Amazon has confirmed that users of Apple’s iCloud data syncing service can now use the company’s Echo / Alexa devices to add data to, or read data from their calendars.

If you’re the kind of person who is planned, organized, and calculated with all you do in life, and also happen to have a knack for technology, then this week’s Apple’s Free App of the Week for iPhone and iPad will fit in perfectly with your lifestyle. Called Calendars 5, this popular calendar app usually retails for $6.99 on the App Store, but can be grabbed for absolutely free till next Thursday.

Here’s how you can prevent iOS from automatically adding events from Mail app to Calendar app. Useful for those who care a lot about privacy.

If you’re a fan of football – sorry, can’t call it soccer! – then you’ll no doubt already have your favorite seat placed nicely in the middle of the room, pointed squarely at the TV. There are plenty of games to keep up with over the next four weeks, and if you live in the right country, it’s all going to be on TV. If like some of us here, you need a handy way of keeping abreast of what games are on and when, then you’re going to want to pay attention.

The Calendar app for iOS is, as native utilities go, pretty darned good, but throughout the App Store, there are remain dozens of alternative options available to those in search of a more versatile feature-set. Fantastical, which was released for the iPhone back in 2012, has long since been considered among the very best in the business, and with Fantastical 2 dropping late last year, things improved dramatically. Now, a version specifically tailored to the iPad has been rolled out by developer Flexibits, and as you’d imagine, it takes full advantage of the additional real estate offered by the Apple slate.

Mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad – and to some extent the iPod touch – have made us all more socially aware and allow us to interact with people around the world with ease. It’s human nature to interact with others and express our social sides, which is one of the reasons why social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Path have managed to ingrain themselves in our lives. But what about those social beavers who either happen to travel a lot and want to see what’s going on around them or just want to discover new and topical events going on in their hometown? CalendApp could be the perfect tool.

Google surprised everyone when they announced that they’re going to end support for Exchange ActiveSync on all platforms except Android. iOS users took a big hit because many users were using the service on stock iOS apps to keep their Gmail, Google contacts and calendar data in sync with other devices. We’ve already walked you through the process on how to set up CardDAV to sync Google contacts on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and now, we’ll show you how to sync your calendar data to Gmail / Google ID as well by using the CalDAV protocol. Complete details and step-by-step guide right after the jump.