UPDATE: In my original post, I wasn’t too impressed with Google Calendar. I’m back on track now, and I’m ready to write a bit more about this webapp.

Issues

When I first signed up for Google Calendar, I was ready to be impressed. I already had a 30 Boxes account, so I found the Import tool, and imported my .ics file from 30 Boxes. For some reason, all the times for all the events were off by 5 hours, which happens to be the offset from GMT that the timezone I live in utilizes. Pretty fishy, if you ask me.

I tried deleting my calendar to start over, and (this is partially my fault) didn’t realize that deleting your main calendar deleted your account, too. After much cookie deletion and cache clearing, I finally got into GCal.

I made a new calendar into which I could import my 30 Boxes calendar. This time around, at the suggestion of a friend, I imported my calendar as a CSV. The times worked out fine, and I just had to make the few recurring events I had in my calendar start repeating again.

I’m impressed with the speed with the calendar. I love the multi-day select, and I love the different views of the calendar, in terms of day, week, and month.

Some features reminded me of 30 Boxes; namely the Agenda view and the quick add event box. However, there are a few things missing, and that’s why I’m sticking with 30 Boxes for now.

Tagging

A new Google app that doesn’t have tagging?! What is going on here?! I think the idea of multiple calendars is neat and all, but tagging is way more intuitive. With 30 Boxes, I can make a custom view of any tag, without having to create events in multiple calendars. Sure, the colors thing is neat, but I’d rather have tagging.

Quick Add

Just copy the 30 Boxes method. Seriously. You can add location, notes, tags, colors, recurring events, or anything you want from 30 Boxes “One Box.” You can’t do that with Google’s. I’m willing to bet that will change, but I can’t wait for that.

Calendar Management

Really, I just want a mass-delete-all-events-from-main-calendar button, but even a prompt to create a new calendar on import would be nice.

The bottom line is that Google’s calendar is a slick app. Of course, the search is great, and apparently it integrates with Gmail, though I haven’t seen evidence of this yet. There are some areas that need improvement, so I’ll just stick with 30 Boxes until Google gets the polish out and gives this calendar a once-over.