cruel to be kind

Why do they always publish new toys when I have no time to play with them? *sigh* Google Calendar started and so far, it really looks nice. I am especially curious on how the shared appointments will work – something I am really looking forward to because I love what I can do today with outlook and sending around appointment mails.

I am hoping to see more and more ways on the net to use “add this to your calendar” but I am not restricted to Gcal in this case – I think it should be a usable Microformat which everybody can enjoy.

One thing I am missing though from a quick look: You can import but not export or synchronise with a pda or alike. Let’s see how that works out.

My text on blogher about it:

The long anticipated Google Calendar has been started – but of what use can such a service be to you?
Much anticipated was the start of Google Calendar, because if we talk about social media tools for interaction and conversation, dates are a big part of it.

And as we all go more and more to a mobile, connected life, there is only one place to put those information: online.

One of my big issues with technologies today is the fact that basic, automatable tasks are not supported by technology – and a calendar is one of them. I want to see my appointments in different styles, I want to be able to share part of them, collaborate with others, color those like on a paper calendar and also be reminded to be on time through mail, popup or sms.

So far, my first impression with Google Calendar is a good one. The UI is responsive, and I can do stuff I can do in Outlook – mark a part of the calendar and just type.

Also I can share events with others, make totally public events and also put them via button on my website. As it seems, they use the label system as in Gmail and it works surprisingly well to have the different layers available. I also can imagine using this with other people and be able to see if or if not they are occupied on a given date to make planning of calls, events and alike easier.

I would expect (but have not tested) it to integrate well with Gmail and allow me to add an event into an email and for the other person just to click “accept / deny” to enter it into their calendar.

I am now going to play with it. And one of the first shared calendar is going to be for the blogher blogging and social media meetings so I don’t forget them again. ;))

How about you? Why not use a shared calendar for groups you are involved in? It is probably best for such cases to open up a new Gmail account and make the calender in this and share it with everyone in the group so everybody can add it there.

But, as always nowadays: You have to be aware of what you are using and what this means. Over all this joy and all this hype we should not forget that this also means sharing your calendar information with a company which can make use of it in many different ways.

And if you live in a country which actually does have privacy laws: You are giving up those when you use a service like GCal.

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Tags: tools