Just had a look at the shiney Google Calendar and really like what I see. Clean, simple, intuitive and fast (much faster and a bit more easier to use than Yahoo! Calendar IMHO). Lots of AJAX goodness, but where it counts.
Killer features include being able to create more than one calendar, share calendars with others, get calendar data via iCal or XML, and importing data from other calendars. My only issue at this stage is that it seems that you can’t sync with other applications, which for me is important right now, and might be the feature that would prevent me from using it fully. Integration with GMail is apparently on the way (from the Calendar help pages), and when that does come along I think it may be a very compelling option.
Tristan has a good screengrab and similiar comments. I’m sure there are loads more out there if you looked.
If you have a Google Account and you’re hankering for a Calendar solution, then it’s definitely worth a look.
All of this is forcing me to re-consider why I need / use Outlook? Would be interested to hear if anyone has got any good ideas as to why I should carry on using it over something as good as this?
Yup i agree with you about the sync functionality. I have to be able to sync my mobile with my calendar and contacts. As soon as this is done i can start to migrate all my stuff off outlook. Another winner for google - nice one!
Well, one of the biggest reasons to still use outlook (or any sort of desktop mail/calendar application) is to be able to work offline. It’s something we take for granted these days (being online all the time), but if you think about it, having *nothing* available to you offline is a real pain.
Hey Tristan
Yup, completely agree with you, and if I think about it, that’s the reason I still use a desktop app. I spose you have to either accept that you then have to be chained to your desk and thus the internet to have access to your mail and calendar, or not. I prefer not to at this stage, but I imagine the engineers at Google are happy with that.
It’s weird right now - MSFT could learn a lot and could (re-)create a desktop app that has the same simplicity and ease of use as Google Mail and Calendar, and at the same time, Google could land more end users if they offered a sync option that enabled me to use my desktop app and then go online when necessary to use their web app. I like choice.
I think that overall though, the killer functionality is integration. Outlook is neatly integrated, if not a littlle bloated, wheras Google’s apps are starting to get there but are not integrated enough yet.
The new Yahoo! Ajaxy interface is as much integrated as a web app could be (I reckon), and Yahoo! offers a sync option, so that’s why I’m sticking with them for the moment
if and when Google offers sync, I’ll re-evaluate.