Lord knows I drank the Google Kool-Aid long ago… my main mail account is through GMail, my new web domain (not yet announced) is using Google’s beta hosted mail program, I waited for months and now have a 5-site account for Google Analytics (great by the way), Google’s desktop search is now something I can’t live without - the only thing I’m not using is their home page, as I’ve switched over to Microsoft’s Live.com (only for multiple pages, better layout control). I mean, look at all these beauiful tools….

People often ask why Google doesn’t charge for any of this stuff… well, it’s simple really… any day now, they could charge for any one of these services - and you know what - I’d pay for it… simply because it’s integrated into my everyday life at this point.

On to the new Google Calendar… I’ve used quite a few online calendars, including the “best” - Airset.com. A great tool that sync’s with Outlook and handhelds, but Google had a way to make the simplest things even easier to do…

The thing I love so far about the Google Calendar is how easy it is to share calendars with friends, and add public calendars - all in a single view. For instance, I can see my personal calendar as well as my girlfriend Heather’s calendar together - then I can add the St. Louis Cardinals schedule, Alias and Lost schedule, and the Wisconsin Football schedule on top of that… so I can see at a glance what’s going on and what I should be doing. The best thing about this, is that Heather always has a ton of crap going on that I can’t keep track of - even remember long enough to add it to my own calendar. Now all she has to do is add it to her own, and it shows up on my calendar too! Beautiful.

As this becomes more popular (it was just officially added to Google’s tools page today), the more public schedules should become available so you can quickly see your favorite band’s tour dates, movie or CD releases, or Angelina Jolie and Brat Pitt’s adoption schedule. Go get them babies!