Words Candy G. Villanueva
I am a great believer in calendars, online or otherwise. Many times we lose ourselves in the tiny details of our work and fail to get a grasp of the enormity or triviality of what we're doing. During such times, there's no better way to bring one back to Earth than a quick glance at a calendar. On it we can see our work and personal lives segregated properly into minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. In an instant we move from confusion to some form of organization.
Online calendars are perfect in helping us organize our lives - they're web-based, portable, and are available anywhere and anytime we have access to the Internet. Online calendars are also usually offered alongside other services, such as free email, instant messengers, and other related services which can interact with it, allowing you to be instantly alerted to scheduled events, be made aware of invitations that involve other people using their own online calendars, and interact with any other services available now or in the future that has to do with schedules.
Here are a few things online calendars can do for you:
? Notify you of scheduled events via email, SMS, instant messenger, or a popup window.
? Can import or export from non-online calendars, such as MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, MS Excel, and others.
? Interact with other people's calendars. You can send or receive invitations to group events which will then automatically be included onto your own.
? You can set a calendar as 'Public,' in effect becoming like an online bulletin board so viewers can automatically see what your schedule looks like so they won't have to ask you.
Yahoo Calendar
For many years, only Yahoo has invested as much time and effort into their free Yahoo Calendar service (calendar.yahoo.com). As a result, Yahoo Calendar offers a comprehensive experience featuring all of the features above plus some other niceties, like the ability to pick from among 16 color combinations and four background photo themes to suit your taste, or a tab that allows you to view Events and Tasks separately.
One of Yahoo Calendar's main features is two separate ways to add Calendar entries: either as a Task or Event. Click either and you will be faced with a long list of different ways to identify them. For example, after you add a title to a new event, you can then categorize it as an Event Type, which lists 28 different types, including Birthday, Wedding, Graduation, Club Event, Lunch, Performance, Reunion, Sports Event, and so on. After you do so, you can then add Date, Time, Location, Notes. You may share it with other people or make it public so anyone can view it online. You may also opt to make it a Repeating event (daily, monthly, weekly, etc.), or send out invitations to others who will receive that reminder via email. A left-hand pane offers a tiny monthly view, as well as links for quickly adding events and tasks and searching scheduled appointments. Finally, you can determine Reminders for yourselves, which you can arrange to receive via email, SMS, or Yahoo Messenger.
Google Calendar
Google Calendar (calendar.google.com), launched in mid April of this year, is typical of Google's releases in two ways. One, it's in beta, meaning 'test mode' and will probably remain in that state for a very long period (Google's free email service Gmail was in beta mode for a long time and even their instant messenger, Google Talk, is still in beta as I write). Also, like Gmail and Gtalk when they started, Google Calendar offers only the most basic features - so much so that unlike the more developed Yahoo Calendar, Google Calendar cannot even export calendar entries as of yet (it can only import). Export is an important feature if you wish to transfer your Google Calendar entries to other calendars like MS Outlook or Lotus Notes.
In lieu of Yahoo Calendar's Event and Tasks, Google Calendar has Next 4 Days and Agenda. Next 4 Days gives you a quick rundown daily view of what's going to happen in - obviously - the next four days. I suppose it's a great way as any to give you a quick heads up of what's going to happen soon. Agenda, on the other hand, is almost exactly the same as Yahoo Calendar's Task, featuring all of the repeating tasks, birthdays, and other event reminders you've set for yourself.
