Google Calendar

rickyb writes "After months of rumors and speculation, Google Calendar is now live. It features integration with Gmail, full iCal support, and a bunch of other goodies I'm just starting to discover. The wait is over!"

Comments

Google slashdotted?!

[disserto]

WTF? Is that possible? Did a traveling salesman just try to cross the road to change a lightbulb?!

iCal compatible

[dave1212]

Nice, you can subscribe to your calendar in iCal, and it imports iCal files. Doesn't seem to have a limit on the number of calendars you can have at once, but I may just be overlooking something.

Hope it works in Safari soon. It doesn't even load unless I use Firefox.

News Flash

[Fiachra06]

"Google awarded patent on time." It was really only a matter of google!

'Full iCal support'

[mac123]

To me, full iCal support would typically mean the ability to publish to google calendar directly from my iCal compatible program, not export each calendar entry and import them.

Full 'read only' iCal support would seem a more apt description.

Re:'Full iCal support'

[generic-man]

iCal doesn't support two-way syncing by itself (i.e. without iSync). You can either publish a calendar to the web or subscribe to a calendar from the web. Unless you have two records for every calendar for which you want two-way sync, I haven't found an elegant solution that lets you both modify a calendar on your local computer and on the web.

Yahoo! Calendar offered IntelliSync six years ago to synchronize my PalmPilot with their on-line calendar, but that software ended up duplicating every event on my PalmPilot.

Re:'Full iCal support'

[generic-man]

I have tried Mozilla Calendar, but until they release a Cocoa Mac OS X application I don't see how they can displace iCal for me. iCal may be feature-limited with regard to calendar synchronization, but it supports Cocoa services and AppleScript (not to mention iSync and an incredibly useful Dashboard widget). Mozilla Calendar is only available in clients that use the same mishmash of XUL and Quickdraw that make Firefox and Thunderbird feel so "un-Mac-like."

Re:'Full iCal support'

[thadman08]

I've been using Mozilla's calendar in various formats for awhile, and it doesn't really 'sync'. It downloads a new copy before uploading your changes. Works alright for single user systems, but definitely doesn't scale. That's where the work on CalDav and such should help.

Quick report so far

[lennart78]

I have been nosing around in it for a few hours now. The main thing that I still miss is the ability to sync with a PDA, but I'm sure that will be hacked into the app. at some point. Furthermore:
* The user interface is pleasant, at least far more pleasant than any other web-based calendar I worked with before.
* The abilty to search for and import iCal calendars is very nice.
* You can manage multiple calendars from you account
* Sharing calendars with other users seems to work nicely

All in all, a decent start...

Re:Quick report so far

[follower-fillet]

> The main thing that I still miss is the ability to sync with a PDA,
> but I'm sure that will be hacked into the app. at some point.
If someone wants to make a start on the hacking this might be helpful:

Rough Google Calender Class and Function Reference

It's a cross referenced and pretty printed version of the Google Calender source code.

--Phil.

Re:It features integration with Gmail.

[lennart78]

Google calendar uses your gmail contact list to auto suggest email addresses when inviting other users to an event.
And the same goes for sharing a calendar with other users.

It wouldnt be Google if..

[tont0r]

If it were Google Calendar and not Google Calendar Beta.

Annoyance

[barcodez]

I wish there was a way (maybe there is but I can't find it) to specify which Google applications you want to be automatically logged into. In my case I never want to be logged into the feature that remembers my searches, I find that feature disturbing. However if I log into Calendar or Gmail or Personal Homepage it starts remembering all my searches again until I log out and then I have to log in again when I use gmail or whatever. So I just don't use any of the features right now because it's too irritating.

Re:Annoyance

[rjrjr]

So turn it off--just like you turned it on. Click Search History, then click Pause. While you're there, delete your history. Ta dah.

Re:iCal!?!?

[forsetti]

iCal is a calendaring file standard. Apple just chose to use the same name for their Calendar product (the obsession with "i*"). Gmail is compliant with the iCal standard, which happens to allow Apple's product (which is standard compliant) to interoperate.

Re:iCal!?!?

[John_Booty]

The iCal calendar format (.ics) has been the de facto open calendaring standard for a few years now. The Mozilla Calendar Project (aka "Lightning") supports it as well.

This isn't really a "Google cooperating with Apple" thing as much as it is a "Google using the most popular open calendaring format in the world today, for which there are already thousands of publically-accessible calendars, because it is in Google's own best interests".

Still, it's a great example of the good that comes from open standards. I love the fact that I can add all the existing .ics calendars out there to Google Calendar, such as sports schedules for the local teams.

HTTPS available

[palad1]

for all of you behind a firewall. Be warned though, https://www.google.com/calendar/render sometimes redirects to http://www.google.com/calendar/render when your session has timed-out. Is there a FF extension that could rewrite urls and force https://www.google.com/calender to be used? Cheers, Palad1 ps: this thing does seem to grok webdav, I'll check tonight with iCal

Re:HTTPS available

[Nimey]

I take that back. Customize Google already does that with Google Calendar. Cool!

HTTPS issues

[tyroneking]

I know I'm being picky, but why does the Gmail link in the calendar page goto the http Gmail site and not the Https version? In fact Google Talk does that too.
Even Yahoo secure email with https by default.

Security by Obscurity

[pinky99]

Anybody else likes Googles "private" calendar link feature? It's a link with a hash part, which enables someone access to the calendar without any username or password. Google says, that "you should not give away" that link. But that concept at all is complete crazyness!

