Managing both personal and work agendas
In my move to Google services (more generally going “all cloud”), I started to use Gmail (love it though there are rooms for improvement regarding the UI) but I also wanted to start using Google Calendar.
Before: One agenda that contains both work and personnal information hosted in Outlook at work. I synched it with mobile device over USB or bluetooth. Pros: one agenda with all my appointements and todo in one place, can take it with me on my phone, nothing in the cloud (no “corporate” securiy issue). Cons: Mixing both professional and private appointments, I can not share it, no access control (my management could see my personal appointment ?).
Last week I decided to leave aside my doubts about Google and went “all Google“. I am already an user of many Google services (like Adsense, Analytics, Google Docs,…) but I am in the process of integrating Gmail and Google Calendar in my workflow. Big move to host those datas in the Google Cloud but the services look good enough and they are so well packaged with nice features that it is probably worth it. I am not 100% sure I can trust Google but I have to reckon that so far they have been pretty good at not fooling around with my datas and hopefully it will remain like that (why would not they?). Also, unlike some “competitors”, they do not try to lock you down by “encrypting” your datas in some proprietary formats, you can always move away with your datas in an interoperable format.