Let's make a date of it

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008. Click here to read more columns.]

If you poke around a bookshop or drugstore at this time of year, you may well find a stash of calendars – no doubt deeply marked down from the gouge-a-rific pricing of the pre-Christmas rush. Funny thing, calendars: they never go out of style.

We have a whole bunch around the house: a family one in the kitchen, already spotty with spaghetti stains over jotted notes of dental appointments and swimming lessons; my son has one in his room; my wife has her own system; and I’ve got on in my office downstairs, too.

And that’s just at home. In my pocket, I keep a trendy little Moleskin as my daily agenda, having parked my once-beloved Palm Pilot a couple of years ago. A few too many drops and mishaps rendered the machine a dunce, and made me appreciate the virtues of using a pen and paper.

I used to use the Palm software, too; just one of many online calendars I’ve tried over the years. Without the hardware to carry around, though, I found that using that particular desktop program was, well, kind of silly.

Others never really tickled my fancy, so I was surprised to find myself really liking a fairly new online service … simply because it’s so easy to figure out. For the sake of some comparison testing, I also gave an old standby another shot.

30 Boxes
Google Calendar
30 Boxes is not your old-school online calendar. It’s souped up for the Facebook generation, baby … meaning that you can, if you want, share whatever it is you’re doing with whomever you wish. Or, in my case, with no one but yourself. Registration, in either event, is required, but it’s free.

The sharing capacity may appeal to some, but I was drawn to its ease of use. You see a default large-screen menu of the current month. Pick a date, start typing … and an event is created. But here’s the fun twist: you type something into the query window at the top – “Tim’s birthday on May 1,” for example – and “Tim’s birthday” appears in, you guessed it, the box for May 1. Type in “Dinner with parents on Thursday,” and 30 Boxes figures out which box applies to the next Thursday.

This use of the query window is worthwhile, because a similar window appears in Google Calendar, but it’s for searching, not adding. When I thought about it, what I really prize in a calendar is not being able to find something quickly, but to add something quickly, which gave 30 Boxes an instant advantage for speed of use.

You can tweak your entries, too, by editing for repeats, time changes and the usual functionality you get with a good online calendar.

The Facebook synching, by the way, is indeed handy. One click, and any events you’ve added to your calendar there are instantly imported here. You can also hook up a MySpace account and some blogging applications, too. Do be careful, though, as you create your privacy settings.

On the suggestion of a reader, who noted my recent endorsement of the I Want Sandy e-mail reminding service, I paid a new visit to Google Calendar.

Once upon a time, I used to use Google calendar a lot … quite the same way I’ve used many Google apps over time. But, even though I check an e-mail account there daily, I fell out of the habit of keeping the calendar going. Ennui, I suppose.

All of the old stuff is still there – one handy thing about keeping my Google account running – although it appears I hadn’t put a single thing in since a medical appointment in January.

The notification service (a la Sandy, but not as easy) is indeed a powerful tool, especially if you have a jammed-up schedule and could use a poke about when to, say, pick up the kids or haul yourself across town for a meeting.

Having sampled both for a few days, here’s how things shape up before me. 30 Boxes is like the cool kid you like to hang out with. Effortless, a bit messy, and you’d wish he’d do exactly what you want (I found myself editing a bit more than I’d like).

Google Calendar, on the other hand, is the face you might want to show the world: detailed, clean-cut, professional. And, unfortunately, a bit dull. In a nutshell, Google Calendar could use an upgrade, or even just the equivalent of a new haircut.

That’s how it is on the web. The big guys can find themselves outgassed overnight by a small company with that has a secret weapon: something cool.

John Gushue is a news writer for CBCNews.ca in St. John's. Site suggestions always welcome at surf at thetelegram.com. John is on Facebook right here.

3 Comments

Hi John,

I'm a Google Calendar devotee, and I have a correction: you _can_ add events in plain-English, by using the Quick Add link under the Create Event button, top left. I have a calendar for each family member that we all can view and edit, and can update them from my phone via Twitter or from Facebook. I maintain calendars for a couple of organizations (and can publish their calendars on their webpages), and I made a Area 2 garbage-pickup schedule that anyone can use ( http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=4uqaj3qgmsne9heluftk3fhnmo%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/St_Johns ).

I expect 30 Boxes can do all or most of that, but any calendaring system takes a lot of work to keep up and even more to switch! Until/unless I get overly frustrated with the current system I'll be staying put; I daresay you will too.

Posted by: Heather Patey | Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 15:01