Google Calendar
Google has released their AJAX-based calendar service. So far, after using it for about an hour or so, I’m pretty impressed. Very close to 30boxes in it’s approach, one can add a new event using Google’s “Quick Add” feature by typing an event’s details into a single text field. For instance typing “Birthday party Saturday 7pm” will add an event called “Birthday party” with the date and time as “April 15″ (from today’s date) and “7:00pm” respectively.
I’m sure there are many more tricks using the “Quick Add” feature that I have yet to discover. If one is currently using another calendar application for their daily calendaring, that’s no problem! … Assuming that your calendar application has an export feature. If not, well … happy transferring. 
The ability to interact with other Google Calendar users has most certainly impressed me. The contacts list in the calendar is the same from Gmail, so very little work needed to invite people to events! I suppose that was the goal, eh? Everything else seems to be quite intuitive to say the least. As an example, another method of adding a new event, aside from the Quick Add feature, would be from within the day view, dragging one’s mouse from the start of an appointment to the end of it. One is then prompted to enter the name of the event and well, that’s about it. Of course you could then go into the appointment in order to modify it further, but that’s pretty darned convenient!
I think this product could easily compete with Microsoft’s Outlook and Mozilla’s Thunderbird regarding their calendar services.
Now to the other stuff which probably urged you to read this article: the bad stuff. Unfortunately, Google Calendar is not without it’s flaws. The good news? Google has repeatedly proven its ability to resolve blatant issues fast! So what’s wrong? Well, there are a few problems right up front. I tried to modify my existing calendar as well as add a few more (one for business, one for personal, etc) but after adding it, nothing had changed in the list of calendars!! That’s not what I was wanting… That’s AJAX for you. Nevertheless, if one refreshes the page via the browser, the calendars seem to appear right away. Other problems consist of things that are also easily rectified (at least temporarily) by refreshing the browser window. Overall, they are problems we can easily live with.
I say give it a shot! What’s the worst that can happen? You put a few appointments in it that you also keep track of by your normal means, decide you don’t like it and go back to the old method, which never changed! Give it a try, let us know what you think. Need a Gmail account in order to access this service? I’ve got plenty; just leave a comment with the request.