The eKnife package (so named because with all the tools included it’s a bit like a Swiss Army knife) costs 59 CHF ($61) and includes a Doodle Premium subscription, a Memonic Premium subscription, and a Wuala 10Gb plan. Purchasers of the bundle receive a voucher code that can be used to redeem their membership on the three services; once their year’s membership has expired they will be free to renew with each service at the regular price if they wish.

The deal runs through December 31 and can be purchased at eknife.ch.

What apps would you like to see offered together as a bundle?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• How to Manage Consumer-Grade Collaborative Tools in the Workplace

Some people have personal assistants scheduling their days. I use a combination of TimeDriver and TimeBridge right now. With TimeDriver, the online personal appointment scheduler, I can create Schedule Books, which are effectively discrete “mini calendars,” or carefully selected portions of my full workday calendar, that I assign to a given type of meeting or call.

For example, if you want to schedule a demo for me to review your application for WebWorkerDaily, you could use my Product Demos link. If you wanted to schedule a half-hour meeting with me at South by Southwest this March to demo your product or be interviewed by me, then you’d use this link. I also have a “let’s Hang Out at SXSW” Schedule Book for friends I want to make sure I see while I’m there. And I have a Schedule Book for my new women’s business podcast to record phone interviews. Each link reveals a discrete number of time slots, and my availability is dependent on my actual Google Calendar availabilities, so if I end up booking time with a client, it automatically removes those time options from TimeDriver’s Schedule Books.

TimeDriver notifies me by email about any schedule additions and inserts them into my Google Calendar. So far, it has been working wonders for me because I don’t have to go back and forth over and over to find a compatible time with people who want to meet with me, and I can designate specific days of the week and specific hours of the day to, say, demos or recorded phone interviews.

I recently reviewed TimeBridge’s Meetwith.me app, and I immediately saw a gap in my scheduling solutions: I wanted to be able to give certain people full access to my calendar to schedule something with me, but didn’t want to share my Google Calendar with them because they just don’t need that much information on a consistent basis. I also really liked the elegance of this calendar-sharing application. TimeDriver still feels like a bit clunky on the interface but the utility is good.

Since I reviewed Meetwith.me, I’ve already had three meetings scheduled through it, and there’s nothing about it I don’t like so far. However, I found that on the side of the person who wants to schedule times it’s not as easy to use as it could be. For example, one person scheduled an hour time slot even though we both knew the call would be half an hour. It just wasn’t clear to them as a new user how to specify a shorter time block.

As my time is more and more in demand for my business and more and more in demand for my home life (three-year-old, husband), I find that I need a work/life manager. While I’ve been working with a personal assistant, right now I’m still not comfortable using an assistant to handle my scheduling. I still appreciate the more personal touch, and even though using TimeDriver and TimeBridge can be a little geeky, I think it gives people the impressions that a) I’m very busy, and my time is at a premium; and b) I care enough to connect with them that I’ll put them in control of the scheduling so we can find something that works for us both.

Am I wrong about opening these “controlled” and secure calendaring options to others? And shouldn’t I be limiting the number of calls or meetings I have a day? Because I sure do feel overloaded. Maybe I am making myself too accessible. Last year, I was only able to carve out a 4-6 hour workday and could never get anything done. This year, I’ve rearranged a few things, spent a little more money on daycare, and have eked out almost a 7-hour workday, and yet I still find I don’t have enough time in the day. I don’t want to expand my workday hours any further yet still want to be productive. All these calls and meetings getting on my calendar are becoming a burden. And that doesn’t sound like a good thing to me.

So what do you think? How accessible is too accessible? And how do you handle your accessibility?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req’d): Who Owns Your Data in the Cloud?

We have 50 free Premium Edition accounts to give away. Sign onto Doodle (or log into your existing account) and enter coupon code: 4as9zxcc. The first 50 readers to use it will get one year of access to the Premium Edition.

Let us know what you think of Doodle Premium Edition in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

But put it on the iPhone and suddenly the mundane and forgettable act of tracking time is fun and accessible and begging for me to use it. Kudos to any cool Web application who ups their cool – and usability – factor by making it work on my iPhone.

Another useful Web application is Zapproved. Anyone who has gone back and forth and back and forth approving something knows how tedious it can be, even via email. I recently had a client who was looking for a way to facilitate the approval process without the headache. I sent them to Backboard which I reviewed in a previous post. I still think that Backboard is elegant for anything visual that needs to be approved, but when it comes to approving a concept or other type of proposal, Zapproved could do the trick quickly and simply.

If you need approval from multiple people on any of your work, start a proposal, enter the email addresses of the approves (Zapproved will remember those addresses for later use), give your proposal a title, enter the deadline for feedback, and give your proposal or project a name. You can set the proposal’s priority, add a description and even attach files.

Attaching files is the part where I think Backboard still wins, allowing you to upload the graphic or text file needing approval so it is easily viewed rather than downloaded. But Zapproved is about simplicity. Approvers receive an email where they can Approve, Deny or Comment on the proposal. As the person issuing the proposal, you can access all the activity on any outstanding proposal in your Message Center. You can also comment on it, cancel it if someone rejects it or close it out as completed. Zapproved archives your proposals for future reference.

The next app I want to mention is GatherGrid, but first, I have to remind you all that I’m a huge fan of doodle.ch, the super simple way to schedule a meeting or call involving multiple people. It is no frills and really gets the job done.

But in steps GatherGrid, another free app for scheduling. The interface actually brings the date and time grid that doodle displays after everyone has entered their times to the home page so all you have to do is check off the time blocks that work for you, create the event, and invite your participants. They receive an email, click on a link to get to the grid, click the time blocks where they are available, and you have the combined input on a single grid to pick the most suitable date and time.

What are your latest favorite apps or widgets, and how are they helping you with your work?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories