I am looking for a good calendar application. This application manages all your schedules and appointments. Some basic features I am looking for are easy addition of events, adding weekly or monthly events, smart adding from mail, and alerting the events.

As I am using ubuntu, one desktop alternative is Evolution’s inbuilt calendar. But as I am using thunderbird for email, that is overkill. Another is Thunderbird’s own Sunbird. But I may not use it as I am new to it. The truth is I have already used Google Calendar application. One minor caveat is difficulty in offline access and that it is a web application. One can mimick a desktop application using prism under ubuntu hardy. But still it is an online application in that I have to be connected to the net. But as I have no net access at night, I would like an offline application. One can use google gears for offline access, but my institute has a proxy server and gears does not support proxy server. Anyway as long as I have no appointments at night, I think it should be fine. (sunbird vs gcalendar)

Google calendar has a wonderful ajax interface. We would expect desktop applications to be better in terms of user interface, but Google has always been an exception. You just need a Google account, you can create for free. You get several google services, the complete list may need another post. A simple yet very helpful feature is quick add events. You can click the quick add link and add a simple sentence like “Dinner with Asok 7pm tomorrow”. Thats it. You can see the event added. Also you can add daily, weekly or such recurrent appointments. Like I can add my weekly appointment with my guide easily. You can view monthly, weekly or a particular day of appointments. Another nice feature is you can add public calendars. For example, I am interested in Indian Premier League. I search for the this term in “Search Public Calendars”. I can add the available schedules. You can also create such a calendar and share for others to add. You can be prompted about the event either by email or

Other developments are GNome live desktop, which promises integration of online applications with the desktop.  Another interseting development is sunbird support for google calendar. Also the lightning addon for thunderbird is very tempting, as my email client is thunderbird, mainly this setup.