So, I’ve been migrating to Google Calendar over the course of the past couple of months, particularly for use in connection with my work running part of the Ford Sayre Nordic Racing program here in my neck of the woods. Now, I’ve been a Google fan since waay back when, but lately I’ve been less than impressed. First of all, their disaster of a login system is putting me off big time (I’ve got a domain account, a separate gmail account, a regular google apps account — and no way of consolidating them, so I spend forever logging in and out and up and down in order to get anything done. It’s ridiculous that Google can’t find a way to help user consolidate this stuff, so we have one master login with access to all our Google toys).
And then there are the quirks within apps like the calendar. Hey, it’s a great tool — and it’s free, so you can’t really knock it. But, seriously. I enter an event and fill in the description field — and then I discover that there’s absolutely no way in hell of displaying the info in the description field anywhere? I mean, WTF? Apparently, that field can only be printed out on an agenda or something irrelevant like that. But, c’mon, this is pathetic, Google. And what’s really pathetic is the fact that users have been begging for this obvious feature for well over a year now, with no — absolutely no — response from the Google developers. Posting after posting on the official Google calendar help forum with no response at all.
At this point, I’m tempted to find a workaround, but it’s really irritating — and a discredit to the Google reputation as a provider of near flawless services — that the calendar app is out there with such an obvious shortcoming. At very best a C+ for this effort, Google. Next time, show your work and do it right.
