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What is the Best Calendar?
An anonymous reader writes "In the flurry of AJAX applications being put to market, Google's new calendar has been getting quite a bit of attention. But being drowned out in this media blitz is Kiko, a startup from Paul Graham's Y Combinator program, along with spongecell, Trumba, Yahoo! calendar, and 30boxes. Which do you prefer?" Update: 04/16 14:55 GMT by Z : YCombinator link fixed.
No doubt about it.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
I've got a sexy Drew Barrymore calander which works for me.
http://webcalendar.sourceforge.net/ It's stable and it does everything a web calendar should do.
I like iCal. Of all the calendars listed, iCal works the best when I'm in an airport and I don't want to spend $8 for Internet access during a 1-hour layover. :)
For more information, click here.
Like *NIX, it just works.
Lunar all the way!
Monstar L
(Paul Graham (is a ((software patent) troll)) wanabee)
I would prefer any calender that integrates properly with my email client. Why is that so difficult? If I receive an invitation (from Outlook Express or Evolution or what not), I want to be able to accept it right there, without saving it first and then importing it into the calender.
Mozilla Calendar cannot do it, Yahoo Mail fails the test, even Gmail does not integration (or I haven't figure out how to switch it on). The only program that really does this is evolution (and of course Outlook). For all the other, it should be back to the drawing board.
fix the link to google calender, its calendar.google.com
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I prefer a 3-tier calendar, with standard presentation protocols in the UI layer (iCal, vCal, etc), arbitrary logic in the logic layer, and any storage server I want in the storage layer (RDBMS, filesystem, etc). Each in a separate component, with standard interfaces. I like Open-Xchange, open source, Java, Postgres, many APIs. But even OX has problems, like a contacts DB ghettoized in a separate BerkeleyDB storage layer for its OpenLDAP server, rather than storing it in the same Postgres. All these apps should have completely discrete components, with minimum functional redundancy, and easily addable objects (in Java, Perl, C/C++, whatever) that can access every API and dataflow. Since there are so many calendar clients, calendaring needs that utility the most.
--
make install -not war
I discovered some of the months have an extra day! Yes, 31 days! And February only has 28, except for (strangely) some years when it has 29! Sloppy coding on Google's part.
I've been hammering through this problem for the last 5 years, trying to find a group scheduling and calendaring application that has the capabilities of Exchange. It's important to note that there is a big difference between 'calendaring' apps (such as 30boxes and Yahoo Calendar and the like), and 'scheduling', where an interactive application can review a persons or groups schedule, and then add things to their calendar.
As far as I've been able to tell, nothing does the group scheduling other than Exchange in any decent form. The best most can do is publish ICS files into a public server, and then make them available for public browsing (say, via phpicalendar), or available for remote subscription (which Evolution, et al supports).
The golden calf for opensource would be an application that supports client-server group calendaring and scheduling, with PDA synchronizing, and multi-platform support. The only thing even remotely moving in this direction is CalDAV, which AFAICT, is moving at a glacial pace.
Until this problem is resolved, there is no defense against "Why don't we just use Exchange for this?"
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
Pencil and paper :-)
The original AJAX calendaring tool.
seems so to me.
While the calendar lovers are looking through this thread:
Does anyone know of a free ajaxish calendaring component that I could plug into a web application that I'm developing? I need it to be able to schedule events in a fairly friendly way, but that's about it. So mostly I'm just looking for something that can give me some decent GUI -- display a given time period in month or week format, allow for some click-creating of new events, moving events with drag-n-drop, etc. I'll handle all the back end.
All of the calendars posted in the original article are built into other heavyier web sites. Even the Sourceforge webcalendar is built on top of PHP, which makes it not useful for me.
Thanks for any info
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
...that start with "As our 31337 /. r34d3Rz might know, Google's new XYZ service has caught quite some media attention, but what about the similar services from ABC, DEF, GHI and so on?".
/.)
Everything Google, or what???!!
(seriously, stop that darn surreptitious advertising for http://www.google.com/ on
Even though it has a terrible UI, I find that Outlook 2003 is the best calendar/task manager program I've ever worked with. You can do a lot with it if you know where to look. Plus, it syncs with my Palm, which is an absolute must for my needs. Yahoo! Calendars almost works, but not quite well enough. Besides, desktop apps are faster than AJAX, and you don't have to worry about the server being down when you need to check your schedule. I want to like 30boxes and Google Calendar, but they just aren't powerful enough for my needs.
Kiko is the only other app that's pretty good from this perspective - it has options to turn off the sidebars and such making it configurable to avoid clutter.
My sig has been answered.
