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Google Calendar - quick analysis

Published in Google, Technology, Web  |  4 Comments


So Google has released their much assumed Calendar. Here is a quick analysis after using it for about 10 minutes (I will play with it more later):

  1. Feels pretty solid & responsive. GMail has sometimes felt laggy to me, but so far calendar seems to snap and respond well
  2. Quick and easy adding/viewing/editing of events using the Google Map style popup bubbles
  3. If you put in the “where” of your location, you can then map to it using GoogleMaps
  4. Similar color scheme to GMail, so I’m already used to the pastels and they feel… comforting
  5. Public sharing of calendars, and invitation to events is very nice - but everyone has to be using GMail. What happened to the iCal invites that both Act! and Outlook and I assume others, support? - Gmail will detect events in email (similar to their ‘Map this’ detection)
  6. Speaking of interplay, no import/export of calendar information. Most people already have some calendar going that they may like to bring their current events in from (like importing an address book in GMail). It doesn’t appear that this is available yet, limiting my move to Google Calendar exclusively - this is available under settings and then another tab
  7. No RSS or other feed of my events - so I have to keep coming back to Google Calendar - I just can’t figure out how to find a specific feed to one of my calendars, more digging

Good start - though I’d like a little more open-ness of the data via import/export, RSS, and perhaps a nice little API. Also, interplaying with other calendaring programs (especially desktop ones) is very important. Like syncronizing with my Apple iCal.

Update: bad me, many of the import/export/RSS features are there, I suggest one takes the ‘tour’ (or RTFM) to see the features and where they’re hidden.

Update: oh, and it doesn’t work on the Nokia 770. <thpt!>

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Responses

  1. katie says:

    April 13th, 2006 at 9:24 am (#)

    It looks as though they do have RSS feeds, a la http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/torrone@gmail.com/public/basic.

    But I can’t seem to sign in — after I enter my password and press the button, it just stalls out. :(

  2. katie says:

    April 13th, 2006 at 9:29 am (#)

    Importing: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/topic.py?topic=8559

    Exporting:
    http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=37111&topic=8566

    Are you sure invitations can only go to people with gmail addresses? That sounds really lame.

  3. Andrew says:

    April 13th, 2006 at 9:56 am (#)

    Thanks Katie, finally got my Make! feed items and saw the notes, then actually took the tour. Guess my 10 min survey wasn’t enough. :)

  4. Chris Hansen says:

    April 15th, 2006 at 3:02 am (#)

    One problem with adding another calendar from a webdav location is that if the calendar is protected (https) or by username/password it doesn’t appear to find the calendar.

    Still working on it though.

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