Frig. How many people do you have on staff in your Google-plex? It was near 5,000 several years back. And yet, your Gmail calendar function is lame as all get-out. If you’re looking for some New Year’s goals for 2009, here are some *really basic* things I’d like in my online calendar function … just in case you’re actually interested in improving functionality and not just expanding categories of cool online functions:
The ability to print my calendar in different sizes. Love the keyboard. Love the whole online, digital-thing, fer real. And, I like paper, too. I like to print things. And I want to print my calendar and include it in my GTD binder, which in my case, is not the classic 8.5×11.
Pretty design when I do print. While you’re at the job of enriching the printing options, would you please task a person or two to actually design a pretty printed page. Try Mac’s/Entourage’s calendar for starters. It’s clean, simple and readable.
Better tie-in with Gmail. Your “add this to my calendar” function that on ever-so-rare occasions pops up next to one of my Gmail messages could use some serious attention. I’ve even been so gullible to think I could actually import with ease a “save the date” type of event into my Gcal. But no. Your so-called feature sucks.
Ability to synch with my iPhone’s calendar. Come on. You’re Google. Mac is Mac. I understand you each want World Domination in your own ways but could you put your petty differences aside for a bit and tend to your users. Fer real. I would like my Gcal to synch with my iPhone, with ease. Oh, I understand all right that I can jump through scary technical hoops, do a little dance, cast a spell and pay for some synching functions, but that frightens me. I want to push a button and synch.
OK, so those are my “life would be so much easier” desires for your company. While you’re at it, I’d love-love-love for someone (that means you, Google) to create a calendrical tickle option. I’d like to put something on a calendar date in the future as a reminder to myself. Fer real, not everything I put on my calendar is an appointment or party. Sometimes I just want to send a note to my Future Self. Couldnchya manage that somehow?
Well, that’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll think of other things, too.
I don’t mean you any harm, Google, and I do align with your “Do no evil,” mantra. But sometimes, crap quality work is evil. And in your calendar function, I’d dare say you’re awfully close to being out of integrity with your corporate — uh, I mean, cultural — mantra.
Rock on, Serg.
9 Comments
December 28, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Jessie, you have many options for tackling these issues.
First, the print size issue. You can set your paper size in the Mac print menu, and you can set a custom paper size, if needed. Under “Paper Handling” (in one of the drop-down menus in the print menu) you can choose “scale to fit paper”. Experiment in there and see if you can come up with something that makes you happy. Printing is very often a trial and error endeavor, so be patient.
For the next three issues, have you considered using iCal and Apple Mail, along with Apple Address Book? You can set Mail to fetch your gmail automatically, and mail, address book and iCal all swap data among themselves (and, more importantly, your iPhone) effortlessly. Once you’ve got your gmail coming in to Apple Mail, the hooks to iCal for adding events are all there, and they work really well. Same with adding addresses. It all syncs with your iPhone, and you can do it via iTunes for free, or get yourself a Mobile Me account from Apple and have it all work automatically. Ilana and I switched to iCal for our scheduling, and using Mobile Me it works great for keeping events synced between two MacBook Pros and two iPhones. It just works. Minutes after she adds an event on her phone, it shows up on my phone and my laptop. Very cool. Set alerts in iCal to remind you to do things.
If you don’t want to stray from Google’s calendar, consider Spanning Sync, a nifty little software package that will handle getting your Google Calendar to talk to your iPhone. http://spanningsync.com/
Yes, you might have to spend a few bucks, or buy your techie friends a drink or two to get them to help you configure some of this stuff, but it’s worth it.
December 28, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Dave, This will probably sound like whining, and it is. I have tried (and done) the “print to size” thing. That option (on a PC) produces a calendar showing 12 a.m. – 7 a.m. events, which, in my case, are few and far between … at least in the matter of “events” I write down. I’ve tried many options, wasted a lot of paper, and, granted, it may be hackable, but who wants to “hack”? Now, I’m trying to repeat how I hacked it before, don’t remember exactly what I did and I’m producing blech. I want to push a clearly articulated button that does what it promises. Call me a whiner, but that’s what I want.
