How do you plan to use Google Calendar?

Planning one's time is nothing new of course and it is a critical discipline of leading an effective business and personal life. Yet, for decades, computer based calendars did little more than mimic paper based ones.

It is a sign of the technology sector's recent focus on people and collaboration (sometimes referred to as web 2.0) that we are seeing lots of activity in the market for calendaring. Group calendaring has received a boost with services like Eventful and Upcoming; individual calendar products include Mozilla Sunbird and the nifty 30Boxes. Earlier this month, Google launched their Calendar (in beta, of course) as a calendar for individuals but with lots of ways to co-ordinate events, share information and integrate to other services (such as maps).

You can use the Google Calendar in a simple way, or you can create several "layers" (confusingly called calendars), decide what you share with friends and colleagues - or outright publish any aspects of your diary on the internet. I expect blogs to be awash with good advice on how to harness the features of Google Calendar if you are a group of friends, a small company, an independent consultant, a family, an event organiser or, say, a sports club. (Stowe Boyd gives a few tips on how to use gCalendar).

It will be interesting to see what lessons will be generated that can be carried over into the enterprise world, still stuck largely on the Microsoft Outlook calendar which works well inside the organisation but is horribly broken when challenged with how business is actually done. I look forward to learning more about the latest in the field when Larry Cannell moderates a panel on the subject at the Collaborative Technologies Conference in June with participants from IBM, Zimbra, TimeBridge, CalConnect and Airena.