Fall is particularly busy for Laura and me. Between Furman football, concerts, reunions, birthdays, and festivals our weekends get pretty crazy. Our old strategy to bring some semblance of order was to jot down our various events on a calendar in our kitchen – functional, but not useful if I’m someplace other than our kitchen and need to check a date.
For many years now I’ve used the calendar function in our office e-mail system (Groupwise) to keep track of both personal and business appointments. I would transcribe the events from our kitchen calendar to Groupwise, which would then update my Blackberry. It worked OK, as long as we remembered to put things on the kitchen calendar. Even then, I didn’t get all of Laura’s events.
This week we decide to take the plunge and use Google’s calendar application. Right now I’m wondering why we didn’t do this long ago. It’s simple, slick, and works like a charm. Laura and I both have separate calendar accounts, but we have it set to share each other’s calendars, so I can view both of these color-coded on one calendar. I can also add other public calendars, such as US Holidays, Moon Phases, etc.
To make things even more interesting, I downloaded the Google Sync application for Blackberry which synchronzes my Google calendars with my Blackberry calendar. Since my Blackberry is also synced with my Groupwise calendar, the Blackberry now serves as a conduit between Groupwise and Google. When I add a date to my Groupwise calendar, it updates on both my Blackberry AND Google. I can add dates where it’s most convient. Pretty cool!