Hot on the heels of the new version of Gmail Mobile for the iPhone comes a new mobile version of Google Calendar leveraging some of the same technology. The previous iteration was frustratingly feature-poor, allowing you only to view your appointments and add new ones using a natural language interface which could be frustrating with the iPhone's keyboard. Thankfully the new version has a more typical appointment entry screen.

Better appointment entry is nice, but the big new features in the new version of Google Calendar for the iPhone are the ability to edit existing appointments, invite other people to events, and the ability to manage appointment invitations and attendance statuses.

Although the official announcement on the Official Google Mobile Blog inexplicably downplays it, Google Calendar now has a modicum of offline functionality on the iPhone and Android phones. Now even if you have no network connection it can still show you appointments that you've previously viewed, though you can't edit them. Hopefully this matures into a true offline capability in future versions, but it's sure nice to know that you can get to your appointments if you need to when you're without a network connection.

The beta just got bettah!

TUAW recently featured an interview with Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote, who stated that the ultimate goal of the application is to be a "universal human memory extension." I've been using Evernote for over a month now and love it -- I've sucked all of my business cards into Evernote with my iSight or iPhone camera, and use the program instead of a card file. Evernote's text recognition simplifies tagging the cards, and I can use either the Mac app, the web client, or my iPhone to look through my database. Evernote's unique focus on images makes it quite different from other information managers like Together or Yojimbo.

The update has some great new features based on customer feedback:

• PDF support -- Evernote can now store PDFs and you can print into Evernote from any Mac application. Image-recognition isn't working for PDFs at this time, but they're working on it.
• Encryption -- Included in the last release, but not announced, encryption works with the Mac or Windows clients only, not with the web client.
• Spotlight integration -- Evernote "memories" are now searchable, and you can create Finder "smart folders" that include Evernote content.
• Mixed View Mode -- In addition to List and Thumbnail view, Evernote 1.1 has a Mixed view that shows small thumbnails with metadata for each note.
• Vertical Preview Pane -- In Mixed and Thumbnail modes, provides a big preview pane with live search results.
  

Want to give Evernote a try? I have 19 Evernote invitations for the first 19 commenters who ask for one politely.

Update: All of the invitations were swallowed up quickly by a group of very polite readers! Thanks for your comments and have fun with Evernote!

Update 2: Thanks to Evernote, I have a huge number of invitations available for TUAW readers. Leave a comment and try out Evernote.

Update 3: Sorry, everyone! I can't send out any more invitations. But thanks for playing!

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.