Ah, and while we're at it, I'm looking for an event calender for a small group of people. Currently we're using yahoo groups, but it's calender has troubles with repeating events, randomly it sends or does not send the e-mails for these events, which is pretty disturbing.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
- works on my PC
- works on my Phone
- works from my USB stick
- works from any webbrowser
- works on a text console
so front-end is irrelevant, as long as it can read and write iCal
...is seriously the best calendaring solution I have come across. It provides a mini languages for recording virtually every possible repetition and exception patterns of recurring appointments (next to storing unique appointments of course), prints out reminders or tabular calendars on the terminal or outputs nicely formatted postscript calendars. And all its functionality is packed into a lean 100k executable. If you don't like noting appointments in its markup language, you can use the program "wyrd" as an interactive, terminal-visual frontend. "remind" is a BSD program and part of all free BSD and Linux distributions. If you install it on a server, you use it via ssh. Implementing a web frontend should be trivial, too.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Even though it has a terrible UI, I find that Outlook 2003 is the best calendar/task manager program I've ever worked with. You can do a lot with it if you know where to look.
Plus, it syncs with my Palm, which is an absolute must for my needs. Yahoo! Calendars almost works, but not quite well enough.
Besides, desktop apps are faster than AJAX, and you don't have to worry about the server being down when you need to check your schedule. I want to like 30boxes and Google Calendar, but they just aren't powerful enough for my needs.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Outlook
This AJAX stuff sucks.
Its not the best but we are pretty much stuck with it in the western world. And its much more accurate than the lunar based calendars like the Islamic and Jewish ones.
The chinese calendar or other lunar calendar needs no adjustment like our stupid one
My phone is the device I'll have on me all the time, so it is important that I can get the calendar onto the phone (Symbian based).
...
Typically this means I enter the details onto the phone, because it's nigh on impossible to sync this phone with my Mac, where I would use iCal (the application, not the protocol) to manage things. Maybe if there was a way to sync the phone over a web connection with any of the online calendaring services
Generally though I try and remember the important stuff myself.
Of the web services I've used, none are that good. Google Calendar is very beta. Yahoo!'s is rather basic although I haven't used it recently. None of them really integrate with the other services offered either. It'll probably be a couple of years before any of the companies turns their email + calendar + groups offerings into an integrated web interface.
Isn't today the Chianti and Chocolate Rabbit Day?
My opinion is that it doesn't much matter which calendar you you. I've tried a bunch of them (Google Calendar, Palm Desktop, Sunbird, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Groupwise, Plaxo, etc...) and the problem isn't typically with a given calendar's capabilities. The problem is that they don't work with each other, especially if you want to use a PDA. Palm Desktop is incompatible with Outlook which is incompatible with Sunbird, etc... Most third party software seems to be written with Outlook/Exchange in mind. iCal is a nice "standard" but it has a minority of marketshare and hence doesn't get enough developer attention. Furthermore, MS isn't about to open up Outlook or Exchange to help matters. Your employer problably uses a different calendar than mine which makes life difficult if you are a consultant or simply have chosen a different calendar for your own use than your company's standard.
I have a Palm Tungsten T3 but it's not very useful because I have to maintain 2-3 incompatible calendars to keep it useful. Import/Export is simply not a solution unless you are changing calendars and dumping the old one. Google Calendar is nice but it doesn't efficiently exchange data with my desktop calendar, work calendar and pda. It's got potential but but we'll see where it goes. Few/none of the calendar makers have shown any inclination to work together so far (customer lock in and all that) so I'm not optimistic.
For that really important appointment, a yellow sitcker on the edge of the monitor saves the day.
i personally like my Sports Illustrated calendar
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Actually it's http://calendar.google.com/ :)
If you insert just "calendar.google.com" into the anchor tag, then you'll end up with current URL...
I've been playing around with Airset lately, and it's not bad.
http://www.airset.com/
Works everywhere without needing to find a hot spot. Gives me notifications when things are due. Integrates with contacts.
To me AJAX is just bending over backwards to make a broken architecture seem a little less broken.
It staggers me as to how people can think this stuff is so wonderful. AJAX is the embodiment of everything thats wrong with HTML as an application development medium. It's basically architecture overkill to accomplish the most rudimentary functionality for a more traditional native client side application.
Is this really the way of the future ?! Enourmous amounts of client side javascript, overcomplicated html ? Why ? Just so we can browse to it over the web ? Surely there are better ways.
open-xchange.org
...
l ine.htm
Open-Xchange(TM) is an collaboration and integration server enviroment with a continuous right management for modules and objects. The product is based on existing components like a web server, mail server, directory server, database
There are several interfaces (like WebDAV/XML interfaces) coming along with this software.
