I’ve been following the growing blogosphere buzz during the past week about 30 Boxes, a new online calendar application that some are saying is the killer calendar application.
So I signed up for the beta yesterday. Noodled around with it for thirty minutes or so, added some appointments to my new calendar, set my preferences for adding in some web content, etc.
Reading all the excitement in recent days, perhaps my expectation was set far too high as I’m a bit underwhelmed by it so far. For me, I don’t see this replacing Eventful, an online calendar service where, like 30Boxes, you can share information with others that I’ve been playing with for the past few months, and certainly not Outlook (although you can sync your 30Boxes calendar with Outlook).
Am I missing the point of it?
Thirty minutes isn’t enough time to form any fixed judgments, though. Plus I haven’t got any buddies on the system yet to share anything with. So I’ll learn more about 30Boxes and then form some clearer opinions.
Meanwhile read what others think about it.
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“I’ve been playing with for the past few months, and certainly not Outlook (although you can sync your 30Boxes calendar with Outlook).”
I don’t think you can sync your 30boxes calendar with Outlook. From what I can tell it doesn’t sync with anything at the moment, which is its biggest limitation and why I’m not bothering to sign up for an account. I want to enter my appointment in one place and have the relevant data accessible to me in a variety of locations (PDA, calendar I share with my family for personal events, intranet for work-related events, etc.) Anything short of that is not worth my time no matter how AJAX-y it is.
If anything, when syncing does come to 30boxes my guess it will be with Apple iCal as the developers appear to be quite OS X-centric. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (I’m cross platform myself).
You’re right, Judy – my using the word ‘sync’ the way I did implies some kind of direct connection between the two. Not so.
What you currently have with 30Boxes is an option to download a CSV file of your Calendar entries which you can then import into Outlook. You casn do similar things with compatible files for Apple iCal.
As soon as this is somehow automated, that’s when it will become extrenely useful.
Clealry I need to spent more than 30 minutes with 30Boxes. Nice match with those numbers, though 😉
I’m a lurker coming out to say that I agree about the hype over 30 Boxes. I’ve long been a user of http://www.Airset/com — it’s the only free calendar I’ve seen that allows you to create multiple calendars for different roles (mom, executive), family members, co-workers, etc. You can view calendars combined or separately. It’s really a free PIM –each calendar has a blog space, lists function, Web links, contacts — so you can view lists, blogs, contacts, etc. according to role (e.g., home, work).
The main problem I have with any of these online calendars, Stella, is what do I do with Outlook if I use these?
It’s already a job enough in managing one calendar so do I really want to have to pay attention to another one, even if I’m keen to experiment and discover new things? And even if that new calendar is supposedly the coolest thing yet in social networking?
I’m far from convinced.