Tag Archives: calendar

Google Calendar as diary

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I’ve been using Google Calendar since its public launch in the summer of 2009. Use it for damned near everything. Any big expenditure with link to a receipt/invoice in Drive.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between blog posts and diary/journal entries. My 6,000+ blog posts, going back 20 years, were written with the idea somebody might read them. Not so with a diary entry. Private, just for me.

I took a run at this kind of journaling pre-internet. Hand written notes in a 3-ring binder. Didn’t stick with it. A few years later I started using Day-Timer planners and kept at it for 15 years. (Seven years ago I transferred a lot of those entries to Google Calendar.) I’d occasionally add a personal note or observation to the meetings and appointments.

A few days ago it occurred to me Google Calendar would be a good place for this kind of casual note. I slug each entry with “Diary” for easy searching. Of course, I can search for any word or phrase in the entry. Almost no friction here and I’m in Calendar daily.

In praise of Google Calendar

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It is fashionable of late to bash Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon et al. There’s plenty to complain about I suppose (and I’ve done my share) but after the fire has been peed on and the dogs have been summoned, I really like Apple, Google and Amazon (I’ve never used Facebook). I like them a lot. Do I like everything they do? Of course not.

But this post is about Google Calendar. I’ve been using it for years. Anything of importance, anything I want to find later… goes into Google Calendar. Case in point: I’m in the process of switching health insurance companies and today I got a call from a representative of the new company, checking on one of the drugs I take. He also asked about a drug I didn’t recognize and said it was a one-time script on February 4, 2014. I had Google Calendar open so I hit the “G” key and typed in that date.

That was the day I hit some black ice and slid off the highway, getting just banged up enough that Barb insisted I get checked out at the ER. They gave me a muscle relaxant as I recall. Here’s a screenshot of that entry.

Note the link to my blog post on the event as well as links to PDF scans of the towing receipt; a summary from the ER visit; and a couple of insurance documents. Four years ago and I had it all from a 5 second search.

Is Google doing something with all of my data? I assume so. But I never see ads an they don’t charge me a dime. I call that a good deal.

Google Calendar “Go to Date”

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One of the reasons I dragged my feet on moving to the new Google Calendar was I’d have to give up the Jump to Date feature that was part of Labs in the old calendar. I’ve been putting all my important stuff in Google Calendar since I started using it. I frequently want to jump back five or ten years. Could not find a way to do that with the new UI… until today. Somebody on a forum just casually tossed out, “Just press the G key if you want to go to a specific date.” Well, shit. I mean… thank you very much.

PS: I have yet to encounter anyone who uses Google Calendar as extensively as I do. I rely on it more than Gmail or any other online tool.

Calendars

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I’ve been creating some short screencasts to help a friend transition from Windows to a new Chromebook. This includes some iOS apps. As I get ready to show him the Google Calendar app, I’m reminded of the calendar I saw on his refrigerator. It’s the “family calendar” where everyone keeps up with who’s where.

Screen Shot 2016-08-06 at 10.08.47 AM

This got me thinking about the seven columns/four rows layout of calendars. I always took this for granted until I started using the “schedule” view in Google’s iOS app (see GIF below). This linear, flowing presentation makes perfect sense on a smart phone where you can endlessly scroll (or search). And the 7-by-4 layout of paper calendars don’t work as well on smaller screen.

GIF

The 7-by-4 layout makes sense if your calendar is printed on a sheet of paper (as it has been for hundreds of years). And if we’re going to share the calendar, we have to be looking at the same piece of paper. Not so in a cloud-connect, smart phone world.

In front of my laptop, I still opt for the month view in Google Calendar but I’ve gotten used to the schedule view on my phone. Will the 7-by-4 view be with us always or will it become a quaint anachronism for those who never knew anything but smart phones?

How I use Google Calendar

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Barb recently started the process of transitioning from MS Office to Google apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc). I’ve been using Google Calendar for years (I’m hardly a power user) so I made this short (9 min) video. If you’re already using Google Calendar you probably won’t find much new here.

Desk Calendar (June 1984)

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I’m pretty sure June 4, 1984, was my first official day at Learfield Communications. And since 25 years feels like something of a milestone, I’ve been trying to come up with something to post here to mark the date.

June, 1984

The calendar [larger image] above was on my desk that first month and means absolutely nothing to anyone that wasn’t around back then. And not much to the handful that was (Clyde, Roger, Bob), so I’ve annotated a few entries to jog their memories.

With good jobs hard to keep and harder to find these days, let the record show I am one lucky web boy. Can’t wait to see what the next 25 brings.

Scott Adams: Calendar as Filter

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Scott Adams thinks the calendar will be the organizing filter for most of the information flowing into our lives:

“You think you are bombarded with too much information every day, but in reality it is just the timing of the information that is wrong. Once the calendar becomes the organizing paradigm and filter, it won’t seem as if there is so much.”

News: “When I read the news, I’m generally most interested in how stories have unfolded across time. I want to know the “new news,” as in the topics that have never been reported until today, but I also want ongoing charts and graphs about the “old news” such as wars and the economy. My understanding of the war in Iraq, for example, has little to do with what blew up today and a lot to do with the trend lines over the entire war. In other words, I see the news in terms of time.”

Advertisements: “Some time ago I blogged that advertising belongs in your electronic calendar, for your benefit more than for the advertiser. That’s because my interest and desire in certain products and services is linked to timing. If my calendar has a certain birthday coming up in a week, and I’ve checked the boxes saying the person is a certain age and gender, or has certain hobbies, my calendar can start giving me gift suggestions and recommending online flowers and e-cards and the like. In other words, advertisements can move from nuisance to valuable service just by adjusting when you see them.”

I know a lot of folks who use their Outlook email in-box as their primary organizing tool. (shudder) The calendar makes a lot more sense to me, too. Especially working out of iCal that’s sync’d between my desktop, laptop and iPhone.