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Calendar Girl
By Marie Gallagher
Graphic Design & Support

Not that kind! I'm talking personal organizer, scheduling tools, daily planners, but to be more specific, the online calendar! Maybe not quite as sexy but certainly makes up for it in usefulness. The online calendar is a tool that organizes your appointments, reminders, task lists and life in general all in one place and accessible from the Internet. There are several reasons to look into these new media tool. One being, to co-ordinate groups of people in their schedules into a common resource. Such as mom, dad, two teens and the frequently visiting mother in law. Or, CEO, executive. Secretary, sales, tech and receptionist, small office, big calendar of projects. It's about keeping everyone on the same page. Weather it's everyone in a family or everyone in an office or even everyone in your life. All parties involved can know that you'll be out of the office on Thursday or late getting home next Monday.

Being married to my Franklin planner, the online calendar seemed like a great way to lose those extra 20lbs of leather and color-coordinated-tabbed-in-decorative-symbolism paper. I found 3 sites that warranted further investigation. One company has served my purposes quite well for about a year and a half. Another, for six months and one I looked into today:. Just to see what new options might have come into play.

Anyday.com (newly acquired by palm.net)
The big plus with this service is that you can have several "groups". One office calendar everyone shares and one calendar for my family. If needed, I could as the administrator of the calendars, combine the two and set permissions on who was privy to what information. Another big plus was the home page. It features a message board, days events, appointments and reminders and also an image of my own. Company logo for the office page and a family picture for the family page. The themes were of good taste and followed all the rules of good graphic design. Adding items to the calendar offers several options, including repeating tasks, email inviting, reminder, notes and even puts an icon next to the entry. There are event reminders, which will notify you of new information in several categories: books, trade shows, internet, movies and more. You can print your new calendar, contact list or even your to-do list. And finally publish to the net sending automatic emails announcing the updates to your group.

Easy.Dailydrill.com
This one has the ability for the to-do items to be dated and undated. There is a lot of extra trivia/info/content at this service and it does email reminders about the items you put on your calendar. (A nice feature!) Not much effort themes although it does a photo gallery to stylize your calendar with. However, be prepared to work with a clunky interface. There is a limited content area where you can find comics, menus, games and (I would guess a testament to the site authors interest) auto racing information. Unfortunately, as I navigated through eh site, I inadvertently switched to a different calendar screen and after 20 minutes of clicking, I was still unable to locate the rather pleasant however elusive calendar screen I was working on. Didn't like the color theme and was unable to find a way to change any style features other than a photo which was on that one screen I couldn't find again. Daily drill.com has a lot of really nice features and I'm sure that once the learning curve is over, it's an effective management tool.

Localendar.com
This watered down version of anyday.com takes the prize for graphical presentation. Should your scheduling adventures require you to add a lobster icon to your calendar, which sits atop an animated background (for that migraine study your involved in), this is what you're looking for. Actually, this is a "fun" and useful site. Visual presentation makes it easy to identify the entries and no frills updating makes it easy to use. The options come in the icons and background selections: balloons, beer, hammer, Cadillac, phone, telescope, chicken, ballet, store,, magic, yoga, cheerleader, canoe and much more. Good tool for family management, but a quick trip to yahoo will provide many other sites of the same caliber.

A little calendar talk from your online-calendar girl. {content}