Google Calendar has Search. It’s an important feature.
Microsoft has a darn good calendar program, whichever name it uses (Hotmail, Live, Windows…). MS is also making strides in Search with the pretty Bing, and has made email searchable.
But for some reason, there is no Search in Hotmail Calendar.
I came up with a good calendaring system. As you know, the big service providers (Google and Microsoft) offer a free calendar program. What to do with it? Well, both Gcal and Windows Live Calendar allow you to create multiple calendars (each with its own name, color, …).
I needed to make a combination that suits me (hey, isn’t that life?). My idea about calendars is that they should show the viewer what he might be dealing with, and also should let him review what he hath done. We are offered many options regarding events but do not NEED to do them all… nor do we have time for all. The modern way is to be flexible. But a man has obligations…
My system is to have 3 calendars: 1. Could Should 2. Must 3. Did Done
In this way, I’m aware of what I must do (the Red ‘Musts’); I’m mindful of what I could do (often overlapping, blue entries describe both what I could do and should do). When something becomes true and has happened, then it has been done. And ya see here, I use these Calendaring programs Edit function which includes changing the Calendar. If I did something, I change it to ‘Did Done’ and write about what actually happened.
I think it important to have a record of what really went down. This is like diary / journal keeping. And it is distinct from a list of what MAY have happened. When you are your own historian (or think that some historian may someday research your docs) you want to make it clear that what was planned, or what SHOULD have been, is not the same as what happened in your life.
I recommend you keep multiple calendars, and that you use the Edit feature if you want a historical record. A lot of invites have the enticing, mysterious “???” end time. When you write your history, you can mark exactly when the party stopped.
Both GCal and Windows Live are great programs. I use Windows because, as I’ve mentioned, I like to create / edit on the PC and then sync when the PC is online. Gcal, unfortunately, does not allow you to Write in ‘offline mode.’ It’s read-only, and is in the browser. I like to open my dedicated calendar program on the PC and do as I please. And that’s that!
Google Calendar is terrific. But a major problem I’ve found is a Time Zone is set not to the Event, but to the Google Calendar User. Thus, any event that user creates, is set to his user setting timezone.
So, if I live in Los Angeles but schedule an 8pm Monday London event, it will show up as a 3am Tuesday event to Londoners. As long as my user setting is PST, I have to do this: set the event for 1pm. In Google Calendar, a user can have more than one calendar. Each calendar can have its own setting for Time Zone.
Thus, I thought a bad but working solution would be to temporarily set a calendar to time zone London. But, that setting just dictates the Display of the time, not the absolute date time start. The absolute is still based on the user’s time zone.
The issue is all the more confounding because the Calendar gives much weight to an Event’s Location field. It wants specific information so that it can map it and offer directions or other services. Yet it’s not interested in the time?
Here’s how it’s published, in London Time:
The solution is: Google should let viewers / subscribers to a calendar set a timezone for “Viewing”– thus all events are translated into a time relative to that user’s view. In that case, if I’m looking at a 5pm New York event as a Californian (PST) I see it as 2pm.
The absolute time should be defined by the manager per event. When entering the time there should simply be a field to enter the time zone, which Google could ‘predict’ once location is entered (that would also require an alteration in the Form inputs so that Location is entered before Time).
As it is, Google Calendar cannot be accurately deployed by a manager of an entity that crosses time zones (sports teams, performers) or has subscribers across multiple time zones.
Oh Google! Yours is such an awesome, awesome company, and yet snags like these make me think you might spend just a wee bit too much time drinking your own Kool-Aid and not actually engineering for humans.