Try it out on http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/on
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That way im not tied to any 'service' being up and alive, be it pay or free.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well I currently use the Gregorian which seems to be the standard. Anyone care to comment on better options (if there are any)?
would be a simple calendar with ical/webdav/caldav-syncing on desktop mozilla sunbird / calendar plugin and syncml-syncing to my syncml-capable cellphone. Would there happen to be an open-source solution to that? (No, calling open-xchange simple is an insult to us all simpletons.)
Synchonization is an ugly hack that needs to be retired. It makes shared calendars almost impossible.
Yahoo! is the best option I have found to date, that has a useable smart phone option. They at least provide a WAP interface. Overall, though, I am still looking for something better.
I really like the concepts and general UI in the Google Calendar but, until they have a WAP interface or similar, it does not fit the bill. The same goes for 30boxes and some other promising solutions.
So far, the only one that allows to sync my Palm Calendar is airset (http://www.airset.com/). That's the only I love :-)
Beta is better than VHS. Steam was, at one point, better than internal combustion. Notes is better than Exchange. Better and who's going to win are two very very different questions. In a world (calendaring) where interoperability and volume will take the day - where all know whwre this one is going.
What I want on my webcalendar:
If anyone knows of a solution out there that fits my needs, let me know. If any developpers are reading this, please take note.
Slashdot: news from nerds.
It's not ajax compliant (yea, maybe a good thing) but take a test drive
of this one:
http://www.skybuilders.com/timelines/
Yes, cat ate my tongue, "comments.pl"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
hard to tell if there's a real difference between any of them. i am switching to google's version because it integrates with my gmail account. but the rest look great, however it's hard to tell, apart from eyecandy, how they're substantially different. it's a calendar for god's sake!
Playboy Calendar
Back when my PocketPCs still worked, I'd use Outlook 2002 (or was it 2000?). I liked being able to print out a one-page monthly calendar for my luddite friends. However; I didn't like the lack of control over "hiding" (rather, not hiding) personal or non-important events.
Since my PocketPCs cacked out (the batteries would run out because I primarily used my laptop), I started relying on my previously-misused brain, and countless miscellaneous pieces of scrap paper ("lists") that I kept in my pockets. Now I rely on my cell phone. I may have also used my laptop, but it is now non-mobile.
What I like about my cellphone is that it comes with me everywhere, it is always charged up. However, I like my cell phones to be cell phones, not cameras, video players, or any of that other crap (actually, it does have a flashlight, but I had to transfer all data from my old cell phone to it manually). So the calendar function on my Nokia is limited, and I can only view events one day at a time. However, I know it's always nearby, so I don't have to be at a computer to put something in. Also, I know it will remind me of important events; the PocketPCs were picky when it came to whether they would automatically turn on to remind me of something.
However, I'll be checking out the Google calendar.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Sounds to me like your problem is; you can't be bothered learing how to use a computer.
Spongecell is the only calendar that has a read/write API http://spongecell.com/api_info/ and an iPod sync tool http://spongecell.com/info/ipod_sync/. Spongecell's Natural Language engine has fared very well in shootouts against 30 boxes, GCal and Kiko.
The major problem that I have with one of the on-line calendars is that your information is stored on someone else's server. Although it is unlikely that anyone would use this information, the potential is there. Not that I'm worried if someone finds out that I'm going to a baseball game next week, but the principal of the thing; I don't want anyone... not some hacker, and not the government... having access to my schedule.
Instead, I am using Portable Sunbird (Portable Sunbird) on a UBS Drive that goes everywhere I do. I plug the drive into any UBS port, and have instant access to my calendar (not to mention Email and Browser Bookmarks using Portable Thunderbird and Portable Firefox)... all without leaving my personal information on the computer I am using at the time.
You will all be killed by the will of all merciful Allah.
My schedule isn't busy enough to require one. Either that or my memory is really good.
My office has been using MeetingMaker, but PeopleCube refuses to sell us more seats unless we buy the new version of the product along with maintenance. So in all likelihood we'll be migrating to Exchange later this year.
It's really a shame that the FOSS community hasn't offered any viable alternatives - it doesn't seem like such an incredible task to get the most basic scheduling functionality. I'd make a feeble attempt at building the whole thing myself if I had the time...
kiko ... nuff said =)
"Nae Kin! Nae Quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!"
Does anyone know if there exists a site which would provide a fairly comprehensive comparison of calendaring / groupware / collaboration software such as http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ provides for CMS solutions?
. Ergo sum cogito - Yoda
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Really. We don't yet have real groupware features, like shared calendars for resources, though we're working on those. But if you create a calendar for your group, we give you multiple ways to get it onto your users' calendars. If they use Kiko, any invitations sent out will automatically appear on their calendars, but even if they aren't Kiko users they'll still get invitations via email and be able to view an RSS feed. And our email/reminder send is now very stable. So try it out, and if you think there's a missing feature, let us know and we'll add it.
