Goooooogle Caaalendaaar (and choccy bunny)

Happy days -- it's IT Blogwatch, in which we make a date with Google Calendar [You're fired -Ed.] Not to mention chocolate bunnies...

Sigh, yes, Google again. Get over it. This time it's calendaring. At Siliconbeat, Matt Marshall urges us to "check it out ... We mentioned earlier that Google Calendar was coming. It is here, as of this morning ... It has a bunch of things you'd expect. You can create events, open them up to friends to look at, or participate in ... You chose whether to make your calendar and events publicly accessible for searching ... all Web-based ... don't need a Gmail account to use it ... it feels blocky in parts, and the toggle at the top-left hand corner between Gmail, Google's main page and calendar could be slicker ... we'll see what it feels like after more tinkering ... in the coming months, it will be able to synchronize with Outlook and mobile devices ... linked to Google's Gmail accounts, which are separate, it will scan incoming emails for potential events ... Everything is RSS-able, meaning you can let others subscribe to your calendar additions/changes ... You can set up multiple calendars ... Google has been built to be compatible with other calendar programs. Charlene Li, of Forrester, has a good review ...  other Google Calendar details, bugs, kinks in this post here by TDavid."

» John Paczkowski sizes it up: "Google's omnipresence that these days that whenever the company uncrates a new service, it is described far and wide ... 'eagerly anticipated,' 'game changing,' or both ... now that Google's long-rumored Web-based calendar has finally gone live ... extends Google's reach further into the sort of software that has made Microsoft Outlook, and to a lesser extent Yahoo Calendar, a personal-productivity staple ... at least at first glance, improves on both of them ... it interoperates with other calendaring programs ... it recognizes that we might have several calendars to manage and a need to interact between them ... it brings Google's trademark ease of use to a category notorious for unintuitive interfaces."

» Google's Carl Sjogreen: "We tried to make it fast and easy. You can add events just by clicking and entering one line of simple event information. No muss, no fuss, no cumbersome forms to fill out. And it's integrated with Gmail so you can add events mentioned in messages to your calendar with just one click ... we wanted to make sure you could use it to see all the events in your world. It's drop-dead simple to see calendars from your friends and family, or calendars you find with the built-in calendar search tool ... You can turn any event on your calendar into an invitation just by adding the email addresses of your guests. They can see and respond to your invitation, whether or not they use Google Calendar ... Google Calendar supports the iCal standard so it cooperates with many other calendar applications ... webmasters can add customized Google Calendar event reminder buttons to their pages."

» Pat McCarthy: " I've been playing around with it some tonight and I’m impressed so far. Importing from Outlook is handy for me compared to 30Boxes, but I'd like an export to Outlook as well ... some nice stuff with sharing, creating multiple calendars, and allowing for RSS subscriptions and for others to view your calendar as a web page ... In true Google style you can also search all public calendars which an interesting kind of sharing and voyeurism, but it’d also be handy to search your friend's calendars for a specific event ... Google Calendar is probably far enough ahead that I switch over to using it. At least giving it a serious shot…"

» Tony Walsh is not as convinced: "You've already handed over your personal messages to Gmail, why not go that extra distance and tell Google Calendar what you're doing, with whom, and where? ... I'm sure Google calendar has lots of useful features, but I'm not convinced relying on free web-based services is such a great idea for critical purposes. Tragically, this means I'm relying on Mozilla's Sunbird, an unpolished, anemic calendaring solution. I eagerly await a stable release of Chandler."  This brought comments like this from Zaskoda: "I'm in Calendar hell. I have linux on the laptop where I'm using Evolution -- but I keep uncovering bugs. I can synch it with my handheld, but I rarely use the handheld ... Bah, anyway... Google Calendar really had my attention until I couldn't find any way to synch it up with other calendars. If they add that feature, I'll be a lot more likely to give it a real go."

Buffer overflow:

• ITtoolbox: The Sad State of Security Reporting (and the Latest Data Losses)
• Nate Anderson: Outsourcing saves companies only 15 percent
• John Paczkowski: You are running an unlicensed copy of Windows Vista. Reverting to MS-DOS  ...
• Mike Rothman: Things I Like
• Michael Pietroforte: Remote control of VMware Workstation using RDP
• Ashby Jones: Pitt on SOX: Mend it, Don’t End It
• Scott Smith: Social text Goes Mobile
• Ken Harris: IE patch breaks some users' browsers
• Alex Scoble: Windows for free: An idea who's time has come?
• Martin McKeay: Ethical Security
• C.J. Kelly: Snort going public?
• Martin MC Brown: Users make us laugh
• Martin MC Brown: Microsoft moves to x64
• Martin MC Brown: Multi-core licensing revisited
• Jeff Boles: Hey Cisco! Where's my SAN blueprint guide?
• Joyce Carpenter: Googling social security numbers
• Jerri Ledford: Data responsibility, part 2
• Shark Tank: It's turtles all the way down
• Douglas Schweitzer: Are you getting what you expected?

And finally... an Easter bunny "recipe"

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Also contributing to today's post: Judi Dey, our very own Antipodean.