Google Calendar: Biting Another Slice Of Our Private Lives?

CaptainRon

Apr 15 2006, 09:34 AM

Well although so far so good. We are getting great free services from this company. But in this regard i would like to mention you the demat account case of Jodhpur.

Some photo studio's came up with this very kewl free trial scheme where you could get your free snaps taken and developed. Under this trial scheme, thousands of people exploited the scheme and got their snaps done. No one bothered to think why the shop was giving out free snaps and how it was making profit from it. Then only to realise one day that a scam had been uncovered, and their names and photos were used to register thousands of false demat accounts.

I am not saying google will exploit us that bad, but it can do some interesting stuff with it. It can become the bad medicine that Microsoft has become for us. We don't want to take it, but can't live without it.

After all if I have a business and I want to use a business email, why not buy an email account? Rather than relying on Gmail. You never know when Gmail decides that you have broken policies and shuts your account. Apart from that, you are simply handing over your personal data to gmail, which is surely not the best deed. (Since we have this quite infamous rumour that they don't delete a single mail that you recieve.)

Now we have this new service called Google Calendar, which seems just as dubious as its Gmail service. With being able to let others sync to our calendars, its a really innovative method of letting others know of your schedule so that they can adjust their schedules etc. Despite all the plus points it just moves one step closer to occupying every user's online life. I don't know about others, but I don't know why I would like people to know about my schedules. If they want to sync with me, they can always ask. What if I throw a private party to selected few, and one of those makes a Google calendar entry? I would face 'discrimination charges' from my all other contacts.
Apart from that, it has the wierd strategy of importing calendars. It allows you to import calendars from outlook, evolution etc, but not export back. Well that is fishy enough to discuss further.

I am fine with softwares like Evolution where I can do most of my day to day scheduling jobs. Some how I have been gripped by Gmail. I still can't figure out how to get rid of it. It's far more simpler to have a 3GB easily searcheable mailbox than burning your archived emails onto CD/DVDs (that i used to do earlier). However wonderful, I still find it a real risky business to deal with. I am still trying my best to get back to my previous routine.

In the end I would like the readers to rethink and decide the share of their lives that they would like to place in Google's hand.

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szupie

Apr 15 2006, 12:27 PM

Personally, I don't have a problem with Google Calendar. I never plan anything personal, therefore I never have personal information to put on Calendar.
Yesterday, I was trying it out, and I decided to create a calendar for the next school year. I thought it would be pretty useful, since it could be informative to other students in my school. So I think if you don't want Google to know your private life, you should use your own program to schedule your private life. You can use Calendar to schedule public things that would be useful to others. Afterall, that's the whole point of sharing your calendar with other Google users.

But I can see how your private party situation could be troublesome. There are always those few who use the system incorrectly and ruin it for everyone else. But that could also happen in any calendar program that enables sharing. Google's only fault is its popularity.

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preman pasar bogor

Apr 15 2006, 01:34 PM

I had been thinking of this
"Put the Right thing on the Right Place"

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CaptainRon

Apr 15 2006, 02:46 PM

Actually as of now, I have not a single problem with Google services. As a matter of fact, am gripped to most of theirs.

But dunno why it always hits me that we are just breeding another Microsoft, which will then turn out even more severe one day, since unlike MS, we are surrendering most of our private stuff to it. Anyhow we can wait and see how things turn out.

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Compuccino

Apr 27 2006, 03:52 PM

If anyone looks in my calendar, they won't exactly be going WOW!
Personally I think Google are taking things too far and more sueing will come = share prices go down!
Google may be taking many wrong decisions now...

Compuccino

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finaldesign

May 15 2006, 11:27 PM

I think you all get wrong idea about this google calendar thingy...

First of all, the idea of calendar is purely for bussiness people. Why? Because if you go to schoole or colledge, why the hell would you bother to put your calendar online? i'ts easier if you write it down on piece of paper and stick it on your wall behind computer or something. (At least you could read it when there is no electric power

)

Anyway, for bussiness people, with lot's of meetings, idea of having online calendar is very good and usable. If you have, let's say, pretty busy week, and you have to meet several people, at different places, but you don't know how and when you'll meet them, the best way is they come to you, when you have time... And they could see it online when you are available...
It's usable for bussiness partners too, that works on distance, that way each partner can see when other is available to reach...

But for common people like me, and you, google calendar is just one more thing that's unusable, because, we like to have our privacy OUR.

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