Google Calendar is Live

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1. Brian
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:21 pm

   Oh it’s live and it is very sweet. I have been experimenting with many web-based calendaring apps lately and this is the best of the bunch. I have tried Calendar Hub, Kiko, HipCal and finally settled with 30 boxes. Im my short time playing around with Google Calendar tonight I can tell that it is more stable and much easier to use then those I mentioned. It was so sweet to import my exported 30boxes events right in. I’m glad this finally launched.

2. Alasdair Allan
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

   I agree, my first impression is that it’s very fast, and it looks like the GMail integration is dynamic, if you have a mail that mentions an event, a check box shows up next to the email to say something along the lines of “Do you want to add this event to Google Calendar?”.

   However the lack of support for Safari, typical of Google, is a killer. I like it, but not enough to change browsers…

3. Brian
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:27 pm

   No Safari support BTW. One small thing that is bugging me is the font selection used to display the time of an event on the calendar. On Mac Firefox it is too small and jagged.

4. Tony
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:28 pm

   Google Calendar is yet another big Google dissapointment. Right off the bat I’m finding fields that aren’t editable (like someone didn’t finish testing the application out beofre they made it live) and a lack of features that every other online calendar have. I’m sticking with my Airset for now.

5. Lakisha
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:40 pm

   Awesome! I love the interface, very Google like of course. It’s been very easy to use and it’s user friendly too. Everything is right at my fingertips without the interface seeming cluttered.

6. Nik Cubrilovic
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:42 pm

   Looks like they are aggregating all the public event info and making it searchable etc. Very cool, and something we suspected.

7. Trevor
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 9:52 pm

   Thanks Mike. I like the fact that events are marked “private” by default–not automatically shared with the world out-of-the box.

8. Eric Willis
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 10:04 pm

   Is anyone else getting the following message?:

   ”Calendar is unavailable right now, please try again in a few moments”

   or

   Server Error
   The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

   Even Google has become a victim of the Digg Effect?

   http://www.digg.com/technology.....ng_Tonight

9. Michael Arrington
   

   April 12th, 2006 at 10:06 pm

   Eric - yes, we’re getting that too. Just refresh and it comes back up.

10. Daniel, Rogue Connect
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:06 pm

    I too got those errors Eric. A few moments later, low and behold it’s working.

    I’ve imported my calendar from 30 Boxes to give this baby a shot. Please Google, give us a nice API

11. Eric Willis
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:07 pm

    Working for me now…nevermind…though for a second that had this was on a very small server farm and was overloading with traffic or Google took the service offline. I am in now!!

12. Eric Willis
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    Working for me now…nevermind…thought for a second this was on a very small server farm and was overloading with traffic or Google took the service offline. I am in now!! Looks cool.

13. joeyfish
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    No Tasks!

    Creating new calendars is buggy. I had to sign again to see them.

    Mobile phone notification failed the first time.

    GMail needs a menu to get the calendar.

    Missing public US Holiday Calendar.

    Ok for a public Beta 1.

14. Redford
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    Allow me to drop in RSS ala 30boxes. I loved having my Evoketv.com schedule placed into my calender complete with show descriptions.

15. staul
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:40 pm

    just a quick comment. seems todo/task not yet ready? it’s an intention of missing or in development schedule?

16. Coen Meerbeek
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:46 pm

    My firs impression is brilliant! Slick interface, very fast, easy to use. I only hope that, in the future, there will be some module with Google Pesonalized! Maybe there is and I overlooked?

17. Lo
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

    I think you can access the calendar through iCAL… I’m downloading a patch for MS Outlook 2003 to access the Google Calendar… let’s see if it works.

18. Steve
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:08 pm

    Seems OK, but currently basic. As Joeyfish says, it is missing the obvious: Gmail Integrated? I don’t see an easy way to get from Gmail to Calendar. Am I missing something? Did the Gmail guys forget to activate the link?

    No Tasks?

    Otherwise it’s like having 2 products.

    Steve@Billionaire24.com

19. arjun
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:09 pm

    gcal is looking pretty nice. i’d really like to use it, but my one blocking issue is that I already have my calendar set up in outlook/exchange (through work). sure, I could import my calendar once, but how would I keep everything synchronized? if syncing were easy, they’d have at least one more customer..

20. aaron
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

    This is pretty satisfying. Definitely the first usable product from them in a while.

21. fred
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

    Love to be able to see 3 months on one page.

22. Raj
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:16 pm

    Looks like there is heavy lods on calender service and i am not able to access it form India.

23. Andrew
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:18 pm

    Wow, I can’t believe that the calendar-wanting, Google following community has reached such a size that it’s brought the Google servers to their knees.

    Impressive.

24. Googlist
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:20 pm

    Love this nice service, I was waiting for it!

25. rocky
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:26 pm

    SMS reminders don’t seem to be working.
    Also, SMS reminders appear to be US only (When they do work). A friend in Canada using Rogers pointed that out to me.

    Also, I’m having issues creating new calendars and then being able to see them.
    I logged out and signed-in again and still nothing.

    Finally, I added several items for early next year. Getting to them was not easy.
    Click month forward 9 times or search by day only

26. Baher Al Hakim
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:30 pm

    It’s down as of now, I guess I’ll have to wait.

27. t.tiger
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

    Sticking with AirSet, syncing with my Palm is easy. Testing Backpack. Cool!

28. Keith Dsouza
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:40 pm

    Cool stuff, thanks for the info.

