Google Calendar
Well after countless rumors that Google Calendar “will be released tomorrow” over the past year, it is finally here. Overall I’m impressed with the interface and features but in my attempt to use it I’ve experienced many bugs and poor performance. The slick user interface is much like Kiko, another online calendar. For about the past year, I’ve been using Planzo but because they’ve had zero feature updates, I’ll probably be changing to one of the others soon. Here are my favorite things about Google’s new calendar.
- Flexible views
The calendar viewing is spectacular. I can drag and select any number of consecutive days from the small calendar on the sidebar and the main view updates quickly and accurately. Want to view 2 weeks at a time? You can. - Search events
This might seem obvious, but many calendars (Kiko) don’t let you search your events. I’m sure this was a no-brainer for Google. - Sharing
Although I haven’t used this yet, the features for being able to share and hide each event look good. It looks like Google has a well-defined API to put event reminders on my website.
Although I am impressed and happy Google Calendar is here, it has some major problems. I understand that it is a beta release but in my opinion it falls short of even beta quality. Hopefully Google will fix the problems as users report them. Here are my main complaints:
- Data syncing and performance
I created new calendars and it took awhile for them to show up. In some of the dropdown lists, the new calendar names aren’t correct. Clicking on events sometimes is very slow with no indication to the user that anything is happening. This problem makes Google Calendar unusable for me right now. - No labeling concept
Google revolutionized e-mail organization by allowing messages to be tagged with labels rather than having copies of messages in more than one folder. They have failed to do the same thing in calendars. I can copy an event to another calendar, but now I have two distinct events. Yuck! I think Kiko is headed down a better path, and I really expected Google to nail this. - Inconsistent event interactions
Clicking on an event in a day or week view will jump to the event details page. Clicking on a event in the month view shows a popup with options for the event. I don’t like the inconsistency. - Invites broken
I tried the invite feature and never received an e-mail. Hopefully this will be ironed out soon. If people can respond to events without having a Google account I think I’ll really use this feature.
If you are interested to learn more, Google has an excellent walkthrough of it’s calendar features. If you’ve tried it, what do you think?
Update 4/28/06: Performance and invites are working much better now. I have now abandoned Planzo in favor of Google Calendar.
Twins Win for Kirby
I enjoyed the Twins’ second win of the season along with 48,900 other people last night at the Metrodome. Although the season has been rough thus far for the Twins, last night’s game the team looked pretty sharp. The Twins had a monster 3rd inning in which they scored 6 runs. They went on to beat the Oakland A’s 7-6.
The home opener was dedicated to the late great Kirby Puckett. Each player will adorn a #34 on their sleeve this season to remember Puck. I’m not sure though if the giant #34 in center field will stay for the entire season. It doesn’t matter much to me. Does anyone know if the big #34 is staying on the outfield all year?
Windows on Apples
Recently, Apple released a beta version of Boot Camp, software which allows Microsoft Windows to be run on macs with Intel processors. Boot Camp allows dual-boot of Windows XP and Apple’s OS X and most of the reviews I’ve seen have reported that although in beta, it works well. Personally, I find Apple’s “support” of Windows very interesting. Historically Apple and Microsoft have been direct competitors and arguably they still are. It will be interesting to see where all of this will go.
After reading Charles Cooper’s perspective on Boot Camp, I have to agree with is assessment. I think Apple is giving new users the comfort of having Windows XP on a mac in order to get them to try OS X. Apple is so confident in it’s own products that it believes users will try OS X and fall in love with it. So this got me thinking about my own situation. For graduate school this fall I want to get a new laptop and have been considering a MacBook Pro over a Windows-based notebook. I do have to admit that knowing I could fallback to Windows XP on my MacBook is comforting. Changing operating systems in a big deal and it’s hard to get a good feel for it by just playing around in the Apple Store.
Has anyone tried Boot Camp and if so how has it worked?
Decisions to Make
I’ve just returned from Pittsburgh, where I was attending an open house at Carnegie Mellon University. The graduate program I was accepted to is a one year professional masters program in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). I was impressed with the open house where I learned more about the goals of the program and met current and prospective students. The program is unique because it is highly interdisciplinary and mixes students with backgrounds in computer science, design and psychology. So now I have to give it some time, discuss it with friends and family and reach a decision.
The HCI program would consist of adding considerable breadth to my software engineering background. I would learn how to design for the user and gain substaintial group project experience. I’m definitely excited to learn more design methods and how to keep the user at the center of the development process. The real question I need to answer is do I want a career shift into a field of user interface design or something similar. What I think this really means is the type of company I would probably work at would be much different. The companies most interested in investing in HCI are high-tech software businesses. Some examples of places graduates of the program have gone include Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Adobe, and Apple.
If I don’t go to Pittsburgh, I plan to stay in Minneapolis and pursue an MS in Computer Science and probably a graduate minor in Human Factors. These two options are quite different and so I find myself with a major decision at hand. Any advice?
Dust off the Wheels
Today was a nice day in Minneapolis. I left work early to get to my last physical therapy appointment but hit what I can only refer to as a crapload of traffic. So I missed my appointment and ended up home from work a little after 4PM. I decided to grab my road bike and dust it off. There was literally a coating of dust on it from sitting in my bedroom. That reminds me I should probably dust the rest of my room…
So after washing it up I got out for my first ride of the season. It was great to be out in the sun and now I have really got a bad case of spring fever. Before I start riding to work, I still have some work to do on my commuter bike. Shouldn’t be long though and I’m hoping to get on a regular schedule of biking to work, swimming about twice per week and depending on how my foot feels add one day or light running. My foot problems (supposedly tarsal tunnel syndrome) have been steadily improving over the past month. It’s been a frustrating healing process as there hasn’t been any obvious correlation between my treatments and how it feels. Like I learned from my lasik surgery though, I need to be patient.