Google Calendar

rickyb writes "After months of rumors and speculation, Google Calendar is now live. It features integration with Gmail, full iCal support, and a bunch of other goodies I'm just starting to discover. The wait is over!"

Submitter waited for this?

[Ilgaz]

erm,

http://calendar.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]

There is really something "cheesy" with these Google fans... OK ending paranoia mode.

Re:It features integration with Gmail.

[lennart78]

Google calendar uses your gmail contact list to auto suggest email addresses when inviting other users to an event.
And the same goes for sharing a calendar with other users.

Re:iCal!?!?

[forsetti]

iCal is a calendaring file standard. Apple just chose to use the same name for their Calendar product (the obsession with "i*"). Gmail is compliant with the iCal standard, which happens to allow Apple's product (which is standard compliant) to interoperate.

Re:iCal!?!?

[John_Booty]

The iCal calendar format (.ics) has been the de facto open calendaring standard for a few years now. The Mozilla Calendar Project (aka "Lightning") supports it as well.

This isn't really a "Google cooperating with Apple" thing as much as it is a "Google using the most popular open calendaring format in the world today, for which there are already thousands of publically-accessible calendars, because it is in Google's own best interests".

Still, it's a great example of the good that comes from open standards. I love the fact that I can add all the existing .ics calendars out there to Google Calendar, such as sports schedules for the local teams.

HTTPS available

[palad1]

for all of you behind a firewall. Be warned though, https://www.google.com/calendar/render [google.com] sometimes redirects to http://www.google.com/calendar/render [google.com] when your session has timed-out. Is there a FF extension that could rewrite urls and force https://www.google.com/calender [google.com] to be used? Cheers, Palad1 ps: this thing does seem to grok webdav, I'll check tonight with iCal

Re:'Full iCal support'

[generic-man]

iCal doesn't support two-way syncing by itself (i.e. without iSync). You can either publish a calendar to the web or subscribe to a calendar from the web. Unless you have two records for every calendar for which you want two-way sync, I haven't found an elegant solution that lets you both modify a calendar on your local computer and on the web.

Yahoo! Calendar offered IntelliSync six years ago to synchronize my PalmPilot with their on-line calendar, but that software ended up duplicating every event on my PalmPilot.

Re:Annoyance

[rjrjr]

So turn it off--just like you turned it on. Click Search History, then click Pause. While you're there, delete your history. Ta dah.

Re:Quick report so far

[follower-fillet]

> The main thing that I still miss is the ability to sync with a PDA,
> but I'm sure that will be hacked into the app. at some point.
If someone wants to make a start on the hacking this might be helpful:

Rough Google Calender Class and Function Reference [rancidbacon.com]

It's a cross referenced and pretty printed version of the Google Calender source code [google.com].

--Phil.

Planzo

[juko]

http://www.planzo.com/ [planzo.com] works well enough for me.

Re:iCal!?!?

[pldms]

iCal is a calendaring file standard.

Well strictly speaking icalendar (rfc 2445) [ietf.org] is the standard, but (as with vcalendar) it's a bit of a mouthful. iCal (to me) is Apple's software, but ical is the standard.

Re:GooCal not very responsive right now :-|

[Recovery1]

Because Galendar.com was already taken. A Melbourne company has it. IMHO, Gcal would sound much cooler. (It incidently is also taken)

At least there's no question about what it is when you call it Google Calendar though.

Import does not work properly...

[JTFritz]

I have exported from Outlook a CSV of my appointments and imported them into Google Calendar and all of my appointments have been shifted 3 or 4 hours ahead. I am in the Eastern Timezone, and I'm assuming this is a timezone conversion issue.

Anyone else have a similar problem?

Does not play well with Gmail Hosted

[marom]

I have a hosted Gmail solution for my domain, and would have loved to use that account for Google Calendar, but it wasn't letting me do it. The only way to do it was to create a new Google Account using that (already gmail-hosted) email address, and then to create the Google Calendar account. However, doing it this way does not add the Calendar link in the Gmail interface, like it appears in the regular Gmail accounts.

Re:Annoyance

[Owndapan]

Try here:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount [google.com]

Down the left hand side there is a "Delete Personalized Search" link that should sort it for you!

