What is the Best Calendar? 309
An anonymous reader writes "In the flurry of AJAX applications being put to market, Google's new calendar has been getting quite a bit of attention. But being drowned out in this media blitz is Kiko, a startup from Paul Graham's Y Combinator program, along with spongecell, Trumba, Yahoo! calendar, and 30boxes. Which do you prefer?" Update: 04/16 14:55 GMT by Z : YCombinator link fixed.
iCal (Score:5, Insightful)
None do what is required to displace Exchange. (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I've been able to tell, nothing does the group scheduling other than Exchange in any decent form. The best most can do is publish ICS files into a public server, and then make them available for public browsing (say, via phpicalendar), or available for remote subscription (which Evolution, et al supports).
The golden calf for opensource would be an application that supports client-server group calendaring and scheduling, with PDA synchronizing, and multi-platform support. The only thing even remotely moving in this direction is CalDAV, which AFAICT, is moving at a glacial pace.
Until this problem is resolved, there is no defense against "Why don't we just use Exchange for this?"
Pencil and paper (Score:5, Insightful)
The best one would be the one that: (Score:1, Insightful)
- works on my Phone
- works from my USB stick
- works from any webbrowser
- works on a text console
so front-end is irrelevant, as long as it can read and write iCal
Incompatible calendars (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a Palm Tungsten T3 but it's not very useful because I have to maintain 2-3 incompatible calendars to keep it useful. Import/Export is simply not a solution unless you are changing calendars and dumping the old one. Google Calendar is nice but it doesn't efficiently exchange data with my desktop calendar, work calendar and pda. It's got potential but but we'll see where it goes. Few/none of the calendar makers have shown any inclination to work together so far (customer lock in and all that) so I'm not optimistic.
My PDA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Integration (Score:3, Insightful)
Is not what actually have what matters me more, is the potential future, so doing raw comparisions right now could be unfair. With future integration in mind, i think that either yahoo or gmail will be the best for their respective mail users.
features I'm looking for (Score:2, Insightful)
What I want on my webcalendar:
If anyone knows of a solution out there that fits my needs, let me know. If any developpers are reading this, please take note.
Re:None do what is required to displace Exchange. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most apps don't simply drop a sched in your calendar. What they do is simplify the process of finding non-conflicting schedules. If someone wants to meet with you, they'll send a request and the calendar app will find a time when everyone invited can attend. If it does, it will ask for confirmation and you can either re-schedule, accept or reject.
Otherwise you would have to respond each request with a time when you are free, that might or might not conflict with somebody elses'.
Undecided :P (Score:2, Insightful)
Since my PocketPCs cacked out (the batteries would run out because I primarily used my laptop), I started relying on my previously-misused brain, and countless miscellaneous pieces of scrap paper ("lists") that I kept in my pockets. Now I rely on my cell phone. I may have also used my laptop, but it is now non-mobile.
What I like about my cellphone is that it comes with me everywhere, it is always charged up. However, I like my cell phones to be cell phones, not cameras, video players, or any of that other crap (actually, it does have a flashlight, but I had to transfer all data from my old cell phone to it manually). So the calendar function on my Nokia is limited, and I can only view events one day at a time. However, I know it's always nearby, so I don't have to be at a computer to put something in. Also, I know it will remind me of important events; the PocketPCs were picky when it came to whether they would automatically turn on to remind me of something.
However, I'll be checking out the Google calendar.
- RG>
Re:Pencil and paper (Score:1, Insightful)
Requiring to find common schedules amongst all these people had been next to impossible because the professors refused to use the standard Mail/Calendar solution (Lotus Notes - which absolutely sucks in my opinion, but that's another post). We had to resort to paper and pencil and chasing each person and professor down to find a common time that would work.
Technology's great but you MUST HAVE buy-in from all parties involved.
Even simpler: (Score:3, Insightful)