Google have today launched Google Calendar.
There are two reasons (that I have discovered so far) that it is not yet ready for the UK:
- It can remind you by SMS of events you have scheduled in your calendar only in the US;
- It can locate your meeting for you by Google Maps based on the location you enter, but only for the US.
There are also two teething problems so far:
1. Importing my work calendar from Outlook created all the events in the evening which were actually supposed to be in the day. Events at 9am were instead starting around 7pm (1900) and all other events were in the same relative position.
2. Importing a calendar of UK Public Holidays (one of the most powerful features of Google Calendar IMHO) fails completely as does any other calendar I try to import (like a schedule of XX football team’s fixtures).
Other than those comments, though, this is set to change the way we do business. If you have a meeting with clients from another company, check their Google Calendar and you know when’s convenient for them. If you have a heavy schedule and fail to see friends because of it, share your calendar with them and organise time in a transparent way.
The calendar can be shared either completely or by showing time free/busy or not shared at all. You can invite people to create their own Google Calendar and, when you start to type in the e-mail address, the addresses you have saved or previously typed into Gmail suddenly appear.
It really is excellent — I haven’t yet finished playing.
If you want to try it out, try and view my calendar using my gmail account which is my name with a full-stop between each of my names!
How long before most of what you do relies on Google? I already rely on it!
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