There are more than a few screenshots over at TechCrunch talking about Google's new calendar software. Ajax based, integrated into gmail, portable, yada, yada, yada. I'll spare you the tech details, suffice to say its yet another web calendar. Nothing new here, all portals have had sucky web based calendars for ages. What is more interesting is the amount of interest and need people have for a Google-delivered calendar software. This is, by far, the most expected and desired feature since Outlook Web Access back in 2003. I have never seen more people look forward to a product this much and desire it so bad. Now if Google is smart enough to build in sharing to this calendar it may be a defacto winner on the day it launches. Why? Full integration. Look at Gmail. It integrates (albeit sucky) chat client, file storage, pop3 access, group subscriptions, tagging, flagging and no advertising on outbound or inbound mail (unlike Yahoo). So basically with a calendar this is a lightweight Outlook Web Access with more features and pesky side-text ads? Now as a standalone this is no match for Outlook or OWA. But if it gets any level of management, sharing and policies…. Well, it becomes a fight over the desktop (yes, again) and where you spend your day. I spend more time in Outlook than any other app. If that app suddenly becomes a web page does it take a lot of people away from the Office suite by default? Thats a big question. What is interesting is the amount of people that say "Hey, check out Google *.*, I use and love it." – Thats what everyone was saying about Outlook 2003 when it launched and now those words are associated with Google. Would you switch? or have you already? And yes, sucky is my new word of the day.

Gdon't care, not really. I only know of one person that actually installed this program and believe me, I tried hard to find someone to play with me and see what Gtalk can do. At the time, not much, aside from a branded stripped down Jabber client it didn't have anything to offer. Google seems to keep on pushing forward with this, it has integrated Gtalk message history (conversations) into Gmail. Aside from being based on an open platform Gtalk really has nothing to offer, especially when you consider other clients that have it beat by a mile. Furthermore, nobody really uses the Gtalk software – everyone seems to be on Gtalkr. So why post this at all? Well, there are such high expectations for Google to provide a Google Cube, power the Google Internet, deliver Google Office, Google Linux… Yet they can't even write a decent IM client and get spanked at it by two Flash programmers. I hope this puts the rumored Google ambitions in some context, if it doesn't go check out Google Pack and it's merry bunch of freeware and you'll see what I mean.

They sure have been buying a lot of fiber. Get it now? Eh? The fiber.. Anywho, the rumor mill over what Google is doing with the dark fiber, the acquired telco building in New York, the $100 Google cube PC, the Google Office, Google Linux. We get it, its a big company with $400/share stock price and they can use the funds at their disposal to do anything. The latest rumor: Google to build its own private global IP network. This, as usual, is bringing out a lot of people concerned over the privacy and how this could lead to Google limiting access only to the web sites that pay for their service. Oh, really? And how is Google going to hook into the Cable jack in my bedroom? The last mile has always been an issue, both for cable and still for ma bell. So let me see if I can settle this would destroying my tall stack of NDA's: Every big private company that has a lot of information on its hands does not want to store it in a single place. Over time it becomes simultaneously impractical, expensive and even impossible to do multi-master replication. Sure, Google has a lot of cash to spend and a lot of ambitions, but at the end of the day Google is an advertising company. Everything else is given away for free in hopes that users would be dragged to their properties to click on ads. So needless to say that every time GOOG shares go up 10% there will be rumors of them taking down Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and DOJ in one swoop. In reality, they just want you to click on ads. As do I. It's called "making money" and despite all the no evil stuff, it is all about the cold hard cash.

Since I'm all about mobility today I think it warrants a little discussion on what is without doubt the most popular web application on the web today – Gmail (though I am playing with Microsoft Live.com webmail and wow, they really give Google a run for their money). So what about Gmail and mobility – well, until now you had an option of syncing your phone with Gmail via provided pop3 download feature. However, if you know the joys of browsing via GPRS on two bars or less you know how painful getting mail on mobile devices is. Well, Gmail went mobile. Now you can browse around your Gmail inbox as easilly as you go through your SMS messages. So check out Gmail Mobile. Now on the other end stands the 500lb gorilla of Microsoft Outlook and there are some great news on that end too. First off, and totally unrelated to Outlook, is the great news that IMF updates are now being distributed through WSUS so you don't have to go fish every other week for IMF content filter updates. But back to Outlook – the latest Outlook Junk Filter update is available for download and you if you got junk mail you need this. Even if you're an ExchangeDefender customer and you don't rely on IMF/Outlook to take care of your spam you need to download this update – I have received a TON of support calls with really weird things happening since the last Outlook junk mail update so please put this on the top of your to-do list.