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
Eventually Google will tie everything together. This is going to be a singlke logon uber platform where everything (for the most part hopefully) can be done from my Google logon and the knwoledge of who I am will be properly pieced and known and I will be added to the greater world of who we are.They talk about the online OS. I am nearing it myself. i have a few programs on my computer that I use completely removed from the internet...and then there is my personal document collection, my warez, and all the digital media...I think we will always have some sort of personal hand held storage (all our lives on a holographic cube that only works when our fresh DNA is there...sigh)...but I think we will also operate a lot more online.
I want to contribute to the great mind that is being created within all of Googles computer. Maybe some rogue hacker who has created the virus of sentient life in computers will hacks google systems through some sickeningly simple but plentiful way of spreading. And then...just maybe... a benevolent computer god will rule the masses into a mathematical utopia of scientific and human renasaince...till some fucker trips the plug and we start killing each other again.
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
I am looking for a solution that has all information that I want in one place.
- Todo list
- contacts
- calendar
- interface to an imap server
- RSS feedreader
Syncing to a phone or whatever should be possible.
I don't trust free services so I want to have this on my own server.
Currently, I am looking at Horde http://www.horde.org/ which has all applications that I want. I had a few problems getting it to work (Javascript errors in the Administrators account) but it looks promising
Try Airset - it syncs your Outlook calender to its web calendar so you don't have to do so manually.
- midtoad
Umwelt schützen, Fahrrad benützen
It's incredible how a lot of companies are going behind a very simple piece of software like it were gold, for Google and Yahoo is an understanable integration but some are full based commercially on these calendar applications.
:-)
Just wait some months to see something better on SourceForge for general and private consumption.
Vote for Ajax as the buzzword of the year, and don't forget beyond all these buzzwords powered companies what you see are just Turing machines
Think outside the box. Calendars, email, etc. are useful tools, but it'd be a mistake to try to do everything exactly the way Microsoft does. For an alternative approach, you might want to try Citadel instead. Open source, AJAX-enabled, and talks to lots of client packages out there. And it doesn't try to be a clone of Microsoft's offering -- instead, it starts with the approach of helping your user community to work/play/quack *as* a user community instead of as a bunch of disparate users who happen to be occasionally sending data back and forth. Give it a try.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
ok, first of all, the original post din't specify a "web" solution, or even that it be multi user or what os it was on....
... and its not a all in one, single shot done deal kinda of package. it takes some tweaking.
... etc.. etc.. etc.. and for being a part of the "google goodness" with its simplicity over glitz... there are occasions where they may have gone to far.. at least in the config/settings area.
.. the
so to that end, I live and die by broderbund/riverdeep's Calendar Creator at work. have for at least five year now.
the plus side: flexible recurring events, multi day events span the day cells in month view (simple, but rare and effective), integrated contacts/addressbook, supports mutliple views with different categories in different views, very flexible layout, cut/paste/drag/etc.. can print to pdf/image files.
the negatives: windows only, doubtful if its really still being actively developed, I hate the publication/dev companies, no reminder system, not multi-user capable at all, no email integration, no scheduling/meeting/appointment invite system. kinda poor import/export.
now, as to the various webscal options.
yes, webcal by knudsen is probably the most well rounded and function standalone calendar... but as other posts have pointed out... it looks and feels "cludgy"
kiko - love it. recommend it. their "natural language" entry is cool. more flexible and accurate than googles. their developers are responsive and intelligent. lacks an integrated email system, but still has a functional invite/meeting system that doesn't force all you peers into the same mail sys. has reminders to email/sms/pop-ups. I like pretty much everything about it in fact. if only they can get that multiday spanning day cells in month view that Calendar Creator and Google have. otherwise, I really really like them.. my other request of them would to offer something like gmail's hosting of your domaim mail. so that again, you're not tied into moving all your calendaring peers to another system, just using your existant accounts. maybe just an imap/pop3 interface to any existant server, with some jscripting glitter and magic for calendaring interaction? I also have to mention that I like their addressbook. if onyl it were acessible to an email client. but i like how it doesn't force fields upon you, and it doesn't leave empty ones sitting there staring you in the face.. makes everything more condensed and pleasant to view.
google calendar- also like it. it has all the normal google strengths, many of kikos. in fact, I'd probably be more infavor of gcal over kiko if i had met it first. but I'm not fond of its pretty much insisting that your calendaring peers also be gmail users. I'm torn as to what I think about the multi calendar interface. I like being able to divide up my life like that and haev separate public/private settings per calendar, but still, within each calendar (or across all of them) I'd still like some lable/tag/categories feature. and while they have the cell spanning feature for multiday events in month view... I big plus- its only for events that aren't using times. big downer. especially in week view, if the event goes from 3 to 4 for 3 days in a row.. why shouldn't that event entry span those dates in those times? I also have a beef with gcal's print output. nasty. I like the overlaying ajaxy events on the screen, why can't i have them in print? Why does everything print across two pages? why can't I click print, then select landscape and a single page?
