Google Calendar has officially gone live at calendar.google.com. A tour of Calendar is available here.
Dave Winer may have been the first to write about it on Scripting.com. CNET also has a story.
My first impression – It’s fast, slick and stable. Calendar is Ajax driven and, as I mentioned, very fast. Adding an event is as easy as typing “Dinner with Keith tomorrow at 8pm” and Calendar structures the data properly and places a correct calendar entry. This entry can be dragged around the screen to a new day or time.
The Key features:
- Text recognition – In adding an event, or detecting a new event from Gmail, Calendar automatically detects event-specific words and suggests the adding of a new event with data auto-structured.
- Manage Multiple Calendars – set up multiple calendars (work, personal, etc) and view them separately or together.
- Heavy Gmail integration – Gmail recognizes when messages include event information, so when you get emailed about an event, you can add it to Google Calendar with just a couple clicks. Google Calendar links on the right side of the Gmail page.
- Sharing – Calendars can be shared with others, and you can subscribe to others’ shared calendars. Read/write permissions can be granted on a per user basis. Calendars can be published via a web page or via RSS, so readers do not need to be on the Google Calendar platform.
- Importing – You can import events from other calendar programs, including Yahoo Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. Click “Settings,” then “Import Calendar”.
- Calendar Search
The key driver of Google Calendar is clearly going to be the Gmail integration. For users of Gmail’s web interface, it will be extremely easy to keep track of Calendar items on Google as well.
My overall impression: Excellent. The ability to share via web publishing or RSS shows Google’s commitment to an open stardard. And this application is impressive in its speed and stability.
Screen Shots:
