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.

Comments

Mayan

[bj8rn]

No doubt about it.

Offline

[Mattygfunk1]

I've got a sexy Drew Barrymore calander which works for me.

iCal

[generic-man]

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. :)

Integration

[thsths]

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.

None do what is required to displace Exchange.

[Shayde]

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?"

Pencil and paper

[schngrg]

Pencil and paper :-)

Re:Pencil and paper

[ChaoticCoyote]

You beat me to it...

I just spent two weeks working and exploring in São Paulo, Brasil (my home is in Florida). I've never been to São Paulo before, and had a rather complex schedule of work and touristing, all managed with a couple of print-outs and old-fashion pen-and-paper notes. No PDA, no GPS, a borrowed cell phone just for emergencies, my laptop secured at the company offices. I did have a real (and decent quality) magentic compass in my watch, just to make certain I didn't get turned around.

I never worried about finding an internet terminal, or having my tech stolen, or carrying flashy stuff to identify me as a "rich" American. No worries about batteries, either.

I love my tech as much as the next geek, but I'm a believer in the right amount of tech for the job at hand. Sometimes, paper and pen are all that's needed, and the tech just gets cumbersome or disracting.

The command line tool "remind"

[Florian]

...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.

None

[Crouty]

Which do you prefer?

None of them. Calendar entries are by definition personal and I do not trust any company enough, especially ones that offer the service without charge. It would be different if calendar entries were stored in encrypted form (which would require a client, but that could be done with JavaScript, too). Before you call me paranoid: Personal user data gets abused a lot and besides I really have done well without an online calendar until now, so there is no real need to use one for me.

Gmail integration

[jdbartlett]

Gmail does not integration (or I haven't figure out how to switch it on).

I may be able to help you here! According to Gogle:

Gmail Integration
Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, and you can add those events to your calendar with just a couple of clicks

More here:

Gmail integration
Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, so when you get emailed about an event, you can add it to Google Calendar with just a couple clicks. Look for the Google Calendar links on the right side of your Gmail window.

It'd be neat if iCal/Apple Mail had a feature like Gcal's Gmail integration.

Re:I want a calendar with no boxes

[Sarbandia]

Have you tried kiko's upcoming view? It's exactly what you're asking for. As a Kiko developer, I made sure that we had a list.