Google Calendar vs. Yahoo Calendar: The Event Organization Wars

Prettiness:

These days, it's been established as a general rule that Google's sites look better than Yahoo!'s. Yahoo!'s are almost always, hard on the eyes with poor choice of fonts and bad colour integration and really pathetic attempts to look modern while Google's web pages appear natural and very modern. This doesn't change in the calendar service battle.

Google: 1 Yahoo!: 0

Features:

Yahoo! doesn't really help its cause in this department. Sure, it has the somewhat (ok, very) uncreative stock tracker, weather and sports tracker but there's really nothing else that it can brag about that Google doesn't have. Contrarily, the competitor supports mobile access, public calendar sharing as well as viewing.

Google: 2 Yahoo!: 0

Convenience:

Another well-established rule on the internet today is that Google is always more convenient than Yahoo!. However, Yahoo! apparently is trying to squeeze in a little rebuttal with their calendar service. While Google's version gets extremely frustrating with their drag concept, huge time bars and the need to scroll to view the entire day, Yahoo! has a list of events and tasks at your fingertips and shows everything at a glance.

Google: 2 Yahoo!: 1

Simplicity/"Understandablity":

Google usually somehow finds the perfect balance of feature-richness and simplicity but not this time. The calendar has way too many buttons that confuse users and again, the drag concept is downright stupid. And the whole fanciness thing starts to turn against them as some thing just get confusing.
Yahoo! though, has a no-nonsense service with a much simpler "Quick Add Event" bar, a simpler way to add events and a moderate number of details that can be specified.

Google: 2 Yahoo!: 2

Sharing:

Both internet companies did a good job in some areas of this. Google allows users to make public calendars that others can view but it seems these days that there is an overload of inaccurate or unmaintained public calendars that some fall into the trap of putting onto their personal calendar. Yahoo! specialises in individual sharing with a very easy way to share calendars with a single person or small groups: All you have to do is send them to a web page (http://calendar.yahoo.com/*username*) and enable sharing. You can also collaborate with them on these calendars with those with the label of "Special Friend" permitted to edit your calendars. With Yahoo!, you can make your calendars totally public too but this feature is not as good as Google's.

Google: 2 Yahoo!: 3

Verdict:

Yahoo!'s ease of use trumps Google's potential masterpiece of features. Too bad they didn't execute.

The Blackberry on your Desktop: Windows Calendar

If you've looked over the idea of upgrading to Windows Vista from lousy XP (hopefully, you have not lost your sanity and bought a Mac), then here's another reason to do so: A convenient event organizer, by the name of Windows Calendar, has arrived. No more having to settle for the complex mechanics of any online calendar or even worse, using pens and paper. You've got all that in an application on your computer, that comes standard with any Windows Vista package.
Sharing the aesthetic interface of all Vista components, Windows Calendar is as easy-to-use as it gets. Quickly, you can create a new task/appointment, which you can detail with locations, descriptions, times and even reminders.
Also, the innovative three-column design lets you speedily catch a glimpse of everything in your demanding schedule. In addition to that, if you have a lot of things to do, a search bar is exactly what you need to save a few extra minutes.
And here's another handy feature; Windows Calendar is fully compatible with the often used iCalendar format so you can effortlessly subscribe to web calendars- maybe the programming schedule of your favorite TV station- or even publish your own calendars to the web.
As well, if you need more than one calendar to cover your day-to-day life, you'll be glad to know that this application can support up to 100. Moreover, you can share any of these calendars with your family or friends through email invitations or directly within your computer.
Naturally, as with all Microsoft software, there's a simplistic guide to get you off and running. So what have you got to lose? Try it.