April 13th, 2006 
admin 
Ok, I don’t usually like to jump onto the Google announcement bandwagon, but I really like their new Calendaring system. If you have a Gmail account, there are some added benefits. But I have also found some integration issues, which, since Google’s stuff is perpetual beta, I’m sure will be worked out sometime in the future. As with most things, it’s best if you check it out for yourself – so go see Google Calendar.
As usual, Google gets the main things right. They have a knack for giving you what you want and clearing out all the filler. If you have used Outlook, and are sick to death of the confusing views, etc – you will love this. This is not to say that some of the functionality isn’t a little puzzling, but overall I love this thing. You can check out views by day, week, month, next 4 days, or agenda. Agenda shows upcoming events.
On the left hand side you see a monthly calendar that highlights which view you are in. Beneath that you see “My Calendars” and “Other Calendars.” I love the other calendars. If you click the plus symbol it will bring up another view. Here you can search for public calendars – like sports calendars. Do you see where I’m going with this? Yeah, you can make your own for your kids’ sports. But you can also check for professional sports. Then you can overlay them on your calendar. That’s smart and intuitive. Bravo. You could get your whole family on google calendars and then overlay them on your own. This way each person can retain their own, but can view the whole. Again, I love it. Notice that you can also overlay holidays. That’s a nice touch.
Now, you can also change the settings in the upper right hand corner. Here you can change general view settings, etc. You can manage your calendars here and share them. And there are also notification setttings. This will pop up a message box on your computer at a specified time before the event – which you can adjust. It can also send you an email reminder. I think they will also be allowing cell phone notifications in the future. Yeah, and you can also import your current calendar – in iCal or csv format. This covers a lot of programs. I’m sure syncing will be there in the future.
My only gripe with this is integration with other google products. Does anyone know of a way of putting all these things together – like gmail, personalized google home page, or google mail for domains. I would love to have this all in one place. Maybe there is a way and I havent’ found it. Maybe I should google it 
[tags]Google,Google Calendar[/tags]
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