The Google Calendar was (finally) announced on April 13, 2006. After a couple of days of experimenting, here's what I have to say about it:
Ups
- Cool interface - The interface makes you feel as if you are running a local application - Changes are reflected immediately and stored in the background. You can continue to work.
- 'Quick Add' - This is easily the pick of the host of features. All you need to type in is 'Lunch with Max tomorrow at 5pm' and the correct entry is made.
- Configurable views - A variety of views are offered to help you organize your schedule (surprisingly very similar to Outlook).
- Reminders - Reminder emails will ensure that you don't miss your appointments - I am more often logged into GMail than I probably will be in Calendar.
- Calendar sharing - I can see this harboring a host of business models based on shared announcements of events - music concerts, sports events - the list goes on.
- Full API support - This opens the use of the calendar to innovative programmers everywhere.
- GMail integration - Dates and times mentioned in your GMail can be converted into calender event with one click.
Downs
- Ho-hum - just another Google experiment in Ajax. There's hardly anything that Google is offering that is not offered by Outlook or Zimbra. Frankly, I'm getting a bit bored!
- A downside of making the interface cool - the initial page takes ages to load - 7-10 seconds on my 128 kbps broadband.
- The 'Quick Add' feature has its share of bugs. 'Day after tomorrow' is not picked up. 'Lunch with Max day after tomorrow at 5pm' leads to an entry titled 'Lunch with Max day after'. The entry is placed for tomorrow at 5PM.
- Managing multiple calendars and sharing your calendar is not intuitive and is best left to experts. I don't see many people using this feature.
Though I'm quite impressed with Google's version of an application that *everyone* has tried a hand in making, I still believe they could have done better.
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