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Inspired by my friend writing reviews about movies and more, inspired by me writing reviews of just movies, I have now decided to go into the “and more” part. Google Calendar: It had to happen eventually. But then again, doesn’t everything with Google?

Google Calendar is the latest addition to the Google family. It’s still in Beta, but again, isn’t everything with Google? I mean Gmail and has been out for more than a year now and it’s STILL in Beta. Anyway, Google Calendar is simple, colorful, and just plain fun. It’s basically a calendar. You can put in anything you want: meetings, dates, appointments, birthdays, television shows, holidays. It’s great! You set the date(s), time (all day is also possible) and a short description and your done. You can have multiple calendars and color code each one like I did on mine (look to the left). I have one for just normal stuff in blue, and one for birthday of people that I know in red (pinkish really).

So that’s all cool, fun, and totally google simplicity, but here comes the REALLY fun part. You can (with permission) add other people’s calendars to view. For instance, at left I can view Aaron *Big Black Space*’s calendar to (at least what he wants me to see…) and check or uncheck it. It’s unchecked above because of the repetitive schools (wish I could get rid of those repeats…). And then, there are OTHER public calendars that you can search for using the power of Google like Holidays. They have all types, US, Jewish, British, Australian, Islamic - basically any kind of holiday you could want! And then, people create OTHER calendars, like movie release dates, or Apple event dates (I wonder who would find that helpful…?) when the TV show Lost airs and what episode it is (I know…). Thousands of things, that can automatically be put in your calendar with a simple check color-coded to your liking - what else could you ask for???

You can also print easily from Google Calendar your agenda (great for work) and view your calendar in five different ways: Day, Week, Month, Next 4 Days (kinda pointless), and Agenda which is PERFECT for printing. You can also sync it with iCal (mac program) both ways, though not at the same time I hear from Aaron. There is quick and easy scrolling through months, and the settings are very nice and custimizable. For instance, you can choose which day the week starts on, choose your custom view, and set it so you get an email when a new event happens.
So what’s wrong with Google Calendar? As I mentioned before, it would be nice to get rid of repetitive events between users like “School” being shown twice and taking up space. Also, only four events at a time can show on each day in the Month view, but what else could you do? Finally, no mobile - yet. This is great, but not everybody is on the computer all of the time like me, so the email things and notifications wouldn’t really work - unless you have it on a cell phone that’s with you ALL the time. I can’t wait for that.

9/10