Scrybe Closes Series A

Scrybe, the online/offline calendar and organizer, has closed their series A round of financing from Adobe Systems Incorporated and LMKR. In what is becoming an annoying trend, the company is not disclosing the size of the round.

You’ll probably recognize the company from the somewhat viral product demo that swept the blogosphere last October. Since then they’ve been through a private and public beta.

Scrybe is a Flash-based organizational and productivity tool that works both online and offline. It consists of multiple calendar management, to do lists, web clip bookmarklet, contact list (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or Outlook importing), and The system operates offline by caching your changes and then uploading when the system reconnects. Zimbra and Google Gears provide similar online/offline products.

The driving principle behind the application is usability. Scrybe’s main selling point is that the application retains the context of the data that you’re working with by “zooming” instead of flipping to the data. One example is the calendar. The cells of the calendar expand and contract as you edit a week, day, or hour more closely while still showing the details of the surrounding days. See the extended video below for more details.

How to Calculate Your Age by Chocolate

Yes, it's true: If you are old enough to do mathematics and you like chocolate, you might be able to figure out your age. By crunching these numbers (including the weekly frequency of your preference for chocolate), your age is mathematically revealed. It's a nifty trick for kids learning basic mathematics, who can practice it on adults and elicit reactions of surprise and amusement. Try it out to see for yourself, and then read on to find out how it works.

Steps

1. Determine how many times a week you eat or want chocolate. It must be a number between 1 and 10, including 1 or 10.
   • Let's say you eat chocolate 8 times a week (we won't tell).
2. Multiply that number by 2.
   • 8 x 2 = 16
3. Add 5 to the previous result.
   • 16 + 5 = 21
4. Multiply that by 50.
   • 21 x 50 = 1050
5. Add the current year (Gregorian).
   • 1050 + 2007 = 3057
6. Subtract 250 if you've had a birthday this year. If you haven't had a birthday this year, subtract 251.
   • Let's say your birthday hasn't passed yet.
   • 3057 - 251 = 2806
7. Subtract your birth year.
   • Assuming you were born in 1975...
   • 2806 - 1975 = 831
8. You'll end up with a 3 or 4 digit number. The last two digits are your age (if you're under 10 years old there will be a zero before your age). The remaining one or two digits will be the number of times per week you eat or want chocolate (the number you specified in the first step).

Why it works

• This really does work for anybody from 1 to 99 years old, although the chocolate part is just for fun (an added distraction). Here's how the mathematics work.
• Select a number between 1 and 10. Multiply by 2, add 5, multiply by 50. These steps are just a fancy way to push your (or your assistant's) random number out into the hundreds place. Here is what you'll get for all possible selections:

1	350
2	450
3	550
4	650
5	750
6	850
7	950
8	1050
9	1150
10	1250

• Add the current Gregorian year (2007):

1	2357
2	2457
3	2557
4	2657
5	2757
6	2857
7	2957
8	3057
9	3157
10	3257

• Subtract 250 (or 251 if your birthday hasn't happened yet this year). This yields the year of your last birthday (2006 or 2007) plus 100 times your chosen number:

1	2106
2	2206
3	2306
4	2406
5	2506
6	2606
7	2706
8	2806
9	2906
10	3006

• Subtract the year of your birth and get your age plus 100 times your chosen number. Put another way:

  (Year of your last birthday + (100 x your chosen number)) - Year of your birth = Your age + (100 x your chosen number)

Warnings

• This will not work consistently for people who are 100 years old or older.
• Your friends may think you are strange for playing this game as it requires inputting information from their date of birth into the equation.