big point of concern and contention with both kiko/gcal
how are they going to make their money? as of my last use of gcal. didn't see any ads. kiko. no ads. yet. subscription for features? which features? how much? subscription for no ads? again, how much? its my one beef with all these "beta" programs.. they lure you in while things are sweet.. but then BAM, once you've invested your data and time into the software/package/service/whatever
I didn't see Zimbra mentioned here, and it is possibly the best internet calendar that there presently is.
I haven't explored all of the available calendars, but I've tried a few. My biggest problem with all of the ones I've tried thus far is that they try to replicate the 'boxes in a grid' design of paper calendars. I would prefer to see someone come up with a calendar that uses a list view, so I can always see by default a four-week view, with all of the dates laid out vertically.
I would find it much more efficient to look at dates that are stacked vertically, so I can scroll up or scroll down through the year. Weeks could be delineated by simple horizontal lines, and months by lightly shaded background colors.
Boxes truncate long words and are particularly inefficient for screen display, because the resolution of computer screens is so crappy compared to the resolution and flexibility of pen and paper. Providing a single long horizontal space for all the information relating to a day would be much more advantageous.
Adding more and more features to a flawed paradigm is simply annoying to me. Give me a layout that works, before adding all kinds of Ajax. Think outside the box (sorry, I had to say it).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I wanted something simple that would fit on a Google Personalized Home Page - so I wrote the Month-A-Majig
It's doesn't have a lot of the advanced features of other calendars - but it also doesn't have the overhead. I've had a lot of positive feedback, and I'm always open to suggestions.
Good god man, you can't expect people to learn an entire programming language just to crack a joke; but it would explain emacs :-o
After trying PDA's, online calendars (yahoo, gmx...) I switched to a pen and a Moleskine diary. Always available, no need for backups, no power source of internet needed, no crashes. It's great.
...when they support Opera. It gets no love. :(
Honestly now that I have spent enought time on slashdot, I want the slashdot style interface for my personal calendar, slashdot green and all. Sure you need a few different icons, and a link that says "tomorrows news".
Another thing I want is some trickier scheduling, If I want to water my plant every three days, it's what I want, If I want to feed my cat every ten days, I want to be able to schedule it, not that a cat would let you pull that kind of thing. If I feel like knowing when a full moon is out and the crazies are out, the calendar should be good about it.
And it should bug me on my cell when I haven't checked my calendar in a reasonable timeframe. Oh and I want it to only do it for things I mark as important, and possibly set some things to send a text reminder without a warning.
A scheduling agent would be nice once they get the schedules happy. Nothing to freakishly hard, but nothing that really does it for me yet.
Storm
I used Lotus Notes at work from 1997-2005 and it works great for calendaring for individuals or groups
The slashdot troll crowd is a very cosmopolitan bunch, so perhaps someone has heard of/built/used an app like I'm about to describe. If so, TIA... I need a calendar app that allows users to create events (appointments, say) that must fall under strict criteria and flag exceptions if a user attempts to violate the criteria. This is best explained in the form of an employee time off calendar. At the beginning of the year, admins can setup employee accounts, with total # of vacation, personal hours they're allowed, as well as %coverage needed on particular days and the like. Then, throughout the year, the associate can login to the calendar, enter timeoff requests, and be greeted with, "You may have March 15-29 off! Enjoy yourself." Or, "December 25 is a restricted day - the company must have 98% coverage that day. You cannot have this day off. However, your supervisor can override this exception with her password." Or, "Your request for April 12 off is denied: you have no more vacation hours left." Has anyone seen/used/built such a calendar? TIA, chewmanfoo
I'd say the Julian calendar is most logical?
;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Calendar
Currently the time is: 2453842.03565
Libertas in infinitum
I've been happy with it. It probably doesn't support all of the same functionality, but it seems to have been around before a lot of these.
FULL Disclosure: I'm an Apple Guy. I don't know the best, but the absulte worst is Apple's iCal. If use it for business with a full schedule, it's barely usable. It's obvious Jobs has never used iCal outside of a script in a demo. I'd write a long list as to why, but I am too tired doing it when I sent Apple feedback after 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 Because I won't use Micosoft's solution with their file format lock-in, and because I like the ease of iSync and .mac, I am stuck using iCal.
I've just accepted iCal and its 1992 calendaring functionality as one of the costs of being a Mac guy. And as for 10.5, I have now given up all hope that it will be any better.
