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Google Calendar – Initial Reaction
April 19th, 2006
It was the worst kept secret for about a year. Finally, we get to see Google Calendar. Released last week, it clearly is a major competitor in the “rule your desktop” competition going on in the Web 2.0 renaissance.
As a (now former) user of hotmail, I got hooked on their calendar service. Hotmail does a decent job of tabbed access to email and a calendar, and it also has some nifty sharing capabilities with other users. I used hotmail calendar to share events with family and friends. With family spread across the country, coordination and planning is essential to our social dynamics.
Once I switched to Gmail at Google last year, I felt a sense of loss not having an integrated and shared calendar. Google was rumored to be working on a new calendar application for months, so I was clearly anticipating that void to be filled. My curiously was piqued even more so when I saw photos “leaked” out on the Web at Flickr that were screenshots of the new beta.
Once I saw the announcement last week in my (RSS) feeds, I quickly logged into the service. To my delight, the application is just for what I had hoped.
Google-brand Simplicity
It is simple, clean, and has the innocent charm of a Google application. In minutes, I had my personal calendar running, and I imported some iCal information from my corporate calendar at work. Then, I searched the public calendars and added sports teams, holidays, and the World Cup matches in June.
Sharing is easy and quick. I added friends and family members, color-coded the display, and set access rights.
Some of the most impressive and useful features are not exactly on the surface. Such as, it allows you to send invites with RSVP tracking. Invitees get an email and select if they will attend. It then keeps a track of the invites and acceptances. Also, guests can post comments and messages tagged to each event.
SMS cell phone and email alerts are pretty much expected these days, but it still is a useful feature.
Gmail Integration
If you receive a message in Gmail that closely or remotely resembles a time, location, and description, you can select “Create Event” from the “more actions” menu. This will then fill-in the details automatically and add it to the calendar.
Out of the box, this is a killer application. It lives up to my expectations—and those are high. It begs the question, what is next? With an estimated ten billion dollars to spend, I am sure Google will figure out something cool. So, for you fellow raccoons, here’s a link:
http://www.google.com/thenextcoolthing
You never know.
