calendars.. the next big thing?
“Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” - Woody Allen
Since starting with my new job a few weeks ago, I’ve been bemoaning the absolute dearth of a great shared calendaring application… When supported by a large corporate IT department, I was happily using Microsoft (gasp!) Outlook’s calendar to manage both my work and social schedules. I looked around and really couldn’t find anything much better than the standalone Outlook. Mozilla Thunderbird was a valient effort, but there was nothing in there that was compelling enough for me to warrant a switch.
I even considered switching back to the good ol’ fashioned paper calendar. Eek.
Why is it so hard to make a great calendaring application? Companies have tried again and again and again to create a fantastic calendaring application, and as such, nobody has really succeeded… Jump.com was actually founded by a fellow Cornellian — I wonder what happened to him…
Recently, there has been quite a lot of buzz around new calendar apps in the works, like upcoming.org, trumba, evdb (which I think is some sort of calendaring/event management application, but I really have no real idea).. even a google calendar is rumored (thanks julia!)…
So what exactly does a “calendaring” application do? It tells me where at when I need to be somewhere. The new “web 2.0″ calendars integrate calendaring with all the latest and greatest buzzwords — tagging, social networks,
To figure out where I need and want to be and do, I use:
- my brain
- microsoft outlook
- evite
- alarm clock
- refridgerator door
My brain is obviously my primary what/where/when device. Ultimately, no matter what calendaring tool I use, I transfer the information to my brain. Problem with my brain is that it’s quite unreliable and affected adversely by external factors like alcohol, sleepiness, and just the general fact that I forget a lot of stuff. I mean, if my brain ultimately worked really well, then I probably wouldn’t need a calendar (but arguably, I wouldn’t have any of the cool “web 2.0″ stuff)
I use microsoft outlook as my primary non-brain calendar. I try and put all of my meetings (both personal and work-related) in outlook.. But, lots of times, I forget to put them in.. and lots of times I forget to check my calendar since I no longer have a pda that is connected to my outlook. Hmm.. mental note.. need to figure out how to integrate my supposed “smartphone” with my outlook.
Since I live in the bay area and have hyperconnected geeky friends, most of the larger privately organized events are in my evite. That said, sometimes I forget to check evite or put an evite’d entry into either my brain, or my outlook.. which means I forget about something. It slipped my mind that my friend matt was having a party last week, and I didn’t remember until brian sms’d me and told me he was running late.. I was like.. hmm.. running late to what? Oops.
My alarm clock tells me every morning what time I need to wake up. Unfortunately, I need to tell it every night what time I want to wake up the next morning.
My fridge door has lots of pieces of paper sticking on it that tell me where I could be.. like yoga class schedules, buffet menus, and a few “save the dates” from my to-be-married friends. Although I do snack a lot now that I’m working at home, I don’t really look at the fridge door too much, and now that I look more closely, a few of these “save the dates” are from 2001. Hmm.
So…. what would MY ultimate calendaring application have?
Hmmm.. I’ll have to do some more thinking about this, but this post has rambled on for way too long already.. But, right off the bat, I’m thinking integration with all of my non-brain applications (outlook, evite, alarm clock, fridge door) would be the first thing.. I don’t want to have to use this new, cool application.. I *like* the way I currently interface with all of my different calendar tools…
So, maybe that’s the killer app of calendaring.. something to just glue all of these calendar applications together… into my brain.
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