The other thing is that I don’t have a Mac. At least not for my personal computer at home. I have a Mac at work, but don’t want to mix my calendars.
And, ahh, another finger pointing toward Spanning Synch. I find this software mentioned all over the web. Mac-based, I do believe it is. Challenged again.
Maybe I’m just missing the boat, and I don’t get it. But every time I try to figure out what to do, all I find is lots of hacking to be done, and that’s just not the solution I want. Or, IF it is the solution, I want a guidebook to my hacking, and not to have to figure out each painstaking step myself.
Whine, whine, whine. But, jeez, I can’t be the only PC-owning, Gmail-using, iPhone-infatuated person on the planet who’d like to turn to her iPhone, out and about on the road, and actually find her calendar in her hand? Say it ain’t so.
December 28, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Ah, I see. I guess I had picked up on your mac use at work and had figured you were all Mac, now.
Much less hacking required with an all-mac solution.
And yes, I do find it amusing how critical you are of the FREE, entry level tools. You get what you pay for, my friend.
December 29, 2008 at 10:49 am
Jessie,
I agree with you. The Google gMail, Contacts, Calendar is a n unfinished suite of tools. I’m not a printer person and therefore I never noticed the limitation of the print commands. What really bother me is the primitive level of the Contacts manager.
Properly managing your contacts is one of the key feature of organizing our online professional and private life. We need to be able to associate more data to our contacts, such as birthdays, LinkedIn profiles, Twitter ID, blog urls, etc.
We need this to be fully integrated with the Google Calendar and gMail.
I have a long list of basic functions I would like to see in Google Contacts, but I’m afraid Google is considering it a done job.
Finally (to Dave Bittner), buying a mac is not the panacea of all our problems. There are people like me that are not so much in love with the Mac, the Mac UI, the mono-brand and closed approach proposed by Apple. We deserve a working calendar, even if we are not in love with the great Steve Job.
January 2, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Dave, How I pine for the day to be All-Mac. Alas, I’m still not so comfortable with basic functions such as “now where did I put that file?” on my work Mac. Yet, still, I pine …
The blog will store your good thinking for such a future date, for now, I’m going to check out Nuevasync, which looks ominously technical with lots of hoops to jump through. Alas, alas.
January 3, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Ref the reminders to your Future Self: Unless I’m missing what you want to do, you can already do this with Google calendar. You can set pop-up and email reminders in minutes/hours/days/weeks under the Options section of the event window. It’s quirky for all-day events such as birthdays in that it sets your reminder based upon 5 pm the previous day. There’s a lot of discussions about enhancing this feature in the Google Group for “Feature Requests and Enhancements”. Try what’s there now and let me know if it works for you.
January 4, 2009 at 12:01 am
Val B, Thanks for the reminder about the reminders. I do use those for when I have a specific task set on my calendar. What I want with the “note to my future self” is more along the lines of a tickle file, e.g. Check out the XYZ event in 3 months to see if I want to go. It’s not a hard landscape item on my calendar and doesn’t really fit, especially not in a time slot. I’ll tell you what I did: Google allows multiple calendars, so I created a calendar titled, of all things, “Tickle,” and that’s where I put such items. They’re color-coded and the whole kit and caboodle.
January 7, 2009 at 12:03 am
Very creative! We use the multiple calendars feature in our family to do a mash-up of individual calendars in one place. Hadn’t occurred to me to use a separate calendar for tickler file. That’s what I love about Web 2.0 tools . . . there’s no prescribed one way to use them. Thanks.
February 11, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Yay @ilanabit comes through with promises of solutions for things about which I’ve been pining/pleading/begging. She’s found the Google/iphone/calendar sync http://is.gd/iW7x Thank you, Ilana.
PS – I was just thinking of you last night. Some tragedy occurred on my iPhone and the happy little bunny game by Jirbo — the one Scott installed on my phone — has upped and gone.