Free calendars are cool and free email is really nice, but put them together and you have something fantastic. Google has made their free Web based calendar available to everyone and it is worth the time to sign up and give it a spin.
Here are some of the feature highlights:
- Invites and Gmail Integration – You can invite anyone with an email address to your events. Other Gmail users can add the events to their calendar directly from Gmail without opening their calendar. Invitees that don't have a Google Calendar will be invited to create one. When you receive an RSVP to an appointment the attendance list is updated automatically.
- Flexible Reminders – You can configure reminders to be by email, mobile phone or pop-up window in any combination. You can even set the calendar to email a daily agenda.
- Drag and Drop – Once you create an event you can reschedule it by just dragging it to a new time. You are given the option to automatically notify event attendees of the change.
- Multiple Calendars - You can have multiple calendars and display them independently or in any combination you wish.
- Sharing – You can choose to share your calendar or individual events. You can share with specific people or make events or calendars entirely public. Public calendars will be searchable. You can add a button to your Web site that will display event details when clicked.
- Interoperability – You can export calendar data to iCal or XML files. You can import from other popular calendars such as Outlook, Yahoo Calendar, and Apple iCal. The ability to synchronize with mobile phones and Outlook is on the way.
From what I've seen so far, I'm very impressed with Google Calendar. It gives everyone the kind of features and flexibility of expensive corporate scheduling applications like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, and it does it for free.
