I’ve been procrastinating about Thing 6 for far too long now. Goodness only knows why. I’d already signed up for Google Calendar so the only thing left for me to do was to add it to my iGoogle page. I therefore thought (naively in retrospect) that this would be the quickest Thing for me so far. Alas, that turned out not to be the case as I then decided to try to take things one step further. Read on and all will be explained…
I already use Google Calendar at work as we have it as our shared calendar at the Judge. We’ve set up a number of individual calendars on the library’s Google account and on these we record meetings, holidays, timetabled duties, inter-library loan comings-and-goings etc. We’d previously used a shared calendar in Outlook, but this didn’t work for us as it couldn’t ‘roam’ which meant that we couldn’t access it from home or from another PC when we were away from our desks. So Google Calendar was the perfect solution – accessible anywhere and really easy to use. I’m sure that everyone knows what Google Calendar looks like, but just in case here’s a screenshot…
Judge Library Staff 'movements' next week
(The eagle-eyed ones amongst you will notice a scheduled Cam23 drop-in session – more details about this on the programme blog coming soon!)
As part of my investigations for Thing 6 I decided to share the individual library calendars with my personal Google account so I can now add appointments without having to log on using the library’s account – a small thing, but a huge relief. It used to bother me no end having to ‘flick’ between accounts.
I didn’t, however, add Google Calendar to my iGoogle page. My reason for this is that, despite what I said in an earlier post, I’ve abandoned iGoogle already having been seduced by the wonders of myfav.es. And for this I blame @PriestLib fully – if it weren’t for his declaration of love for myfav.es I wouldn’t have taken a look to see what all of the fuss was about. So apologies iGoogle it was fun while it lasted. It’s not me…it’s you. And yes there is someone else. Anyway, I’ve set it up so that I can access Google Calendar from myfav.es so all is good in the world.
But I didn’t stop there. I should have done, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I decided that if Google Calendar were to be truly indispensable to me I would need to integrate it with the calendar function that I use on my iPhone. This calendar is where I remind myself of birthdays, doctor’s appointments, weekends away and holiday dates. It’s basically my lifeline since I threw away my 2009 diary and printed calendar and I’d be lost without it. Having everything in one place on Google Calendar seemed like a good idea so I set off trying to make it happen…
Two weeks later it still hasn’t happened. To begin with I couldn’t make head-nor-tail of the instructions for syncing devices on Google Calendar Help. But then I was heartened by the news of Josh H’s success and decided to ask him how he did it. The penny then dropped…before I could get this to work I’d need to ‘pair’ my phone with one of our Macs at home and at this point I got too bogged down in the techie details (the devil is in the detail) and lost interest.
There you have it. Procrastination to no end. So to finish this post and procrastinate no more, my scores for Thing 6:
Usability: 
Utility: Likelihood of adoption:
Like the post – and the procrastination aspect. I empathise (and my blog proves it too). Even spending time reading other blogs just delays the need to put pen to paper (so to speak). Tried the myfav.es but not convinced.
Are you sure you would need to pair the devices? Doesn’t google calendar create a feed that you can simply subscribe to in the iCal on your iphone?
It sounded so logical to me, but after a bit of googling and looking on iCal and google calendar on the mobile device I’m using, I don’t see how it works without too much bother. So, ignore me.