calendars

Your Microsoft Outlook 2007 in-box is one of those apps that's underappreciated and easily overlooked, yet for business professionals and home users alike, it often bears the brunt of most e-mail exchange.

It's time to give Outlook--and yourself--a hand with some free, and free-to-try, add-ons that could very well smooth out your workflow. We've rounded up five time-saving Outlook add-ons for you to take on a spin. Just don't get too add-on-happy, since, as with browser extensions, a surplus of running Outlook extras can drag down the pace.

Google put out a pair of small, but useful Gmail updates on Thursday that make it both easier to use and more integrated with the company's free Calendar service. Notably, both have skipped a trial through the service's "labs" section, and gone straight through to the final product.

The first is drag-and-drop attachments, a feature which lets you drag files from your desktop machine right into your e-mail message to have them begin uploading. It works the same as the system Google implemented in its Wave service for photos and other media types. It also has … Read more

Now that China is playing hardball with Google by blocking some of its search results, are Gmail and Google Apps business customers at risk?

The search giant tried to address fears of a loss of service among enterprise customers using Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs by offering some technical solutions in a blog posted by the Google Apps team late Tuesday.

For Gmail and Google Apps business customers with operations and employees in China, Google cautioned that the Chinese government could at any time block access to those and other services in mainland China. As a remedy, the company … Read more

As we get closer to the launch date of Apple's iPad (April 3), I can't help but ponder how each application I use might translate to the new device.

Games obviously will have a lot more flexibility with the added touch-screen space, and having more available screen room will probably make development of more complex control systems easier. Apps in every category will have a little more processing power to work with, taking away any delays we've grown used to on the iPhone and iPod Touch. But another noticeable difference for me is how I look at … Read more

Google is trying to solve a very difficult part of personal time management with a new experimental rescheduling feature for the free and paid versions of its online Calendar service.

Smart rescheduling, as Google calls it, lets Google Calendar event creators pick another time for a meeting based on the shared schedules of its participants. The feature, which numerous start-ups have attempted to solve over the years, automates the process of finding these new times.

The only requirement in this case, is that your other attendees have shared their calendars with you. This may be a bit of a stretch … Read more

Here in San Francisco, where the seasons consist of rain, fog, sun, and more fog, we don't really get to enjoy the beauty of falling autumn leaves. At least we can get a vague approximation of the process via the Stihl Autumn Calendar 2010.

On a daily basis, the calendar automatically tears off and drops its own pages, which are designed to look like leaves in various fall hues. It accomplishes that by ripping out the bookbinding thread along its spine using a motorized reel.

Ad agency Euro RSCG in Dusseldorf, Germany, came up with the idea to promote … Read more

The Windows system tray clock used to be the most primitive and least accurate timekeeper since a caveman stuck a stick in the ground on a sunny day. What Microsoft left undone was an opportunity to developers who rushed in with much-needed improvements such as atomic clock updates and, best of all, colorful, customizable, feature-packed skins and utilities that let you put useful, accurate clocks on your Windows desktop. Unisoft's 3D Tray Clock Ex. is just such a utility, updated with more looks, more features, and more improvements to stay ahead of the much-improved clock on recent editions of … Read more

Developer 4Team specializes in add-ins, "software solutions integrated into Microsoft Office and Outlook," which are the business world's essential tools. Their ShareCalendar lets users share Microsoft Outlook Calendar folders without a server, both online and offline. You can share information with it from within Outlook and other Office applications, such as customized Outlook calendars with your own forms and even imported items. You can specify different folders for different groups of people, and even "subscribe" data for clients and coworkers. It also synchronizes shared Outlook items with handheld devices or between a PC and laptop.… Read more

There are a lot of calendar applications out there, and by this point we think that most people have settled on their favorites, whether they're devoted to Outlook, the online capabilities of Google Calendar, or something else. Most of the stand-alone calendar applications that we review don't particularly impress us, simply because they offer little in the way of features that could conceivably lure people away from other programs. VueMinder Calendar Lite, however, is an exception: this flexible calendar fills a niche that other calendar programs don't.

The application's interface is sleek and attractive, reminding us … Read more