How Google Calendar could be improved

I’m a big fan of Google apps – gmail, Picassa and google documents, but I’ve never got into using the calendar. Some of my friends do. But despite the fact that I’d love to have a useful web-based calendar I just zone out when I look at the interface.

Do you have to be one of those people who colour-coded their revision timetables to get into it? I don’t know but I wish they’d change it a bit. I’m fed up with having my calendar and events split up between facebook, my phone and my email account – it’s too fiddly and not practical.

[PS: After mouthing off about this earlier, I’ve discovered you can sync your google calendar to the native calendar app on your phone. Complicated, but information here for iPhone and here for other devices.]

Here’s my wishlist for Google Calendar:

1) Make it simpler: I know, I’m being a bit slow, but when I open up Google calendar I just think Excel spreadsheet and I am not good with those things. I can see it has huge functionality, with maps, invite lists and reminders. But it is too damn complicated, I’d prefer it if this functionality was built in behind a simpler interface.

2) Sync with Facebook: nearly all of my invites to social occasions come from Facebook

3) Accessible to people without gmail accounts. I can see this would be hard. I know you can send invites to their hotmail address, and that they only need a google account to be able to use G-Cal but they don’t. Most of my friends aren’t on gmail. This is why I always use Facebook over Gmail to organise events of any sort. Could Google make some app or client which lets people from wherever share calendar details with each other? I hope so.

4) It should be easier to turn emails into events: someone invites you to an opening or a conference and there should be a “turn this email into an event” option. That would prompt me to use the calendar more.

Any improvements you’d like to see?