Itchy Hands

First look: Google Calendar

The rumoured Google Calendar went live today, and boy does it look slick. Simple to use yet powerful, this product looks like a winner from Google.

Google did a real good job with the interface by making it easy to switch views in your calendar and add events easily. Click and drag, drag and drop, or just click and type to add new events. It understands phrases and sentences like “Lunch with client tomorrow at 1pm” and automatically turns them into events on your calendar.

One feature I really like is the ability to have multiple calendars. This means I can set up a private calendar, one for work and one for the football matches I want to watch. The previously mentioned 30 Boxes online calendar manages this by assigning events with tags which is cool in concept, but not as easily implemented I think. Google Calendar’s multiple calendar feature reminds me of Apple’s iCal and feels almost like a desktop application.

You can also share your own calendars, or subscribe to your friends’ or public calendars. It’s really open and you can share and subscribe to calendars via iCal or XML formats. According to Product Manager Carl Sjogreen, Google Calendar will even be able to sync with Outlook and mobile devices in the coming months. This kind of openness is rather uncommon, and really deserves a hat’s off to Google.

And of course, there’s the Gmail integration. Gmail can supposed recognise events mentioned in your email and allow you to add it to Google Calendar with a click, but I haven’t seen it in my Gmail yet.

Overall, I feel that Google Calendar is a really great product. It feels like a finished, ready product although it’s in beta, unlike Google Base, Google Video and even Google Reader where it takes a while to figure out what it is or how it works. (I still can’t figure out Google Base.) I really agree with Charlene Li in her post about Google Calendar creating a platform for time-based applications.

Unfortunately… it’s really slow at the moment because of all the heavy traffic to the site. If you can’t get in, here’s some news and reviews from others for you to judge:

• Google unveils web-based calendar app | CNET News.com
• Charlene Li’s Blog: Google Calendar creates a platform for ‘time’ applications
• Matt Cutts – Review: Google Calendar
• TechCrunch » Google Calendar is live

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Tech & Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.