News 04.13.2006

Google News
Google Calendar (unofficially?) launched last night, and I was able to log in and play around with the interface (as many others obviously have). I have to say, it is faster than I thought it would be. It may be due to the fact that it's still fairly new and not many people were up as late as I was (on the east coast anyway) fooling with it. It may also be due to not much calendar data is being served just yet to myself or others which may eventually slow it down (God, I hope not).

Anyway, it's very intuitive and well laid out. It's quite simple to add and edit events and just does exactly what a modern online calendar should. I like some of the other less noticeable features such as the notifications via pop-up, email, sms, and cell phone. There are options to import iCal and MS Outlook formats. One of the least expected, but sure to become one of my favorite features is the create and share other calendars with family, friends, and the general public. Also neat is the ability to drag and drop events to different days/times and even drag across the grid to span days/times.

I've tried to access the calendar via the Nokia 770 to no avail (no Opera support?). Hopefully Google will make this work soon enough though. Going through some more of the details of the setup, I noticed the ability to change the colors of calendars, XML and iCal formats, and printing to PDF format.

And for my (not-so final) judgment on Google Calendar: There's going to be one more tab in my Firefox browser from now on. All in all, it's a great addition to the Google universe. I for one... well you know the rest.

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