Niklas' blog

I’ve been on the prowl for a good online calendar for a long time. Well, I have been using one, and if you use Microsoft Outlook, there is only that one I can recommend: Yahoo! Calendar. The simple reason is that you can download a small and free program that allows you to synchronise data between Yahoo! Calendar and Outlook.

So far, I have found no other online calendar which easily does that¹.

So why do I care about synchronising with Outlook, when there exists a perfectly good extension for Firefox that displays a calendar, or why not the standalone application from the Mozilla Foundation, called Sunbird, that performs the very same as said extension?

The answer is that I own a PDA that runs an operating system from Microsoft, which synchronises with Outlook. I like carrying my PDA with me and having all my updated calendar info in there.

The sad part is that the new online calendars will not allow synchronising, but merely subscribing to them. One can only make the changes using the web interface. More about an oldie² that does the trick, but seriously lacks intelligence, later. Let me define the difference between synchronising and subscribing calendars, even though it may seem simple:

synchronising: you create, delete or change an appointment in either your web-calendar or your calendar-application, update (i.e. synchronise) them and the change is propagated through both worlds.
subscribing: you create, delete or change an appointment in either your web-calendar or your calendar-application, and when the other part updates, it merely downloads the changes – or the entire calendar. Nothing is synchronised.

Listible displays a list called “Best online calendars“, which contains very few really interesting choices. I mean, no offense, but I think a lot of the calendars available don’t look very good.

No, I do not carry a fetish for great-looking web applications, but I like having 1) skins to choose from and 2) an online interface that does not sting my eyes.

Features, then? Tops the my list right next to looks, as I use my calendars all the time. There is a reason why I only use Yahoo! Calendar for synchronising my appointments: if my computer and PDA die at the same time, taking all appointments with them into the swirly depths of hell, they will still be available through the web. And I never, ever use that web-calendar to view my appointments, simply because it’s ugly as hell³.

Outlook 2007 will probably support subscribing to a few calendar-types, among them iCal, the standard that Apple loves. Google are busy developing a calendar of their own, which will most likely allow people to synch it with Outlook; I’m very much looking forward to the Google-calendar. Mind you, Yahoo! are currently renovating their services (which all beta-testers can attest to) where their e-mail, calendar, et.c. will work through AJAX and be much more feature-driven than today. Good-looking HipCal will probably be implementing support for synchronising iCal-based calendars in the future.

But what is there available today? True to my investigative tech-nature, I’ve registered for most calendar-services that are available on the web, and I will draw them all to a point: 30 Boxes is the best. I will only mention CalendarHub as a possible competitor so far, which has a mighty drag-and-drop AJAX interface, but the interface and functions aren’t nice as what’s to be found at 30 Boxes.

The last time I delved into 30 Boxes, there was no import-function and I hence dissed it. Now, I have exported everything from my Outlook-calendar and am really liking 30 Boxes. The downfall of this is, of course, that I have to write everything that I type in 30 Boxes into my PDA as well, which is very frustrating. However, as my PDA is disintegrating I might just move to a web-calendar wholly. We will have to see. Web 2.0? Changing, people! Back to why I like 30 Boxes:

This is the single interface for quickly adding appointments to your calendar, and it is simple. For instance, say you want to add an appointment for tomorrow, saying you will meet Wilma at 18:00 and add the tag “personal”. Simple, you just write “tomorrow 18:00 Meet Wilma tag personal” without the quotation-marks. You want to meet her on the 25th? Write “25/3″ instead of “tomorrow”, then.

I’ve made this extremely quick film (using freeware Wink) that shows you how you can use it. If you are not fit for such a quick flick, just go to 30 Boxes and you’ll be flung into a demo showing how you can use it. I love all the double-clicking that available, tagging, sharing calendars easily – and you can even share a calendar that only shows contents that are specified by your tags! You can also propagate your calendar by sending e-mail to it. Ooh, I’ve added my flickr-feed to it, which means that my photos show up as RSS-icons whenever they’re published, and I can see them by double-clicking the icons. Your contacts can even invite you to partake in appointments, and you automatically get to accept, decline or stay undecided on the matter.

The very thought-through usabilities of 30 Boxes is what makes it a winner, together with its simple graphic interface, and very prominent features – at times unique, as far as I know. It’s for the person on the run, and for teams. Help-functions are readily available, and there’s a forum where one can ask questions and expect replies from the admins (and other forum members, of course). Very nice. Give them marketing help.

By the way of calendars, don’t we all wish for a future where all mobile devices and online services work using the same standards? There’s an organisation which works for interoperability betwen mobile devices, called Open Mobile Alliance. I believe most of the work on mobile synching is driven by the Data Synchronization Working Group, a part of OMA. I sometimes wish they could carry guns and know the home-addresses to all developers working with interoperability between devices.

We’ll just see what the future brings. And we’ve got SpongeCell, the Hula Project, Planzo…

1. AirSet being the only exception, yet the synchronisation doesn’t seem very off-the-bat – not at all compared with Yahoo! Calendar, anyway – and the interface is not very good-looking[back]
2. possible exception being icalx.com, it’s severely outdated, compared with the new kids on the block – on the other hand, it is very reliable and has been up for years[back]
3. as I noted, though, that will hopefully change within a month or two, when Yahoo! kick off the AJAX-stage of their coming reincarnation[back]