Using Google Calendar for other purposes Jan10 '07

I've been intrigued with the idea of using Google Calendar as a journal, or even better - a blog or news feed.

Using it as a journal

I've already begun using it as a personal journal - recording anything from how often I use the health club, to personal feelings or ideas that I wish to jot down somewhere.

It works by simply creating a new "event" as an individual journal entry. The events are automatically date and time stamped, so you always know when you wrote something. And, obviously, since it's a calendar - the events are organized by "day," keeping a chronological archive of all entries ever written.

The event name is the journal entry headline, and you can use the description part of the event as the body of the journal entry.

Screenshot of Google Calendar

If I ever need to quickly locate every day I went to the health club, I can do a quick search for "Went to Lifetime," and it pulls all days, provided I named the event in the same fashion. This is a great way to track progress of your work-outs, by seeing which activities you did each visit. Also, the membership to this health club is a benefit of my company, and if I don't go a certain number of times, they cancel the membership. So by tracking how many times I go, I can keep my own little "internal counter," so I am assured my membership stays alive.

Using it for other purposes

This is only the beginning of how useful Google Calendar can become.

Imagine using it as a form of content syndication. You could create a public calendar, which others can subscribe to. Then, each "news entry," or "blog entry" is synced to subscribers' calendars. They don't have to do anything - it all comes to them.

This idea already exists in some fashion, in the form of public events. By creating events that are public, other calendar users can copy those events to their calendars.

Screenshot of Google Calendar

Categories: Google , Software

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matthom is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.

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