Google Calendar Hotkeys

[KrugalSausage]

I think that most slashdotters love hotkeys, so here ya go:

Some Google Calendar hot keys:

a - Agenda view

c - Create event

d - Day view

j and k - forward and back on days/weeks/months

n and p - next and previous, same as j/k

m - month view

q - quick create event, can add date and time and info and it will be added accordingly. I particularly like how it doesn't force the calendar view to focus on the new event. (e.g. april 14 breakfast at tiffanys 03:00)

s - calendar settings

x - 'next four days' view

/ and ? - both highlight the search input field, but add a / or ? to the beginning

(on a side note, is there a hotkey for firefox that automatically highlights the input field on a viewed page?)

Re:Not quite "live"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"If by "live" you mean "barely functioning," then you'd be right."

Ugh, no kidding. Opera isn't at ALL supported. It'll let you in, but then you get javascript errors all over the place. Weak.

Re:Not quite "live"

[kv9]

Yea I am wondering if they should put it back into BETA. Google betas are much more stable.

it already is BETA [google.com]. i played with it earlier today, before it hit slash, and it worked fine. it's just swamped by all the hits, but either than that it is a pretty nifty app.

Re:OK, but Google needs to start doing better

[Rui Lopes]

Settings, Calendars, Other Calendars, Add Calendar, Holiday Calendars. Choose your preference. Maybe there's a shortcut to get there. But the feature is there. I'm using it.

Re:HTTPS available

[Nimey]

Ask the guy who writes the CustomizeGoogle extension for FF. He's already done that for GMail.

Re:Not quite "live"

[c_forq]

Even with all the features working it will not function for my needs. They really need to work on repeating events, for example as a college student I have a class that meets the same time on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Currently there is no way to input this event, besides putting it in three times.

Re:How does it compare to 30boxes?

[escay]

dammit i wasted 2 mod points down the drain yesterday - i wish i had them now!! 30boxes is really useful - its neat to read, simple to edit, and most important - resembles our paper desktop calendars making it very intuitive to use. if you are looking for a direct, no-strings-attached solution to a calendar, 30boxes is the way to go.

Re:HTTPS available

[Nimey]

I take that back. Customize Google already does that with Google Calendar. Cool!

Re:'Full iCal support'

[thadman08]

I've been using Mozilla's calendar in various formats for awhile, and it doesn't really 'sync'. It downloads a new copy before uploading your changes. Works alright for single user systems, but definitely doesn't scale. That's where the work on CalDav and such should help.

Re:Not quite "live"

[agallagh42]

How do I export my Google Calendar data?

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer. py?answer=37111&topic=8566 [google.com]

Re:Not quite "live"

[wantobe]

Except that the poster said his class meets Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which indeed isn't there. [old fart]I never had a class schedule like that[/old fart], but it should be pretty simple to add seven boxes labelled Sunday-Saturday and a "Repeat every..." header, and then it'd be all set. Hop to it, Google!

I gotta say, though, for my and my partner's needs, it may be just about perfect. We can each have a seperate calendar under one login so that we can immediatly see what we have scheduled, but more importantly I can add/edit client events for him and he can add/edit them for me. No other basic or free calendar has met these needs for us, so this may be exactly what we've been looking for.

Re:Security by Obscurity

[JourneymanMereel]

Except for the obvious thing that anything in the URL (read, anything sent via GET) appears in the server logs and client history. Server logs probably aren't that big of a deal because they're (hopefully, at least) just about as secure as the database. However client history is another story all together.

Enter SSL. Now, not only are the above two things considerations, but add to it the fact that (unless I'm mistaken) anything POSTed is sent encrypted while anything encoded in the URL (eg, GET) is sent in clear text.

Re:that's why

[cwernli]

https://mail.google.com/mail [google.com] remains https even after login (should work anywhere except in the UK, but maybe even there).

Re:Not quite "live"

[probbka]

If you select "weekly", checkboxes for the days of the week come up so you can customize.

Re:Annoyance

[Anonymous Coward]

It does deafult to being off. You had to manually turn it on in the first place.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is NOT full iCal (RFC 2445)

[cknudsen]

The iCal standard (RFC 2445) contains a lot more features than the Google UI presents. I'm not sure if their import will barf on the unsupported stuff or just ignore it.

• VTODO - todo items
• VJOURNAL - journal entries
• VFREEBUSY - free/busy specifications
• RRULE - much more complicated repeat rules (next to last monday of every other month, repeat hourley, etc.)
• EXDATE - exceptions to repeating events