Google Calendar has now entered it’s public beta testing phase. The interface will be familiar to anyone who’s used GMail and any other calendar application before – it’s basically a hybrid of the two.

Palm Sync for Google Calendar is Needed

My initial impression is that it looks good, but without the ability to sync with handheld devices (e.g. Palm Pilot) it’s ubiquity is far from certain.

PC-using iPod owners will no doubt be delighted to know that their music machine can already sync with google calendar, thanks to it’s support for the iCal format (if Palm Inc. are listening, take note!)

iCal

The best of the low-hanging fruit so far is that it happily subscribes to iCal files, so publicly available calendars (which are typically produced by the legion of apple users who have been enjoying a good calendar app for a couple of years) are now far more accessible to web-based users.

Sharing

The ability to collaboratively author calendars looks good too, however, this seems to be broken at the moment.

Update: People want Palm Sync!

Since writing the above entry I’ve noticed an awful lot of people arriving here with similar desires… it’s understandable really, given that Palm have sold over 34 million PDA’s worldwide, and licensed the OS for use in millions more phones.