Re:Security by Obscurity

[Tom]

Not really. If it's a good hash, then it's just as if not more secure than a username/password combo. From a security POV, there's no difference between

http://blabla.com?user=dummy&pass=dumbone

and

http://blablab.com?hash=3ebf71dc0135c7927da8fc55a2 fbe782

So that's not the point. And don't say anything about POST, please, POST is not any more secure than GET, the only people it hides anything from are the dumber half of the AOL users.

Tell me more about yourself

[parascott]

Hi! I'm from Google!
We'd like some more personal information about yourself
and your associates and your company and your business transactions
and your...........

Just enter everything for us here and here and.....

Remember: We fight evil.........

They're right you know.......

Am I the only one scared of this?

[minkie]

They already know about everything I search for. If I let them, they would also know about every usenet article I read, and have all my email too, but I'm not willing to give them that. And now, I can add to the list of things I could let them know about me who I have appointments to see, and when. Sure, why not? Perhaps next we'll be seeing Google Bank, Google Dating Service, Google Medical Records, Google Credit History, Google TV, Google Phone Company? All services supplied for free, just let them own everything there is to know about you.

Re:Am I the only one scared of this?

[caffeination]

That's like being scared that Domino's knows what pizza you like. How do you expect them to know when and what to deliver to you unless you call them and give them the information? It's fairly important for them to pay attention to the terms people use, just as Domino's has to be aware of what pizzas are popular.

The alternative is that after you type in the terms, they return a page saying "Lalalalala we're not listening! We care about our users' privacy!" Instead, the choice of whether or not to make the information exchange is left to the individual.

Re:iCal!?!?

[pldms]

iCal is a calendaring file standard.

Well strictly speaking icalendar (rfc 2445) is the standard, but (as with vcalendar) it's a bit of a mouthful. iCal (to me) is Apple's software, but ical is the standard.

Import does not work properly...

[JTFritz]

I have exported from Outlook a CSV of my appointments and imported them into Google Calendar and all of my appointments have been shifted 3 or 4 hours ahead. I am in the Eastern Timezone, and I'm assuming this is a timezone conversion issue.

Anyone else have a similar problem?

Big Brother will know your schedule

[foolish_to_be_here]

Someone has to bring this up. Do you really want the Justice Department getting court orders from Google to hand over everyones calendars so they can go on another fishing trip? Or, just think of the data mining potential for Advertisers. They are probably really wetting their chops on this one. Use a DavMod calendar on a descrete server. Other wise you are just asking for trouble.

Re:Big Brother will know your schedule

[caffeination]

Or maybe you're asking not to be a lonely paranoid recluse.

It's a social calendar: You put some stuff up, make it viewable to your friends, then check their calendar to see when they get out of class so you can call them.

The internet isn't the place to be plotting your coup d'etat anyway.

Google Calendar Hotkeys

[KrugalSausage]

I think that most slashdotters love hotkeys, so here ya go:

Some Google Calendar hot keys:

a - Agenda view

c - Create event

d - Day view

j and k - forward and back on days/weeks/months

n and p - next and previous, same as j/k

m - month view

q - quick create event, can add date and time and info and it will be added accordingly. I particularly like how it doesn't force the calendar view to focus on the new event. (e.g. april 14 breakfast at tiffanys 03:00)

s - calendar settings

x - 'next four days' view

/ and ? - both highlight the search input field, but add a / or ? to the beginning

(on a side note, is there a hotkey for firefox that automatically highlights the input field on a viewed page?)

Re:Submitter waited for this?

[KrugalSausage]

Are you serious?

The yahoo interface doesn't even compete with google's.

First there are no hotkeys, and to add an event, you specificially have to click on the number/date (waste of time).

e.g. In the month view, do you like having to click the number 13 to add an event (mind you that a new page loads) or do you like clicking anywhere inside the box, and having an instant prompt, as in google's?

I could go on and on...

Now, I do agree that there has been a lot of 'fanboyisms' with google here on slashdot, but you really picked a bad example by bringing up yahoo calendar.

Tag level sharing

[revery]

The one thing that I really, really like about 30boxes is that you can set tags on events and specify permission to people at the tag level. If Google implemented this feature, I'd seriously consider switching to it. Interface-wise, I think they have 30boxes beat (at least, day view, month view,etc)

Just my 2 cents...

Missing features wishlist

[retrosteve]

First thing I missed, which will make it impossible to import existing calendars:

* No to-do's. All events must have a start and end time.

Anyone else want to add a wish?

Re:Missing features wishlist

[VeganBob]

Google would make a note of that request, but even they don't have a to-do list on their calendar. Sorry.

Re:Submitter waited for this?

[shokk]

I'll wait for SyncML support. I need this to work with my Treo, so it's Yahoo and Intellisync for now. Plus Yahoo has that cool Day Planner widget to go with it. But given RSS output, any RSS reader will be able to act as a day planner, and there is an RSS Yahoo widget.

Re:Not quite "live"

[agallagh42]

How do I export my Google Calendar data?

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer. py?answer=37111&topic=8566

Re:that's why

[cwernli]

https://mail.google.com/mail remains https even after login (should work anywhere except in the UK, but maybe even there).

Re:Not quite "live"

[probbka]

If you select "weekly", checkboxes for the days of the week come up so you can customize.