Google launched its calendar today. If you can call it a launch; not officially announcement that I’ve seen so far.
I stumbled across if when I picked up a Digg feed this morning. I pinged Cameron and when we had a chat we talked about it on G’day World.
After using it for a few hours I’m a big fan. Firstly, I’ve been looking for an easy way to set up a calendar that I can share with my wife, and other ways to share across time zones. Google does that simply.
Secondly, it’s simple. It makes it easy to add events–even with simple phrases–and I can subscribe using my Mac’s iCal client.
Thirdly, I can subscribe to other public calendars, whether they are events, or personal. That will be the killer app. In fact, I think it’ll drag people into using Gmail. When users start sending calendar events to people they know, I think it’ll draw people to use the calendar, and by repercussion, the Gmail integration.
It’s funny. Google services remind me of the excitement I felt in the hay day of the browser wars. I’d always get excited and install the latest release. It’s similar, I got excited and spend a good hour or so playing and setting up the calendar.
I can’t wait to see the mash-ups and ways people use it within online communities.
One Comment
I am a long-time user of Gmail, and have been desperately waiting for Google Calendar for ages. I got tired of waiting a few months ago, and started using 30 Boxes. I even got my wife into using it, which makes synchronising our lives much easier (despite the fact that it seems a bit sad that we have to really on shared calendars to organise stuff!).
Anyway, I eagerly checked Google Calendar today, and, I’m just not convinced. At this stage, I think I prefer the 30 Boxes approach. They have less extraneous stuff, fewer views, but it’s clear and concise.
I’ll keep trying Google, mainly because I think tight Gmail integration will be great, but to be honest I expected more.