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Google's New Calendar CL2
pvt_medic writes "Google is apparently working on its own calendar (CL2) program to integrate with Gmail. The closed beta is ongoing with about 200 participants - people involved are not allowed to invite outsiders to see the calendar and are under strict rules not to share any details with outsiders. Here are some leaked photos of the CL2."
How about dynamic calendar subscriptions?
Select your classes from a schedule and have each period from now until the end of the year added for you. If the Prof gets sick, your calendar is updated automatically. Subscribe to your local concert club's schedule and see who's coming. Mark a show you're interested on and get automated notice when it's postponed.
Add some classification and filtering (which GMail is already well known for) and now you can just click the "Entertainment" tab and see all the movies, concerts, shows, book signings, lectures, plays, etc going on in the upcoming week.
This could be really cool.
Google never ceases to impress me. It seems that they always have something new up their sleeves. Earlier today I was reading about a program called, "Wrightly" (also posted on /.) that is supposed to be the killer Google Word Processor App that everyone's been talking about.
Anyway, what I really find amazing is Google's ability to find and promote those technologies that we would never have heard of. For example, Picasa and Google Earth. I played with Google' Earths previous self (KH) but I didn't want to pay $30 or whatever they were charging... and I would have passed Picasa off as yet another cheap knock-off.
I'm not saying that these are great programs in anyway, but they sure are great for free stuff... and that really amazes me -- Google really does have an aptitude for providing quality "free" software.
Matt Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com
I'm a student who uses campus computers at times, I work in an office, and I divide the little time that remains between my own home and my partner's. Between all of these points, any sort of synchronisation with a diary app is extremely unlikely, and with assignments, work events & a social life (yeah, right) all slipping randomly from my mind, I can see the value in this. Sure, an actual diary might be an idea, but I'm used to logging on to my gmail account every time I sit at a desk, whereas over the past few years I've tried half a dozen times to get into the habit of using a proper diary, and I fail miserably, usually after writing and promptly forgetting to check a single entry.
Even funnier is that if you take the images into gimp and change the levels to make all the colours really dark, what looks like a username stands out quite legibly in two of the images.
:)
Hope you don't work at google, solomanj
Will Google let people use their application logic without requiring we store our personal data on their servers (subject to cracking, government requisition, backup tapes "lost in the mail", etc)? For that matter, how easy is it now to connect our own Jabber networks to Google's version?
--
make install -not war
Actually, I'd say that they have always been a company focused on a few things. They've hired a good number of good scientists.
Some of this stuff requires fairly complicated techniques from the realm of research.
Need an example. Get the calendar to sufficiently put a short summary of everything that's going on in its cells by extracting that data from your email.
One word: integration. A good standalone calendar is ok. But if you can get the map where you have an appointment, the exact text of the email that triggered it, a fast search to find anything remotely related to the topic, instant chatting with the people in the meeting if you need to ask something, etc as pale examples of what all combined could be used, you have far more. Of course, google based means that you must access internet to access all of this. A portable pda could be superior if you are on the run and without that access. But now even cellphones have access to gmail and related sites, so in many places access to that information can be done in several ways, and for all will be the same.
Well, if we're lucky they'll throw their efforts into OpenSync, a very good effort to make a standard for exchanging data between (among other things) calendars and pda's.
;)
And you can always "upgrade" your pda to Linux
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
I don't think many people are aware of it but a 'new' standard is finally emerging that allows mobile devices to synchronize over the internet. A great number of mobile phones and smartphones (like my Nokia 9300) support this. See the website below for a list of devices that support SyncML. So does the Mozilla Sunbird Calendar...
;)
List of devices: https://www.mobical.net/mobical/phonesetup/
What use is an online calendar if it doesn't support online synchronisation?
I know that Gmail has ignored the wonderful imap standard, so I'm not entirely cnvinced they won't ignore this one.
So: Please Google, don't be evil, and use the open SyncML standard
X.