Everyone anticipated a calendar application from Google, with people guessing it would be released on April 1st like Gmail before it. Well, its here finally and anyone with a Google account can try it out. Google Calendar has been in the works for a while, initially being named CL2. Some high profile folks got a sneak preview and posted the screenshots at Techcrunch.

For the rest of us normal folks, the day has finally come. Google Calendar (not yet abbreviated as Gcalendar) deploys the familiar look and feel of all other Google Tools like Gmail, Google Reader and Google Page Creator. AJAX is widely used in Google Calendar and its certainly improves usability over several other online calendars by giving real power to the pointer with a full drag and drop interface. Each user is allowed to have any number of calendars and each one can be shared or kept private.

Fast and Efficient Usage

I was able to add a new event in several ways.

i) Normal Approach

This is similar to what any other calendar application or Desktop Suite would do. You click on the create event, then give a time span and save the event.

ii) Natural Language

This is a unique feature and I haven't seen it on any other calendar application yet. You can quickly add an event by typing it as you would when describing it to someone. For example, 'Meet clients at 3pm on tuesday' automatically adds an event named 'Speak to clients' at 3 pm on the following tuesday. If am/pm is not specified, am is taken by default for 7 to 12 and 1 to 6 defaults to pm, which seems reasonable for most appointments. Natural language tried to make the most sense of what you type. So, if there was a typo, like "See friends at4", it still adds an event called "see friends" at 4 pm. Short forms are mostly recognized, like Mon, Tues, Wed etc. for days of the week. 'Tom' and 'tomo' don't seem to be recognized as alternatives to tomorrow. It would be nice to have a way to add custom aliases for certain words. Some advanced english statements are also not recognized, like "Match at 7 day after tomorrow" added an event for the next day called "Match at after" It also returned the following error.

Error I got when trying certain natural language requests

"Match day after tomorrow at 7" also didn't work and did the same thing, but returned no error this time.

iii) Drag and Click

If you would like to add a new event from 2 to 4 pm, you can click and drag to select that time span. A small bubble pops up allowing you to type in the name to quickly add the event. You can also move events around by dragging an existing event to a different time slot or day in the calendar. This helps in correcting mistakes of wrong time allocation quickly without having to delete the event and make a new one. You can also drag and select several days or weeks in the miniature month grid on the left and the events calendar on the right will automatically change to display a summary of all those selected days at once.

More Features

Like Yahoo calendar, reminders can be sent to the phone via SMS. This feature is only available in the US at the moment. The color of the events displayed in the calendar can also be changed, but this seems to affect all the events at once, so event specific color coding is not possible yet. Any of the calendar views (daily, weekly, monthly, agenda etc.) can also be exported to pdf and printed. You can also invite people to your events and also keep track of the RSVP's, like the evite service. Another way to share an event with people is to use this button which can be added to your blog, email signature or web site.

Room for Improvement

Despite the nifty features, there's still work to be done, like tackling those errors and maybe adding the following features which are available in other calendar applications.

i) There is still no integration with details from Gmail's Address book.

ii) There is also no way to distinguish between various types of events, like birthdays, anniversaries, meetings, parties etc. An option to color code event types is also missing and badly needed.

iii) An export option is also missing for those who might wish to export the calendar into iCal format and load into their own PDAs or Desktop applications.

Conclusion

As ever, Google has taken a slow and steady approach. While all other portals had long offered Calendars with Email and Address Books, Google has taken this one step at a time and focused on making a better product that overcomes the limitations of the competing products. They've done a good job of studying how users prefer to use the application and then provided a tool that does just that. They haven't wasted time in providing themes or different colored interfaces which few people notice. In fact, Gmail was released in 2004 and has still not provided customized themes like Yahoo Mail, but manages to compete well.

Though its just been released and is still in beta with some rough edges, thousands will quickly start switching to this Google Calendar. The high traffic could cause some initial sluggishness, similar to what Google Page Creator experienced when it was first released.