With the prevalence of these online applications, will computers ever be reduced to simply basic OS and a web browser, with everything else done and stored online?
until they have a synchronization app for outlook (so that I can synch with my cell phone), they are all useless to me. At least KIKO says coming soon....
I really like Plans, http://www.planscalendar.com/
I need to investigate the aforementioned OpenExchange more thoroughly, but in the meanwhile... I run an Exchange Server instance (have to since I develop against the MS stack for a living), and though it's neither free as in speech nor free as in beer, it does cover your criteria list pretty well: Web interface, Smartphone support, scheduling & schedule sharing, server-push based synchronization, etc. Until OSS finds a way to put up a solid, interface-compatible Exchange substitute (including scheduling, invitations & reminders), the various $5-$10/month account hosting services are an option I suppose.
I'm still hoping for a viable replacement myself, of course.
Pi Ran Out
After trying a LOT of calendars that integrate with both iCal and Windows, I'd have to say Google's new calendar comes closest. I tried running my own DAV server to publish my calendar on the local net, but the only Windows calendar I could find that could read iCal format was Mozilla's, and asking Windows users to switch to Mozilla wasn't feasible.
With Google's calendar, I can export my appts. from iCal, then publish it back to iCal users and also give Windows users the web address of my calendar, satisfying everyone.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/04/google-calendar -vs-yahoo-calendar.html
We've seen Google Finance quickly grab marketshare from Yahoo Finance because of a more interactive interface. The same could be said about Google Calendar. Though both Yahoo and Google offer similar set of features, the interface of Google Calendar is miles ahead of Yahoo Calendar.
I use Mobical because it uses the SyncML protocol that my cellphone uses. I can sync all my PIM data (contacts, calendar, notes) easily. Still waiting for one of these web2.0 calendars to take advantage of SyncML.
"Aren't you going to get into costume?"
"I never get out of it."
-- Tom Stoppard (R&G Are Dead)
Kiko doesn't seem to have anything over the other AJAX calendars coming out. Looks to me like they were aiming too low. I'm not even sure who would buy them at this point, given that Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! all already have their own systems ready.
MSN Calendar and EssentialPIM are my favorites
I have yet to find one that suits my needs, yes, even the all-holy Google Calendar.
Here's what I demand:
AJAX - Without it, a web calendar is as ineffective and nasty as creating ASCII art in VI.
Easy recurrence settings - I want to easily set an appointment for every wednesday without filling out a three-page questionnaire on the topic.
Right-click support - When I want to do something, I often look for a right-click context menu to do it in. Google, I'm ashamed of you. I really thought you'd be ahead of the game on this one.
Custom increments - My day-view and appointment setup can be displayed in hours or in 30-second increments, it's completely up to me how granular my scheduling will be. Google, again, I really hope you're listening.
Recurrence Deletion - When I delete an instance of a recurring appointment, I want the default action to be "delete just this one" instead of "delete all occurrences," and I don't even want to be prompted to delete all. I'm a big boy, and I can "delete all occurrences" from a context menu if I so desire.
A "current time" bar - A line running across my day-view, showing the current time.
Dynamic Updates - I want to be able to leave my calendar open ALL DAY without any reloading nonsense, and I want to be able to watch my appointments slide up the day-view, and past the "current time" bar.
Audio Event Notification - Using a simple Macromedia Flash SWF as an engine, a sound could be played to notify me of events. This is vital for me, since I'm usually in front of the computer, so SMS notification is a bit ridiculous.
Location Awareness - This is a big one. The calendar will keep a list of locations I've used in the past. It knows where they are geographically. When it sees two concurrent appointments in different locations, then it calculates the driving time between them, adds in a user-determined amount of "slack time" (10 minutes?) and sends my notification THEN. Basically, it knows when I have to leave and alerts me to the appointment WHEN I MUST BEGIN MY COMMUTE, not 10 minutes before it starts. The calendar should keep one location as "home," and assume that I must be there if I haven't had any appointments for a few hours, and calculates commute time from that location accordingly. A nice side effect of this features is that the calendar can easily display driving directions for you, or a list of routes for the day.
Smart text parser - Google got it right on, here, although theirs could use some smartening-up. I want to be able to say "dinner at parent's house this friday"
Countdown - I'm mathematically disadvantaged, so I especially have trouble figuring out how soon I'm supposed to leave for an appointment, with the AM/PM shuffle and the strange 60-based (instead of 100-based) numbers. I want a running countdown to my next appointment, seconds included. I also want to be able to mouseover any event and see a countdown to it. I've already written a greasemonkey script to supplement Planzo.com's calendar with this functionality; but Planzo is a disaster, calendarwise, and I abandoned it for my own sanity.
