On Wednesday (04/13/06) Google unveiled their latest product, Google Calendar. The new web-based application is open to the public, but is expected to remain in beta temporarily. Google Calendar, code-name CL2, helps track events, schedule appointments, and share them with others. This new service is completely intergraded with Gmail, allowing users to add events mentioned in messages to their calendar or emailing scheduled events to contacts. Google Calendar will also notify the user by email and/or SMS notifications if requested. Since Google Calendar supports iCal standards, it can import content from applications such as MS Outlook.

Main Features:

• Gmail Intergration – send events to contacts or save mentioned events
• Calendar Sharing – create public calendars or grant users permission
• Data Importing – import data from other applications (Outlook, etc.)
• Multi-Calendars – manage seperate calendars for work, home, etc.

Any calendar can be easily shared among others by either giving specific users access or by making it open to the public. The application will even schedule appointments with others not using Google Calendar through email. This new service is amazingly better and faster than both MSN’s and Yahoo’s services, which have existed for many years. Google Calendar will work in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, but not in Safari. I suggest trying or at least testing this new service, as it is completely free.

Links: Google Calendar | Press Release
Related: MSN Calendar | Yahoo Calendar
Coverage: BetaNews | Weblogs Inc | TechCrunch

1) Google Calendar screenshots have been revealed by TechCrunch, a popular Web 2.0 blog. (Yahoo! apparently fed them the info) Anyways “to be launched” service is an online AJAX based calendar service, which is suppose to be called CL2. The service has a gmail-like user interface and will have plenty of colaboration features, including RSS. It should also become intergrated with many of Google’s other services.
Links: Tech Crunch | CL2 Login Screen

2) Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have been added to the iTunes Store. The “season pass” will cost only $9.99 and will download the current episode plus the next 16 shows when they become available. Epsiodes can still be purchased individually for $1.99.
Links: Daily Show | Colbert Report
iTunes Links: Daily Show | Colbert Report

3) Microsoft has announced that their code name “Origami” Tablet PC should be available by the end of April. This is a new line of products, influenced by Microsoft, which are ultra-portable machines that are powered by Windows XP. Samsung’s version has a 7″ touch screen display, an extendable keyboard, Bluetooth, and WiFi. They can also run standard apps such as MS Office as wells as support playing videos, listening to music, and viewing photos. (Pricing will be around $600-1000)
Links: Origami Project | Microsoft’s Preview

4) MSN Live (aka. Windows Live) has just gotten a full AJAX makeover. Although still in beta, the service looks simple and clean. It has support for custom RSS feeds, as well as a selection to choose from. (weather, horoscope, email, news, etc.) The interface looks much better than Google IG. One neat feature that other services don’t offer that MSN Live does is Feed Search. For example search for “CNN” and when the results appear, if a feed is available a “add feed” button will be displayed.
Links: Windows Live | LiveCom Offical Blog

If you search for the phrase “desktop search” in Google’s search engine it brings up Google Desktop Search as the first result. Then if you search for it in Yahoo’s engine it brings up Yahoo! Desktop Search as their first result. (both as expected) They both advertise their products properly (prioritizing their own), but also provide results for competitor products after theirs. This is completely normal. But when you try out MSN’s Search you will see that Google’s Desktop Search hilariously appears at the top of this list. This is even above their over their own product. Let me know if im wrong, but if you have a product competing with another major company, wouldn’t you advertise it. I’m guessing, but this is what happens when MSN copies Google’s results. If MSN wants people to use their product then they should be advertising it over competitor products.

Link: MSN Search | Google Search | Yahoo! Search

1) Firefox & Thunderbird 1.0.6 – Mozilla released another update for both Firefox and Thunderbird making both programs v1.0.6. They released such a quick update because v1.0.5 contained a buggy API, which didn’t allow many extensions to function properly. Only update if your extensions aren’t working, but there aren’t any other updates since 1.0.5.
Link: Mozilla.org | Firefox (changelog) | Thunderbird (changelog)
Related: Firefox and Thunerbird 1.0.5

2) MSN Messenger v7.5 BETA – Microsoft is currently testing a major update to the current v7.0. Some new features include voice clips (15-sec clips), new sign-on screen (sign on invisibly), and re-named buttons. This doesn’t say much, but they most likely also fixing major security flaws and bugs even though they haven’t announced any more yet.
Link: MSN Messenger | BETA News
Related: Gaim | Trillian

3) AOL Explorer 1.1… (BETA) AOL is working on a web browser to compete with IE, Firefox, and Mozilla. It currently includes a pop-up blocker, spyware scanner, tabbed browsing and a desktop search. I highly doubt this will become popular, they are just trying to get into the desktop search field, which Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are already in, and also going for a brand new browser, which IE makes up about 90% (FF is about 10%).
Link: AOL Explorer BETA | BETA News
Related: AOL Media Player | AIM Trition

4) Google Earth FREE Edition 3.0… BETA is out. This is an update to the previous version that had a few bugs. It is an amazing program, which should be installed by everyone. It had 3D images of many major cities and is gathering more and more satellite images from around the world every day! Google Maps also now covers more maps from around the world.
Link: Google Earth | Google Maps
Related: Google Labs | GlobeXplorer

5) QuickTime 7.0 Windows Public Preview 2 is now available. Apple has fixed many bugs since pre-1. It’s most important feature is the ability to play H.264, a video codec, which allows playing HD level content at low data rates. The file size is also suppost to be smaller than other formats of HD.
Link: Apple Quicktime | Windows Preview 2
Related: iTunes 4.9 w/ Podcasting Support

Note: (if you don’t already know) 2day is another FREE SKYPEOUT DAY