Yesterday, Google launched Google Calendar. So far, I’m very impressed.
As far as I can tell, it does everything that Apple’s iCal does, except for to-do lists. A few things I liked:
- Importing events from an iCal file
- Each calendar generates its own iCal feed
- Notifications can be sent via pop-up, e-mail, and SMS
- You move and change the length of events by clicking and dragging
There isn’t much bad to say about the service. In about ten minutes of use, I did manage to find one display bug in the Agenda view, which was no big deal. But I was quite disappointed that they didn’t include some sort of to-do functionality. In my quest to increase the portability of my data, I was hoping to move my to-do/event list to Google Calendar. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that added at a future date.
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One major thing it’s missing is the ability to sync back to another client or device. I don’t always have internet connectivity, but I can always have my PDA on me.
I have yet to see an app that does this.
Doesn’t your phone sync any changes back to iCal? I haven’t used iSync before, but my PocketPC syncs both ways with Outlook.
I vaguely remember reading that a deficiency of iCal (the file format) is that it doesn’t contain the necessary data to allow for syncing. I’ll have to do some research to find out if I’m remembering correctly.
I only sync the address book between my phone and the iMac. iCal (the application) just doesn’t work well for me. It’s easier to keep everything in text files. I’m sure my phone does sync changes back to iCal. But I’d be willing to bet that it does so through an API rather than iCal.
Can you make a group calendar? Or better yet.. can google-calendar sync multiple calendars together? That’d be cool. I can do that with outlook, but the quick and easy remote access of google-calendar would be preferable.
Yes, you can give read and edit permissions to other Google Calendar users.
Ah, upon closer inspection, there’s the ability to export the data back to iCal, under the Manage Calendar->Calendar Settings option. It’s not quite full syncing, but better than nothing.
(Which I only just realized you already pointed out in the original article. Durrr…)
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