Aside from this, general ease-of-use and intuitive GUI would be great - I haven't seen a web calendar yet which had successfully tackled those simple concepts.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
I use my Palm (Treo 650) Calendar more than anything. Is the best the coolest or the one you use the most?
On a related note, this would make a great Slashdot poll.
Are there any calendars (other than Outlook) that will also sync with my PDA??
Wow, no one mentioned that yet? You can sure tell this is Geekville.
Online calandering/agenda/productivity software has one major hurdle that must be overcome because they can be widely adopted and replace current offline solutions. That is privacy and trust.
When you use a web app to do anything, the data you send up there is collected and logged, probably indexed and correlated with other information to build a profile. This is done by almost any company, but the matter is especially serious for certain high profile companies, who admit that they may never delete any data. This is powerful stuff that may be used in many ways, some of which the originator of the information may not agree with.
Imagine, they'll know what you search for (possibly identifying the information you are after, interests, hobbies, profession, place of resident, disease... ). They'll know what you send in email, IM and WHO you interact with. With this calendar in use, they'll even know your day to day schedule, potentially understanding what you do, your interaction with other business and people, and where you are at.
Some people may argue that "You should have nothing to worry about unless you are doing something wrong". Well, that is all fine if the values of what is "right" and "wrong" of the company or society controlling your data fits with your morals (they mostly do today). However, things may change, (Japanese Americans in WW2, Jew in Nazi Germany etc... ) and it is dangerous to have that much of your information stored by a 3rd party forever.
Untile the matter of privacy and trust is solved, it will be difficult for the masses, coporate and goverment to adopt online productivity apps to a large degree.
I don't like the way Google Calendar has my entire Gmail contact list in plain HTML in their home page. The contact list is used when inviting others to your events, but this could have been implemented in a more secure way.
Most Google tools are generally better thought out, better engineered, better developed, and simply head and shoulders above the competition. That's not hype, it's simple fact, evidenced by their tools.
... for one simple reason. None of the spiffy AJAX-ified online calendars (and some are quite nice) have the ability to sync wirelessly to a mobile device. Once I got used to having instant, two-way push-syncing between my desktop and my BlackBerry, there's really no going back.
Outlook and Exchange themselves blow. But this is one killer feature that I simply cannot, and do not want to, live without. Unfortunately it's also going to be a tough one for open source or small companies to break into, due to the politics (and financial demands) of wireless hardware and networks these days.
Does anyone have a shared calendar application to recommend (hopefully not hosted by a Web 2.0 startup that won't exist six months from now) that syncs calendar entries with Blackberry ON A MAC?
Maybe this segment is not significant enough for RIM and/or developers to spend time on, but I can't find anything that actually works reliably. Some software syncs contacts, but all seem to balk (or break) on calendars.
Lotus Notes does it and it can manage multiple-time zones including daylight savings.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Yeah, I know, I'm a tool... But Windows Calendar in the Vista Beta is like a nice combo between Apple's iCal and MSFT's own Outlook. And you can publish it to remote locattions.
it's all about sync. i can live without any other individual feature. if i can't sync it with other calendar software, on other devices (palm. outlook. etc.) there's nothing that compels me to use any of these.
I currently rely on my Treo and Yahoo Calendar for my calendaring needs - I enter stuff on the Treo, and my SO and friends can read and/or update my Yahoo Calendar.
I use a very old copy of Outlook as an intermediary to keep them in sync - Treo syncs with Outlook, which then syncs with Yahoo. I never use Outlook for anything other than this purpose, but it's particularly well suited to this task - like it or not, just about everything can sync with Outlook.
I'll be checking out calendar.google.com, now that I've played around with it a bit. It can sync with Outlook (albeit in a clunky manner, at the moment), so it should be fine for me if I decide to go ahead with it. No harm in running Treo+Yahoo+Google, if Outlook is the pipe between all three.
For those of you who *could* use Outlook to solve your problems, but you hate the product or Microsoft, give this approach some thought.
Notes is tough to beat as a group calendaring tool - I'm trying to find a useful way to replicate its functions using other software, and finding it difficult.
- SMS reminders for events - ok, a few others have this, but it's integrated all over the place
- Pure CSS layout - no AJAX, so all pages can be bookmarked. However that means you'll want to use Firefox
- Print envelopes directly from the website - I have never seen another site with this feature
- Timezone integration everywhere - today's meetings are spread around timezones, so it is important to be able to print a calendar or make meetings in any timezone
- A whole bunch of stuff coming in the future which I won't even go into right now.
