.sunrise.am

MAGNE TO Ever gotten lost en route to an engagement? There’s an app for that. Magneto allows users to add an address to any appointment, subsequently calculating drive time, traffic and directions. The app also pulls calendar info and integrates to-do lists, taking the guesswork out of your fast-paced life. magneto.me

EVERNOTE The ultimate in organizing apps, Evernote syncs data across all your devices.

Scan the business card of a new contact; organize meeting notes with tags; share said notes (and files) with colleagues; take snapshots of documents and much, much more. evernote.com

A SHAKESPEAREAN GIFT The Marin Shakespeare Company is having quite a season.

This past May, the 25-year-old company received an anonymous $1 million donation, a pleasant surprise that will ensure the Bard’s words continue to reverberate throughout the county. “It’s a transformative gift that will allow us to achieve a lot of things we’ve dreamed of for a long time, including making our mainstage productions even stronger and expanding our education programs to include more schools,” managing director Lesley Currier says. “It’s so gratifying to know that with this gift we will be able to secure the future of Shakespeare in Marin.” The annual outdoor season takes place through September 28 at Dominican University’s Forest Meadows Amphitheatre and this year features As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet and Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. Those interested in catching a performance of As You Like It can take advantage of the new Pay As You Like It program: Tickets to the show, which runs through August 10, are available for a donation of any amount. marinshakespeare.org C.V. P.

Books are a necessary escape for children, fostering both
education and imagination. This strain of thought led
Fairfax resident Amy Bon and her daughter Bella to found the Guatemala Book Project — a nonprofit that
is creating small library collections in the rural schools of that country’s Recuerdo a Barrios region — after
a trip to a Guatemalan village in 2010. “We recently shipped off about 45 cartons of
books and school supplies to the eight elementary schools we are currently work-
ing with,” says Bon. “Our students in the district have typically never had the opportunity to choose a book
to read, and the teachers all struggle with a lack of classroom supplies.” Bon’s initial plan was to purchase
used books and send them down, but there were not enough Spanish-language options to be found. Instead,
money is raised through events and donations, and
books are purchased through the South American
division of Follett International, one of the largest
scholastic book companies in the world. The project is
having an impact on local students as well — eighth-
grade-Spanish students from Mill Valley Middle
School succeeded in raising $1,000 for the effort earlier
this year. “We currently have two students who have
chosen the Guatemala Book Project to benefit from
their upcoming bat and bar mitzvahs,” adds Bon.