Thing 8 - Google Calendar
As an undergraduate I kept with great meticulousness a diary of what I was meant to be doing. Since starting work I have fallen into the habit of using my Outlook calendar for work and my mobile for personal use. It's a habit I'm comfortable with, and I didn't expect Google Calendar to provide much that would persuade me to abandon current procedures.
That said, the interface is attractive and it was quite easy to set up, though there doesn't appear to be an option to set the clock to adjust for daylight saving time. It is British Summer Time at the moment - you just have to look at the rain through your window to know that - but Google makes no acknowledgement of the fact. In the end I had to pretend I was in Algeria to get it to tell the right time.
Google Calendar works quite like Outlook's calendar facility - setting start and end times, optional reminders and so on. I started to encounter problems when it came to reminders. Reminders can be displayed in two ways - as a pop-up window, or as an email. I tried both, neither with unmitigated success. In order to benefit from pop-up reminders you have to have Google constantly open in your browser. This seems more hassle than my current system, which works because I have Outlook open all the time anyway.
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| Outlook - my faithful servant |
As far as email reminders are concerned, I have been using for things related to this blog a Gmail account I created specially for Cam23. I have set this account to forward all emails to my work address, which I check using Outlook. But the email filter at work is mean. It lets emails about new blog comments through, but not emails from Twitter or, it turns out, Google Calendar. So I end up unreminded.
I can see Google Calendar has its advantages - the ability to share your calendar with others is handy (though do I want other people to know what I'm doing all the time? and anyway I've got Twitter for that...) - but by and large I share the reservations expressed here by my colleague Anna. Like her, I'll give this a fair chance, but I don't really expect it to become a fixture.
