Google Calendar Review by Wang Chung (pics)

Wang Chung

Google Calendar is google's latest web product. It's as straightforward as you can get - A totally online digital calendar loaded with features and integration options. It is somewhat odd that I (of all people) am reviewing a calendar - never before in my life have I actually used a calendar day in and day out. I figured since I like Google products, I'd give this a shot!

The only thing you need for Google Calendar is a standard Google Account. If you have no idea what the hell that is, I can't blame you - Google Account is another name for "GMAIL account" Smile

You would probably only know this if you were very familair with Google Home. Assuming that everyone and their godfather has a GMAIL account, we'll continue. Head over to http://calendar.google.com and sign on up!

Once you're all set, there are a ton of things you can do. It's hard to believe that the initial package (Google insists many more upgrades are to come) comes with this many features. Let's start with the basics - Currently, Google Calendar allows you to upload/import/integrate your pre-existing calendars, so long as they are in the generic iCal .ics format or the Outlook .csv format, both standard formats that you should be familiar with if you're a calendar kind of guy.

If that isn't enough, Google has a searchable database of pre-existing calendars. Type in the name of your favorite sports teams and voila - seasn schedule is at your fingertips! This isn't perfect, because google does not provide calendars (it finds pre-existing calendars), and does not even host them. This has caused a few issues - other servers have been flooded with requests for .ics and .csv files that GCal has picked up.

There are several methods of adding events - there is quick add, double-clicking on day or time block, Create an Event button and more. Once I set up my calendars (Currently I have loaded a NJ Devils and NY Yankees season calendar [complements of www.sturtzefans.org], AND Google's own Holiday Calendars [US, Canadian, Islamic]), I started to add my own events. Driver's license test next friday, SAT scores the following tuesday, Hardcore Movement on wednesday. You can add events before you put in custom calendars, if you'd like

The great thing is that there are so many ways to view the calendar. Day-to-day view, week view, next (x) days view, month view, agenda etc.
My personal favorite is the month view because I do not want my life restricted to little tiny blocks of time - I just don't roll that way - and Google Calendar is fine with that. This versatility makes it great.

Here we have a generic month view. You can see my active calendars Smile

Fun features indeed.

Here we have the agenda view. It lets you know what's up and coming. Pretty nifty.

The best part is, you can set alerts and whatnot. You can be alerted via gmail or even cell phone SMS :O Very cool. I suppose that soon there will be a google homepage widget which I can not wait for!

Google Calendar does have its flaws. The aformentioned lack of google-hosted calendars is an issue - GCal insists that it can't always gather data from the server. That's frustrating! Also, the event creation is finnicky - you can't create an event that repeats on a particular day and I have no fucking clue why. For example I can not create something that reminds me of the American Hardcore Movement on DI.FM every wednesday. I can do every weekday, tues-thurs, mon, wed, fri etc but not a repeating weekday. Go figure that out Sad