

Ask HN: What features do you miss in existing calendars? - alexk

Hi All,<p>Are there any features or specializations that you miss in state of the art calendars (like Google or Zoho calendars)?
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ScottWhigham
Simple: the ability to create easy, customizable printed event calendars.

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alexk
What if remove "printed" from your sentence?

Let's say an organization wants to publish events
(<http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/tickets/>) customize look and feel and
get comments and attendees and the software would give an easy way to do this.

That would be the public event calendar.

What do you think about it?

~~~
ScottWhigham
Mildly helpful but then I have to find another app to handle the "printed"
part. And although I would like that, if "printed" isn't a key functionality,
then it would seem to be a waste of my time to integrate it (and possibly
duplicate my efforts with respect to using already-ingrained corporate
calendars).

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yannis
Cutting the pics of the girls and sticking them on the wall in my garage :)

Seriously, calendars are overstated applications and very few people really
have a 'strong need'for it. Busy people's calendars are normally kept by their
secretaries and I think there is potential in the opposite direction,
providing calendars with less features.

~~~
ScottWhigham
Wow - really? Sorry OP but I'm following yannis off topic here. There are some
odd assumptions in that paragraph:

    
    
       * Assumes that most people who need calendars are "busy people" 
    
       * Assumes that most busy people have secretaries
    
       * Assumes that very few people really have a 'strong need' for calendar apps
    

I'm sorry but I disagree on all three assumptions.

    
    
       * My wife is busy in the sense of raising our family but, without her Outlook calendar to remind her of important appointments, she's lost. Also, every company employee is expected to mainain some sort of computized calendar regardless of how "busy" that person is - calendar of important timelines for a project, vacation calendar, days off, etc.
    
       * I would argue the complete opposite - most startup CEOs are busy as hell yet can't afford a secretary. I personally have a part-time exec asst but she doesn't maintain my calendar (she's part time after all). Companies like Google, MSFT, IBM, etc are full of smart, busy, 70 hour a week developers and sysadmins who don't have secretaries. I would guess that something like only 2-5% of all employees have a secretary. This one is just wrong IMO.
    
       * This is the most debatble of the points raised but, IMO, the fact that most app suites include a calendar and probably 50% of computerized printouts at company functions include a calendar of events tells me this is also wrong. 
       

yannis - nothing personal; I'm really not trying to single you out or just be
a jerk lol (really!). I just think very differently from what you wrote.

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yannis
>I just think very differently from what you wrote.

I am glad and no offense and the primary reason why I enjoy HN. I realize
there is always a spectrum of opinions. Perhaps some of my assumptions were a
bit exaggerated but the gist of the matter is that too many software suffer
from featuritis and I am all for simplicity.

Your wife is busy raising a family and needs her outlook, but mine did raise
three kids with important events stuck on the fridge door on little notes.
(She is B.A. graduate and very computer literate). On the other hand one of my
daughters keeps notes for school events on an online calendar.

I realize that most startup CEOs are busy as hell and can't afford a
secretary. A lot of them lurking here at HN, probably do their own coding as
well :). It doesn't mean that if you can do secretarial work yourself that is
more economical for you to do it and that is one of the reasons for a lot of
startup failures, the owners overloading themselves. It is a must at the
beginning but not for ever. I employ about 18 people at Managerial level jobs.
I consider it a waste to see Senior personnel spending an afternoon
'prettifying' an excel spreadsheet or report, when someone else can do that at
a 1/3 of the price. As for me I like tinkling with the technical side of
things and now and then 'steal' work from my secretary :). She does keep a
calendar for me and screens a lot of my emails.

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pbhjpbhj
Few seem to be able to take an email and easily make it into an event - just a
regular email dragged from or forwarded from an existing MUA parsed for a
start date (earliest date mentioned in the body), time, duration, people who
need to know about it (sender and recipient at least).

Easy synch is vital.