    I have taken this article on my site linked back to here.

29. Orli Yakuel
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:40 pm

    Very simple and clean, I like it.

    It’s seems to me that cl2 covered just about all the functionality that users need in a calendar.
    So many features included.

    Really, what more are we going to need?

30. antigoog
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:41 pm

    30boxes is much better! Google, instead of rewarding the innovation made by startups, and keeping the industry alive, prefers a badly designed product.

    Yahoo > MSN > Google

31. Bob
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 11:48 pm

    Anyone know how to integrate the calendar listings into our site?

    This seems like such an impressive application by the guys in Mountain View.

32. DrumsNWhistles
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 12:02 am

    GCal is nice, but I haven’t found a compelling reason to move from 30Boxes. I opted to import my 30Boxes data over as an experiment, but wouldn’t migrate.

33. Maresthil
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 12:31 am

    I notice the lack of setting Beginnning / Ending hour of the day view

34. Francis Hastings
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 12:40 am

    I’m sticking with my Kiko calendar for now… cleaner UI with less popups, and better support for RSS feed consumption are the killers for me.

35. Ben
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 12:50 am

    I don’t mind it. They have a set of links above the big google in the top left for access to gmail which opens it in a new tab. I wonder if they are planning on doing the same for gmail but haven’t pushed it out.

    Overall pretty good….. nothing that really makes you go wow. But being able to intergrate it into your gmail account sure would be a good thing.

36. rick gregory
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 1:35 am

    Hmm… nice, but some obvious - and disappointing, given that wait - flaws.

    1) No visual integration with GMail. I don’t understand the ‘heavy integration’ comment given that, in GMail, there’s not even a link to Calendar

    2) OK, it recognizes invites sent from GMail… but let’s face it, that’s a ‘Doh!’ feature - I mean if it DIDN’T… But try sending an invite to your Gmail account from an Outlook account (I have a corporate email address and use Outlook there). You get an email, with the .ics attachment. No recognition that this is an event and it should activate Calendar. Why oh why does everyone assume we want, or even can, live in their little silo??

    3) an invite sent to that same corporate account hasn’t arrived after several minutes… could be load related, but still…

37. Bart Claeys
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 1:40 am

    There is something wrong with the timezones. I imported >1000 events from Yahoo Calender and all hours are wrong (8PM becomes 4AM). Day-events like birthdays are shifted one day ahead. It’s probably a minor bug. Overall I like the calendar a lot, can’t wait to fully use it!

38. Gtox
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 1:56 am

    Can I export the events by using RSS (for use in netvibes, like you can with 30Boxes) without having it indexed and published by google search?

39. Steve
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 2:13 am

    Can anyone get the feeds to work??

    I can’t get the public or private XMP or ICAL feeds to work in Netvibes or GOOOLE READER - which sure make it seem like a google problem.

40. chill
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 2:22 am

    Always two steps forward one step backwards.

    Why no ability to add weather for each day - such an obvious calendar RSS feature - like Yahoo has had for YEARS and others like 30 Boxes offer?

41. David
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 3:10 am

    As of 7 a.m. EDT, the site is saying “Google Calendar is unavailable now” Please try back later.

42. Sam Davyson
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 3:55 am

    Creating new calendars seems to be down now.

    The draging for events is awesome though. It is much more intuitive than 30 boxes and seems much more powerful. The repeating events are intelligent for instance. I don’t like the lack of tags (or “labels”) and I don’t understand how you can use the Quick Add to add a description to the event.

    No RSS imports is a little rubbish.

    It seems there are a few stages to a Google launch. There is the (optional) pre release of screenshots leaked out a month or so before. Then there is the actual opening of the doors (today). And then (in a few days time) the service will actually start working.

43. duoyun
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 4:13 am

    i had one just now.

44. Mjdgard
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 4:28 am

    woot? you can’t use colors for different events?

    hui, big -

    (or am I blind?) *hope so*

45. bogdanx
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 4:52 am

    the one weird thing is that you can’t have events repeated every other week. pay day, people, pay day!!

46. Blaze
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 5:00 am

    This is EXCELLENT. It’s a fresh change to be able to open up a beta web program and actually use it to it’s full capability and love using it. Depending on integration I will use this in the future. It’s just so simple, quick and easy.

    I’m envious that Google has such a good team. It makes me wish I could make programs this good!

47. Saul Weiner
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 5:04 am

    Yeah, I agree wholheartedly with the folks above. Not fully integrating Calendar into Mail v1 is silly and value destroying. Silly Google. Silly.

48. Dan100
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 5:14 am

    Any sign of intergration with Google Desktop’s Calendar?

    That’s my main calendar; it would be nice to see google intergrate two of their products…

49. Ernie Oporto
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 5:34 am

    Without SyncML or other way to get it back and forth from my Treo, I’ll have to stick with Yahoo and Intellisync. It sounds like it will be a long beta period.

50. OREO
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 6:05 am

    You mispelled Ability!

    “The ***abilit*** to share via web”

51. james
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 6:15 am

    yahoo still wins for me….not really digging the look of Google’s calendar…i await to see itegration with gmail and gtalk and if that makes any difference at all. Yahoo still wins for me
    …Note to YaaGoog…whoever supports mobile reminders in Europe (Netherlands) 1st, will win me as a client, as its still only a stars and stripes functionality….
    james

52. Rory
    

    April 13th, 2006 at 6:17 am

    Anyone see any intregation with Google IG?