As I was chatting with an employee at a pharmacy the other day, she mentioned that she has to carry a day planner with her everywhere she goes, lest she get “lost.” Even the smallest of day planners can be a cumbersome burden, but everywhere I go, I see others just like her. People on planes drag along what look like autobiographies of their entire lives. One of the great things about the technology that surrounds us, though, is that we don’t have to carry as much to stay on track. In fact, something as small as your cell phone and a Google Calendar account can help you to keep track of everything you need to.
If you’re not yet familiar with Google Calendar, let me take a sec to tell you how it works. This free service works like most online calendars. You can enter events, times, and places, and you can view them by day, week, month or year.
Change your view simply by hitting those tabs in the top right corner of the screen.
Any calendar program, though, can do that. Google has several unique features that make it a step above the rest. You can network with other Google calendar accounts to see your partner’s schedule, or those of coworkers. You can even invite others to see particular events on your personal calendar. It’s available in a number of different languages, and you can search your calendar for particular events.
The best part of all of this? You can get reminders and notifications of where you’re supposed to be and when you’re supposed to be there via your cell phone. How cool is that?
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I’m still waiting for Google Calendar to accept imports from MS Outlook. I’ve been using Outlook with a Pocket PC for years. It would take me too long to switch over to Google Calendar, but I do think the service is great. Once they get some kind of functioning sync working, I’m planning to use it.
Gmail, by contrast, is a highly functional and convenient service, and free. I use gmail heavily. It offers pop3 access and permanent archival.
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