Apparent: Organize your kids' play-dates

Parents of young kids know it can be tricky to manage their busy social schedules.

A new app aims to help out. Apparent is a tool that helps you plan their kids' play-dates with other parents. Consider it a social network, of sorts, designed to simplify get-togethers — including a calendar, contact names and numbers for other parents and caregivers, lists of child allergies and a map that shows you who's around you.

The first step is to sign up for the free service with an email address, or you can log in with your Facebook ID. Then, add each of your children to your account, including their name, gender, birth date, allergies, and other optional info, such as nanny name and number, grade, school, teacher and more. You can also add a photo of yourself and one for each of your children.

Once this completed, invite other parents to use Apparent, which is critical to get the most out of the app. You're prompted to invite people by importing names from your Contacts, but oddly you cannot type in an email address of someone not already in your Contacts.

Using Apparent to book a play-date is as easy as creating one by giving it a name (e.g. "Movies with Maya"), where the play-date will take place (address), the start and end time, if it's a drop-off or not and any other details you might want to add.

Once it's created, tap the Invite Kids tab and select the kids' names invited to the play-date. Those who use Apparent will get the notification, which they can accept or decline, plus they can ask questions, too. The event is automatically populated in the integrated calendar for all parties and synced between all parents whose kids are invited. That's the gist of it.

You can also capture and share photos of kids while on play-dates. Parents must consent to this feature.

If you're not sure what to do with your kids, tap the Around Me tab to bring up a Google Maps screen that shows your location — via your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch's location via GPS, cellular or Wi-Fi technology — and you can see if any of your kids' friends are nearby.

With everyone's consent, the app also lets you create and manage class contact lists to avoid the endless search for parents in your kid's class.

Apparent is a great idea to simplifying play-dates. It's very easy to use and completely free — so there's not much to complain about here. But be aware this app will only be useful if all parents on the play-date use it; otherwise you'll need to toggle between the app and emails and/or phone calls with those who don't want to participate.