Section 20.3. Project Planning and Group Calendars

20.3. Project Planning and Group Calendars Forget the tattered kitchen calendar. Forget the assorted Palm handhelds, on which everyone on the team wrote down a different time and day for the next meeting. With online planning and calendar software, you can keep everybody literally on the same pagea Web page, to be precise. The modus operandi for using this sort of online service should be pretty familiar by now: find a site that you (or y'all) like, sign up for an account, and log in when you need to use it. The beauty of an online calendar is that people all over the buildingor country, or planetcan share the same calendar. And because they're online, Webbased calendars are cross-platform and networkable (so you and your spouse can see each other's calendars). In some cases, the site can even send you little electronic shoulder-tap reminders of your looming appointments by email or instant messaging program. 20.3.1. 20.3.1.1. Google Calendar Google Calendar is beautiful, fast, and simple to use; it feels like a regular piece of desktop software, not like a Web page that blinks every time you make a change. For example, if you already have a Gmail account (Section 14.1.4.2) and you sign up for a calendar (http://calendar.google.com), Gmail recognizes messages that mention dates or events and offers to add such events to the calendar. You can import your life from other calendar programs like Microsoft Outlook or Apple's iCal program into your Gcalendar in just a few steps, too. There are two ways to add events to your day: fast or by form. With the Quick Add option (Figure 20-4), you just click a one-line box and type your info ("Brunch with Julia at Mayrose Sunday at noon"). Google understands your plain-English notation and slaps a proper appointment into your online datebook in the right place. Then, Google being Google, you also get a link to a map of your restaurant's location based on its name , complete with address, phone number, link to its Web site, driving directions, and reviews posted by other diners. Figure 20-4. The Quick Add box in Google Calendar lets you dash off a note on the fly for an upcoming event in regular hasty English. Once you hit the Enter key, your appointment shows up on your calendar page on the proper day and the right time, making it a much speedier way to keep your schedule current than plodding around in dropdown menus to make a date. You can also add an event to your calendar the long way: by clicking the Create Event link and laboriously filling in the form for time, date, place, title of appointment, and all that. You can view your life by the day, week, month, or the next four days, and there's also an Agenda tab on the main screen that shows you a vertical list of all upcoming events. In the Settings area, you can select your privacy options for sharing your calendars with others. That's also where you configure your options for getting reminders sent to your email (Gmail) account or your cellphone as a text message. 20.3.1.2. Yahoo Calendar If you've already got Yahoo email, instant messenger, address book, or any other Yahoo services in your life, it makes sense to add Yahoo Calendar to your stable; you can find it at http://calendar.yahoo.com. It integrates nicely with the email and address book components (clickable tabs for both appear right on your main calendar window). Scheduling an appointment is as easy as clicking the Add Event button and typing in your info on the resulting screen. Yahoo gives you more than a dozen labels to indicate exactly what type of event you're scheduling, including Meeting, Dinner, Bill Payment, Party, andhelpful for many Anniversary . You can view your schedule by day, week, month, or year. On the Options tab, you can share your day's view with other people, add personalized touches like photos and horoscopes, and import data from other calendar programs (like Palm Desktop). Even if you keep all your contacts and calendars in another program, you can sync it up with your Yahoo Calendar to give yourself an online backup, no matter where you are or how hard you bounced your PDA off the train platform this morning. Tip: Calendar sites abound on the Web. If you don't want to add to the Yahoo/Google empire, Kiko (www.kiko.com) is another option. 20.3.1.3. Basecamp/ Backpack /Ta-da List If you love to be meticulously organized in both your life and your collaborative projects, check out Basecamp, Backpack, and Ta-da Lista related trio of services. All three are available at www.37signals.com, along with the company's own online word processor (Writeboard) and group chat (Campfire) applications. Basecamp is a big group project and planning service (Figure 20-5). Tossing out stodgy spreadsheets and charts , Basecamp lets you set up your own workspace online. You can communicate with others assigned to the same project by means of message boards , to-do lists, file sharing, and community calendars. A free account lets you manage communications and scheduling for one project at a time (no file sharing included). For $12 a month, you can have three projects going at oncewith an unlimited number of peopleand share up to 100 megabytes of files on the site. For $100 a month, you get a gigabyte of file-sharing space, time-tracking capabilities, and encrypted file transfers for your top-secret project. Backpack is also all about organizing, but it tends to be more of a personal thing. Once you sign up for an account, you can make individual idea or project pages in a topic ("My Summer Trip to Qubec City" or "Plans to convert the basement into a photo studio") and then add photos, files, and text to the page to help you develop and flesh out your plans. You can also share your pages with pals. Figure 20-5. A Basecamp project page lets you visually organize a plan or project and lets everyone involved communicate in the same space, even if they're not all online at the same time. Members of the same team can post messages, updates, and other general information to keep everyone in the loop. For your further organizational pleasure , Backpack can send you a reminder by email or cellphone text message when one of your to-do items comes due. Monthly Backpack plans range from free to $14; more money means more pages, reminders, and room to store your stuff online instead of in your mind. Ta-da List is completely free and, if you're the type that gets through the day by sheer will and a detailed to-do list, completely addictive . You can make lists for yourself, friends , spouse, and co-workers . And to make sure you don't miss an item, you can get an RSS feed (Section 5.5) of your list to keep you on track. All three services work on Windows and Mac OS X with modern browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer 6 and later, and Safari. And since it's all Web-based, you don't have to tangle with installation or worry about hard drive space just make sure JavaScript is turned on in your browser and you're ready to go. Anywhere . POWER USERS' CLINIC Wandering Laptops vs. Online Nomads The ability to store all your documents online means that travelers now have a serious decision to make: should I even bother lugging my laptop along? If you store all your stuff online, for example, there's much less point in hauling your laptop through airport security. Instead, you can tap into your archives, whip up documents, and show off your photos on any computer with an Internet connection. You can backpack through Europe with a much lighter bag and check your Web-based email and voicemail (Section 18.2) in a local Internet caf. The main drawback to productivity here is not being able to find a computer or Net connection. The alternative, of course, is bringing the laptop with you; that way, you have everything on board. If you just need to do a little word processing or want to sooth your nerves with a little chill-out music, you don't need an Internet connection. There is, however, a way to combine both approaches: keep all your valuable files on a pocket hard drive or USB flash drive. That way, you've got your stuff with you at all times on any computer, whether it has an Internet connection or not. Some pocket driveslike Lexar's JumpDrives with its PowerToGo software, Verbatim's tiny Store 'n' Go USB hard drives , or its U3 flash drivesactually let you install and run your own programs without first having to copy them to the computer you're borrowing . Prices vary with drive capacity, but you can pay anywhere from $50 to $200 for 1 to 8 gigabytes of space. Note: Not sure whether your browser has its JavaScript revved up? In most cases, you just need to turn on the checkbox next to Enable JavaScript in the browser's preferences or options area and then restart the program to have the change take effect.Of course, finding this JavaScript box is the hard part, but here's a quick guide for the most common browsers. In Internet Explorer for Windows, choose Tools Internet Options Security; click the Custom level tab and scroll down to Scripting so you can click the Enable button. For Firefox for Windows, choose Tools Options Content. In Firefox for Mac, choose Firefox Preferences Content; Safari fans can find the JavaScript option by going to Safari Preferences Security.