Usually, when Google goes public with a new beta, it means that the company doesn't want to absolutely commit itself, but it's pretty sure that it has a reasonably finished product. But the new Google Calendar is, it turns out, truly a beta product, if not alpha. While it has an impressive feature set and is nicely designed, Google Calendar has enough glitches to make you wonder whether, this time, Google was too fast off the mark.

Google Calendar is one of the new online applications that uses the popular Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web development technique. Because data updates are faster and more responsive, Ajax-based online calendars offer a great deal more flexibility than their more static predecessors. For example, users can enter appointments and other info quickly and easily using either menus or by typing in simple sentences ("Lunch with Valerie noon-1 p.m. May 14"), share calendars with specific contacts or the public at large, and incorporate other calendars that follow the iCal standard.

Quick And Easy
Google Calendar offers all these features in an excellent, easy-to-understand, and well-designed interface. You have five calendar views to choose from: day, week, month, a specific number of days, or a list of appointments. You enter a new appointment by clicking on the Create Event or Quick Add links, or by clicking directly on the day itself. As with other Ajax apps, you are then offered a single line in which you type as much or as little of your appointment as you like. For example, typing "Staff Meeting every Monday 4-5 p.m." will result in an entry of "Staff Meeting" to appear each Monday at 4 p.m. on your calendar. Add an address, and a Location line will be added, with a link to a Google map.

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If you want to alter an existing entry, just click on it and you're taken to an edit page, where you can change the name, time, location, and description of your event; start a newsgroup-like discussion; add a reminder (which can be a pop-up or sent from your E-mail or mobile phone); and change the privacy level.

This is the point where Google Calendar's beta status becomes obvious. When I first began working with the app, I hit a wall when I tried to edit existing entries. If I made a change and hit the Save button, the edit window just sat there. If I hit the link to take me back to the calendar, a pop-up box let me either cancel the request or lose all my changes. There were other quirks on the edit screen as well. For example, the fields that would've let me create a repeating event were missing.

After some searching, I found the answer on Google's discussion board. Apparently, the problem was with my security software. Some users reported that when they disabled the pop-up blocking in Norton Internet Security (or other security apps), the problem went away. I tried disabling pop-up blocking in my copy of Norton, and it worked--I was able to freely edit the entries, and the field for repeating events reappeared. Since then, Google has posted a set of fixes for users of Norton Internet Security and ZoneAlarm, some of which include lowering a PC's security level. Hopefully, by the time Google Calendar becomes final, those fixes won't be necessary.