For the most part I'm really enjoying the switch I made to Google Calendar (GCal), however there are a couple of things that are bugging me and they all stem from Google's :scare: default :/scare: calendar concept.
In your GCal, you have a default calendar that cannot be removed. Additionally, you cannot choose another calendar to be the default. This default calendar has some special features:
- All events created via SMS are placed in this calendar.
- You can receive notifications for events in this calendar via SMS or e-mail.
- It is the selected calendar when creating new events.
- It is the calendar that quick-add events are placed in.
One of the benefits to using an iCalendar system is the ability to organize events into separate calendars. For example, I have a personal calendar, work calendar, volleyball calendar, birthdays and anniversaries calendar, my Tasks Pro™ calendar, US Holidays, Denver events, etc. I can share different calendars with different people, with varying degrees of access. This segregation also allows you to look at one type of commitments at a time, all at once, or some medium of the two.
The problem I have is that if I want event reminders from GCal, I am forced to put all of my events into a single calendar, losing all of the benefits listed above.
Additionally, the iCalendars created by GCal that I can subscribe to in iCal (and sync to my BlackBerry) do not include alarms, so I can't allow iCal and the BlackBerry to handle the reminders for me.
Unfortunately, this problem has been around for a while; indicating it is not high priority to be fixed.
So the GCal system has generally been great for me. I have access from any machine and can subscribe from my desktop machines to have offline access - but not having reminders of upcoming events is a real problem. I can deal with some of the limitations imposed by the default calendar, but reminders are needed.
One solution I've thought of is to write a script that would parse the GCal iCalendar and add an alarm to each event (using a default preset). I should probably find time to do this before I miss a call or appointment. 
UPDATE: Ok, this works with iCal: code removed
UPDATE #2: Code released as a mini-tool: Google Calendar Alarm-It.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Kevan adds this Comment:
One very hackish solution: sign up for dummy gmail/google accounts for each calendar you want. Set up all the relevant stuff for each one (SMSes all pointing to the same number – or hey, different ones if you keep your work/home devices separate, email all forwarding to your main email account, etc.), and share admin rights for the default calendar for each one on your “main” account.
THEN, use each account as your correspondence point for that topic. Email will come to the appropriate box, and calendar events can be auto added to the calendars.
I’m doing this, almost by accident, with home and work emails, since I ended up with a google hosted account and a regular gmail account. I forward any work outlook events to my regular gmail account, the event gets auto added to my gmail calendar, and then shows up in my view on my main hosted calendar. I can always tweak since my main hosted account is an admin on the gmail one.
It’s wacky, but it actually works. It’d be a lot of work to arbitrarily add (and manage more than a few) calendars, that’s for sure.
December 20th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
I guess that could work, but I really don’t want to be logging in and out of Google accounts to add events, etc.
December 20th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Kevan adds this Comment:
Well, if you make the main account an admin on the other accounts, then you can add events to those calendars from the main account. Again, not the best, but it ended up working for me since I only wanted two calendars of my own.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Good point, that does make it a viable option for getting SMS notifications.
December 21st, 2006 at 4:12 pm
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