Solo Technology

I said I wouldn’t. I swore I wouldn’t. Yet here I am again… mentioning what is, at the moment, still vapor. Google Calendar (aka cl2).

So, by now you’ve seen the TechCrunch “leaked” screenshots article of CL2 or read about them elsewhere. You’ve probably even read the story about the leak that ended up with Yahoo! having those shots. Oh, such drama.

What haven’t you read about? Useful features in Google Calendar. Where’s the truly useful synchronization features? Like… oh, I dunno… Outlook? iCal is nice and all but how about direct to other tool synchronization? (say, is there a decent ical to outlook sync thingy out there already?). How many of us are stuck using Outlook for a variety of reasons? I have well over 5 years of personal and business stuff wedged into Outlook. In fact, the only real use I get out of Google Desktop is the incredible searching abilities it provides for my Outlook gunk!

[as an aside, I listened to a "security" podcast yesterday that discussed how bad google desktop is because it (and I quote) "copies all of your data to the google servers." omg, this is an expert?!? No, I won't mention the podcast -- I don't wish to even offer him a link. But sheesh. Do a little research]

My whole deal is family calendar — and keeping my wife’s Yahoo calendar, my personal and work Outlooks and Pocket PC all in a zen-like harmony. So far I have a tolerable work-around but man, it could be so much smoother.

And why in the heck do so many blogs point at this google calendar thing as evidence that Google is doing an online office suite?!? What am I missing that I’m not making that huge intuitive leap? Calendar means office suite?

Bah. I’ll believe it all when I see it. I’m tired of even mentioning this topic to be honest. And to see the screenshots was particularly disheartening. I had this fantasy about interoperability and google, in that fantasy, was going to solve all of my calendar syncing woes. *sigh*

One Response to “*sigh* Google Calendar”

1. Rich G. on March 9th, 2006 6:40 am
   

   Gcal is the mmorpg of online apps to me. There’s lots and lots of hype, pressure to release, and when it gets out there’s a really good chance it’s going to not live up to they hype, won’t have all the features we won’t, and will be Kunark-style beta tested while live (you went through kunark’s pay to join beta didn’t you? they termed it live release, six months too early imo)

   If google’s going to do it they need to “Just Do It!” and do it right. With all the calendar applications out there… I find it hard to believe that gcal is taking this long to develop, and not hearing rave leaks about how it syncs with everything from cell phones through SMS to palms and outlook and ical is beyond me. On the plus side gmail was slow to roll out and I love it now. It just took it an age and a half to arrive.

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