A lot of these features have not yet been rolled out, but they are in beta. Oh, for those of us blessed with Linux desktops, check out this feature that will be coming soon (as soon as we finish the Windows version of it): scan a business card from your web page13 Month mayan like calandar is best.
the company i work for has just launched whatstheplan.com. the idea is to fill the niche of actually planning events, promoting them and inviting people to come to them. since a lot of these apps have the ability to sync up with vCalendar feeds we can actually integrate with them. it seems like a lot of these calendaring apps aren't too focused on making a really high-quality event planning system. check it out and give it a try next time you plan a party or something.
share-able among the workgroup members, on or off site
cross-platform client support
doesn't live on somebody else's server
Apple could make iCal into this, it wouldn't be that hard. I certainly wouldn't complain if the server only ran on OSX Server.
In the meantime, I recommend MeetingMaker. Rock solid server software for Mac/Windows/Solaris/Linux . Native clients for Mac and Windows, Java clients for anything else. There's even a connector for outlook if you really must....
Open source, superior email client, and first really Exchange competitive application since Netscape calendaring server went the way of the Netscape browser. Supports iCal standard so that it supports Apple iCal client, Palm and all iCal compatable calendaring systems, Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.
Admittedly, I haven't tried every linux distro, but its definately not a part of most of them. Nor is it a part of any BSD.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A large majority of the world already uses it. And no bugs. Except maybe February.
Reviewers have been going on about the natural language functions on Google Calendar, but having run some tests of my own I'm not all that impressed. Pollack Media Group ran a comparison of natural language calendars a while back and I used these same queries to compare the NLP functionality of Google's calendar and Web 2.0 upstart SpongeCell. In almost every instance SpongeCell performed better than GCal:
1. "Media Convention Friday through Sunday"
SpongeCell: Successfully added 3-Day/All Day event
GCal: Failed to add event, time, multiple days
2. "Conference call with Joe Smith monday at 2"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event
GCal: Successfully added event
3. "dinner with Jack and Cindy tonight at 7"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event at 7PM
GCal: Failed, added event at 7AM today (in past)
4. "flight to los angeles departs saturday at 9"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event
GCal: Successfully added event
5. "Call Dave at 10"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event
GCal: Failed, added event at 10AM tomorrow
6. "Arrange convention travel tomorrow"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event
GCal: Successfully added event
7. "Lunch with Jeff tomorrow"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event (at noon)
GCal: Successfully added event (all day)
8. "CSI viewing party tomorrow night"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event (8-9PM)
GCal: Successfully added event (all day)
9. "pick up Zoe for soccer at 4"
SpongeCell: Successfully added event
GCal: Successfully added event
SpongeCell consistently outperformed the NLP translation abilities of Google's calendar.
Seriously, I wish Google would stop spreading themselves thin and just stick to what they do best - putting ads on everything in sight.
There's also http://www.naptaar.com/
Google calendar integrated into Netvibes is my favorite hands down (www.netvibes.com)!
It also syncs Palm devices and cell phones.
I've tried the whole Sunbird thing off an on for over a year, and I give major props to J. Haller for his Portable versions of the mozilla tools. However, Sunbird itself needs major work at the interface level to make it a viable product. It seems to handle the actual iCal (*.ics) format well enough, but the user experience has been sorely lacking for quite some time, and I've not ever noticed much effort thrown into this project that improves upon it in the time I've been watching. Sure, it can be made to work, but it's like you have to learn a series of hoops to jump through to get there... not anything I'd ever dream of getting my wife and/or non-tech-peers to try to understand. Fortunately (for me and my small circle of influence) google calendar is out now and seems to work rather nicely. If they (or someone else) get plugins working for outlook, Mac iSync, etc, I think it really stands a nice chance.
Airset. I haven't seen this one mentioned yet. I got turned onto it by Joel Splosky(sp?). Its pretty nice.
Normal is a setting on a washing machine.
I just love Lotus Notes... and hate IBM for not porting the Notes client to Linux (and for not porting Admin & Developer to Mac OS X)...
...and YES I do know that Notes runs fine under WINE.
--
Lotus Notes is like a woman... you either love it or hate it... and sometimes both at the same time...
Apparently you haven't looked too deeply. In addition to the other obvious alternatives others have suggested, Zimbra http://www.zimbra.com/ does all the group scheduling stuff that exchange does. They've even added resource scheduling recently. Best of all it uses a bunch of great open source projects and glues them together nicely. The "network" version is far, far cheaper than exchange.
My cellphone. It works without an internet connection and fits easily in my pocket.
No, I will not work for your startup
Personaly, the only good I can see in calendars is for oggling at the amazingly sexy Lucy Pinder. Otherwise, they're pretty useless.
I use iCal as I use a mac at work. I then publish it to a site and then link to that in gCal. So if I need to see something and I'm at a computer I can check gCal. If I'm on the road iCal syncs to my iPod so I have everything there. And I have been known to just print out a page or two and stuff it in my wallet