Websites I Can’t Live Without: Google Calendar
Aside from actual coding and design, about 90% of what I do on a daily basis is online. I keep my to-do list online, my calendar, Blog (obviously), bookmarks, and so much more online. My life is online and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love managing it all online and technology is making it easier to manage that life on and off the WiFi. So I’ve put together a series of posts designed to show some of the online services that get my vote when it comes to the best online services. Today, I’ll be starting off with a lesser known but still great service that has changed how I schedule my day:
I’ll admit, when GMail first came on the scene several years ago, I was enamored. Not only could I organize my email in a logical pattern, but the spam filters were second to none. When Google integrated their Calendar app, I was all the more happier. Google Calendar is a well thought out Ajax enabled calendar app that provides not only private calendars, but public calendar sharing and subscription to shared calendars. In fact, in addition to managing my own schedule on Google Calendars, I also have been able to search a list of public calendars and import them into my own. As you can imagine, I’ve already included the schedule for the Colts season in addition to sharing a calendar with my wife.
Google Calendars also has the ability to import events (although there really is no mass import feature) and provides private and public calendar URLs that you can use to embed in other web services (more on how I do that later)
Adding events to the calendar is very similar in function to that of a desktop app with one click event adding and drag and drop functionality. The feature that I like the best is the email alert a few minutes prior to the event to remind me. Some of the online calendars that I looked at in the past wouldn’t email you or provide any alert to remind. I must have the email alert and Google provides.
Basic service? Yes. But with the integration with GMail, the well designed UI and the ease of use, I am hooked.