233 Tech.

Google Calendar + SMS = Awesome!!

Posted on 23. Oct, 2009 by Nana Kwabena Owusu in Real Tech, WWWPlus

Google Calendar is part of the services (See this post on SaaS) offered along with every Gmail or Google Apps account as one of the collaboration features for meetings and event scheduling.

I have used Google Calendar once in a while but not extensively although it has a lot of cool functionality, one of which is mobile access. The mobile access in itself is not why I enjoy Google Calendar Mobile but rather the fact that  it allows adding events by simple English phrases.

Example, provide  “Ghana Dev meeting on Thursday @ 6 in the evening” and Google Calendar figures out the date, time and event name from it. That’s cool and all, but I just recently discovered (I’m sure for some of you, I’m late to the party) the killer feature for Ghanaian account holders; SMS Alerts.

Yes, it is exactly what you think. It allows you to get a text message to remind you about an upcoming event.

Not excited yet? You should be.

Google Calendar allows sharing y0ur calendars with any number of people you wish. Think colleagues, friends, interest groups. There are even some cool ways to sync Google Calendar with your Facebook events, mobile devices and also to share your calendar on your websites and some social accounts. The downside is you need a Gmail account.

This means literally that not only do you have a way to create and share meeting times but you can also add a feature that ensures almost anybody that subscribes to a particular calendar can’t say them forgot or didn’t get the email reminder. This comes straight to your phone and in this way SMS provides significant advantage for important business and personal events and activities, over other technology.

Still need some more convincing?

I am a Liverpool Fan (I bleed RED!) and I am sure most people who enjoy football would also love to know when exactly their teams are playing the next match. Well I can (and I will) create a calendar for match fixtures and anyone who has Google Calendar and enables mobile alerts, ( updates cab be set for minutes, hours or days) before the match you will get an SMS. Now extend this to church meetings, school activities, night club rendezvous times….

Sadly though this feature is available for only MTN and Zain customers. Vodafone, Tigo and Kaspa customers its time to ask the customer service reps, why not us?

Liverpool fans, follow me on Twitter or Facebook and I will update you when the calendar is ready.

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Tags: collaboration, events, Ghana, google, mtn, online calendars, schedules, SMS, text message, zain