Reviewing Calendars
November 3rd, 2006 by Richie
Just reviewing the web2.0 calendars available. I feel that we can enhance the existing calendar so the review.
I have reviewed the following as of now :-
upcoming.org: It has a cool invite UI and also the listing of places in a meeting venue UI. Very cool those 2 functions. Rest are ok, not great
planypus.com : The home page itself was not striking enuf for me to login and try
annologger.com : Site is ultra slow and I am yet to make sense of the features in it.
rminder.com : It seems to be a paid service for the US and Canada alone. So did not touch it. Looks good though.
beeplet.com : Had a very cool ui. I think the login page is in Dutch. Does not have many features but cool never the less.
jotlet.com : I am reviewing this now. Will post as soon as I make some progress.
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Hi Richie,
Indeed beeplet.com was build by a dutch company, they redraw the service.
What are you looking for as you mentioned web2.0?
What about http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
or an ical form?
Best Regards,
Remco
Maastricht, the Netherlands
Richie,
Thanks for mentioning Planypus. I’m sorry that you did not want to try it out. I hope that you do and you might find that it was worth your while.
Planypus, however, is not a Web 2.0 calendar. It is rather a site focused on plan making with friends. Planypus helps groups of friends casually and democratically make plans together.
We have many users that truly love our site both in the American and International users. We would be very excited to have you try Planypus out, and I hope you would do so.
Thanks!
Hello Richie,
Just a thought about other Open source CRM initiatives although not coded in PHP
Have a look as they seem to have a workflow system working… : http://www.centriccrm.com/
Keep up the spirit and the excellent work Thank you for all the work done !!!
Hi!
Thanks for the feedbacks. I will have a relook at planypus again.
In the meantime, I had a look at
http://www.eventicus.de/. It is german so could not make much progress but seems to be a digg-like event format. It may even be in the format of http://eventful.com. Even then, eventful.com is not exactly what I am looking at.
Eventful is a good idea but I am not sure if the way the data is formatted is something that I would want. Not that the application is incorrect, just that, I am not sure how to use that to my advantage.
More to come as I review …
Hi Richie,
Just to complete your tour, please have a look at the Google’s shared calendar (you’ll need a Gmail account). It’s really amazing, the ajax implementation is perfect (you can resize a meeting or change it with the mouse).
Some colored features (places / involved participants) would be appreciate.
And, that’s my long run demand, we need to enforce this “events” table to add many informations, adding the capabilities to link files, adding custom fields (for task management in a project, for example) and availibility to link an event with whatever in the DB …
But I think I’m becoming heavy on this.
RV.
Edit :
If it could be possible to publish in the iCal format (that is begining to be a standard), we could use it with Horde IMP, Sunrise, … and many other php website apps.
RV.
Hi RV!
Thanks for the great idea!
I will see if we can have it in 5.1 as it cannot be as of now accomodated in the bug fix releases.
I just finished reviewing CalendarHub. Very good indeed but lacks finesse. The drag and drop was good and the entire approach seems logical. There are certain feature breakages but I hope they will be fixed. UI wise, they need lots of improvement, but I will still rate them as the best I have seen yet.
Reviewed Planzo. It is more eye-candy stuff than CalendarHub. The features are different so if done properly, it might have its own market. The themed background is something that is new and exciting to watch but as it changes rapidly it may seem like an irritant to many(it was to me for sure). The guys have given it thought and it is seemingly more fun-loving; nothing wrong with that but just that I think they do not have a particular focus in mind, seems too free-spirited.
AirSet is so full of features that it can hardly be used. I would like to have a much cleaner UI with a lot less features. It seemed too obnoxious as of now. Not to belittle it but it has so many features that there has not been any attempt to make it seem logical and coherent. The white space has been used to the point of congestion and features that are not used that frequently too are given. Not for the common user but a very very elite set of users that want exotic features at the least.
Remember The Milk is by God the fastest calendar I have seen yet. It is amazing but not sure if it has all the features yet. Sad as it would have been great if it had the CalendarHub features in it, it would have been almost unbeatable.
Amazingly neat and very smart calendar seen till now. Worth the time to have a look.
HipCal is good but not great. Not much Ajaxification done. Has the required features and has a very good categorization concept. Needs to have a more focused implementation. Right now, it seems to be Alpha stage at best.
Tried epointment to no avail. Could not even register for some funny reason so dropped it.
Jotlet seems to have issues in Firefox. Will try out in IE and get back shortly…..
jotlet.net has been a good letdown. Showed lots of promise but does not have good javascript and Ajax handling. Makes me more than conscious of the level of expectation the community has of vtiger.
Have to test the product more and more thoroughly in all versions of browser and all kinds of browsers.
All in all, jotlet.net did not give me a memorable experience but instead a forgettable one.
Tried Spongecell. Another forgettable experience. The UI is pretty cluttered. The color combo too needs to be relooked at again.
Nothing worth mentioning.
Now, I am going to analyze the following and call it quits :-
30boxes
google calendar
trumba
apple calendar
I think that exhausts the list of web-2.0 calendars of repute.
Finished reviewing 30boxes in my Firefox-2.0 browser. The xperience is not mind blowing. It is no doubt pretty standard-good but not too exciting a stuff.
The flow is good but we can make it a lot more smoother and correct.
A good tool though.
Reviewed trumba. Was good. Could have been made more usable and could have some more white space. A web1.0 calendar with all the right features. A little bit of Ajax thrown in will do magic. I think it is not being used too much as it is still behind in terms of technology. But all in all, a good package for the oldies.
Some time to respond to the feedbacks.
Remco, I need to have some Ajaxified stuff with the right combination of features and Ajax. Not too lopsided else it spoils the experience. Something that is really intuitive and useful. Till now, I have only come across products which are good at either of them but not both. I am striving to find a good example to learn from.
I have downloaded the mozilla calendar in the meantime and am playing with it. Will write the review for the same shortly.
Hi Alex!
Thanks for taking out sometime to comment on my blog.
I am actually looking for a web-2.0 calendar with the right balance of Ajax and features from which I can learn the features and how they are to be shown in the vtiger calendar.
I feel that the vtiger calendar is still not upto the mark hence the study.
I will anyway keep your point in mind about planypus. You never know when things come in handy.
Kindly do not misunderstand my not reviewing planypus, it is just not what I am looking for.
Richie,
Not a problem at all, I completely understand :). Although Planypus does have a calendar feature its is build more around planning democratically, rather than a straight calendar feature, thus probably not something that you are immediately looking for. If you do decide to plan events I hope you give Planypus a shot. Cheers!
Right now, I am looking at google calendar. I also discovered that kiko still exists so will add that too to the list of calendars to review.
google calendar is really the right balance that I have found till now. I think it meets my requirements too. Still I will have a look at kiko and Apple Calendar.
Time for a tea-break.
Reviewed kiko as well. The implementation is nice but seemed too congested for my liking. In some areas, the implementation seems amateurish like when they show the Trash Icon. It is a good feature but usability takes a beating. The flow is a little not so smooth. It is good but not to my satisfaction.