If you build a better mousetrap ...
by Volker Weber
Google published a better webmail last year, and quickly gained quite a market share. The interface was snappy, had some interesting innovation and provided all the functionality people needed 95% of the time. The competition tried to match the 1GB mailbox, and Google was quick to let their mailbox grow faster than people were receiving mail. My usage quota is actually falling:
You are currently using 372 MB (14%) of your 2713 MB.
Today Google opened another cornerstone in their collaborative platform: A calendar. And my migration from the proprietary Notes database to the standard iCal format quickly pays off. I can subscribe to my own desktop calendar, incorporate other public calendars, again in a very snappy web interface.
This is a wake-up call: If your calendar still lives inside a proprietary format and you cannot even display a public calendar published in a standard format, you may soon be left behind. Take a look inside the Christian Holidays calendar. This is no rocket science.
And if you think the Google collaboration platform is done now, ask yourself why they bought Writely.
Comments
Hi Volker;
This is getting interesting for sure...
Just looked briefly over the Google Calendar pages and although I can Im- & Export Outlook and Apple iCal data, having this tool actually sync to with Outlook and iCal would be a killer.
Greetings;
Markus
Volker,
look not bad ;-) Let's wait and see what is next on the Google list of collaboration tools *g*
Is there anyway to access the calendar from within Gmail? I looked and didn't see a way.
Bruce, there seems to be no direct link from/to GMail "today".
I think that they wil make something... :)
This calendar is the cooles one I have ever seen. Not only as a WebApp.
You can simply select x days or weeks, can drag&drop events, invite people ...
Now can we get Gmail, Gcalender and Greader in a nice little appliance to put in the company's intranet? :-)
You can't natively see your calendar from within Gmail yet. However, there is a Greasemonkey script out for Firefox that will do it. I wrote up a how to:
http://techlifeblogged.blogspot.com/2006/04/add-your-agenda-to-your-gmail.html
