Call me
crazy, but I think Google is using some kind of mental suggestion on me while I sleep, as I am slowly falling for their
products one by one (maybe I
should shut my Mac off at night so they can't get to me?). I've been hanging out
at Google News more often, I haven't started Mail.app in almost a week in favor of Gmail, and now iCal has been kicked
out of my Dock in favor of a Quicksilver trigger that takes me straight to Google Calendar.
That's right, as
a .Mac customer and lover of 3-plus years, I am tossing iCal and its syncing ability aside for the innovative and
ultimately easier to use beauty that is Google Calendar. Sharing calendars and events is so much simpler on the gCal
side of the fence, especially since the invited guests can leave comments on the event right at Google Calendar without
the need for some obnoxious service like Evite.
More to the meat of the matter, Google Calendar's 'Quick Add'
takes the chore out of adding an event to my schedule, inviting me to do it a little more often to make I stay all the
more on top of things. In gCal, I can hit the letter 'q' to open a small dialog box into which I can type an event
name, time and date almost as if I were telling someone about it in an email: 'dinner with Jessi 6 pm 4/22' adds the
event right where it should go. As icing on the Quick Add cake, date spanning works too: 'Half Life 2 Therapy Camp
April 22-24' creates an event that spans properly. No obnoxious tabbing around to set dates and times right, and no
mousing to drag little event boxes. Call me crazy, but I'm starting to believe that
some desktop app developers could learn a few things from this kind of simplicity that
is found in many of today's web-based apps and services.
Google Calendar's multiple and customizable
notification features sealed the deal for me. Email, SMS and popping up the browser window (if gCal is open) are all
available for various notification types like events, new, changed or canceled invitations, replies to invitations and
even a daily agenda email reminder that sends you a roundup of the day's events. Hawk Wings
points to a
blog post by Jeff Hobbs who puts it quite
nicely: "
it’s like Google just hired a personal secretary for everyone on Earth." Sweet, I've
always wanted a secretary. Unfortunately, there is one seriously lacking feature in Google Calendar's 'secretary
factor': as of yet, there is no 'pick up a latte from Starbucks' option. Maybe someone can whip up a Greasemonkey
script or plug-in?
Caffeine addictions aside, you can top this all off with the 'access and edit from
anywhere' factor since Google Calendar is web-based,
and Gmail automatically parses email for events to add to
Google Calendar (*ahem* iCal/Mail.app engineers!), and I'm already forgetting what iCal looked like.
It all started
with the supposed Airport Express
invitation that showed up on Flickr, announcing an Apple press event for February 22nd. It was soon deemed to be a
fake, and then two more
popped up, with different designs (also fake). They weren't the best: in the Airport invite the perspective of the
Apple was off, and the blue one actually misspelled the word "February." We know you can do better.
