Thing 8: Google Calendar

Dates? Calendar? Geddit?? Photo by Jemasmith on Flickr

Hmm, just counted up my Google calendars - there are 6, including two shared ones. These include:

• my main one for general appointments
• a meal planner one (shared)
• one for birthdays
• the CPD23 calendar available here (shared, of course)
• a couple of private ones you don't want to know about!

The benefits of having multiple calendars, for me, is the option to hide all but one of the calendars I'm interested in. The calendars can also be colour-coded so appointments are clearly identified if you're scanning for something (although of course you can search for it).

I did have a background image on my calendar but I've gone all minimal now with the recent upgrade to Google calendars. To try to learn something new about what Google Calendars can do, I looked at the help pages (how many times have I advised students to do this with databases...? I should practice what I preach!) and although I found I utilise the application pretty well, I did find out a few extra things I could do:

• You can add UK (or wherever you are) holidays to your calendar by clicking on Browse interesting calendars, on the drop down list next to Other calendars.
• From the same menu, you can add the Hebrew calendar, phases of the moon and the International Cricket Council cricket dates, should you wish
• From the What's New page, you can see how to add icons like a little cake for birthdays, and those jetsetters amongst you, you can set an appointment which takes the time zones into account.
• There's more to discover on the Labs page

I look forward to reading other CPD23-ers' blogposts on how they use Google Calendar.