LAUNCH: The Backpack Calendar - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

LAUNCH: The Backpack Calendar Jason 27 Jul 2006

114 comments Latest by Anonymous Coward

The Backpack Calendar is here. It’s available as a tab in everyone’s Backpack account, but it’s only accessible for paying customers. This is what you call an incentive to upgrade ;)

Watch and learn

A great way to be introduced to something new is to 1. dive in and use it yourself, or 2. watch someone else use it. We’ve put together a few Quicktime movies with audio that help demonstrate the basics:

Overview: Get a feel for the basics (adding events, creating calendars, etc).
Sharing calendars: Check out how easy it is to share your calendars and subscribe to other people’s calendars using the popular iCalendar format.
The layout: A quick overview to the grid and day view.
Getting around: This tour shows you how to move through the calendar and a few shortcut tips to jump directly to any day/month at any time. These shortcuts make Backpack extra useful — especially when someone calls you and says “Hey, are you free on November 12th?”

Props to Sam

Our very own Sam worked his heart out on this one and we love him even more for it. It’s simple on the surface but it was complex behind the scenes. Building a modern web-based calendar is building an entire new product. The development of this calendar took about 2.5 months and a few things didn’t make the 1.0 cut. We’ll be working on those next. The biggest headache was IE 6 support.

What’s next for the calendar

A few things that didn’t make the 1.0 cut that we plan to add are:

Repeating events
European date preference
Drag and drop events in IE (it works great in Firefox and Safari, but IE 6 wasn’t playing nice)
And some minor design issues that we had to introduce in all browsers in order to accomodate for IE 6 (bastard!).

We have some other stuff planned too, and we have some edges to polish up, but we’re really thrilled about this initial release.

We hope you like it

We’re really excited about this calendar. Personally this will be the first web-based calendar I actually use. I’ve tried the others but none of them really resonated with me. Too many popups, too much stuff getting in the way, too many different views, clutter, etc. So here’s our offering. We hope you like it.

If you don’t have a Backpack account please consider signing up. The calendar feature is only available for paying plans, but those start at only $5/month (no contracts, no signup fees, no termination fees, cancel at any time). Thanks again.

114 comments so far (Jump to latest)

Ryan Christensen 27 Jul 06

To cross-post my comment from TechCrunch — I�ve been toying around with the Backpack Calendar since it was just launched (appearantly, within the last 20-30 minutes?).. very satisfied, though, time will be the true test.

I�ve been a gCal user up to this point.. and generally dislike the excess baggage found there. I�m hoping this isn�t *too* minimal.. but it looks like it should serve me well.

The only suggestion I have so far is for whole-day-events (non-time-specific events, that is) that don�t span multiple days to be displayed differently � ideally in the manner that multiple-day all-day events are. Just to give some visual difference.

Keep up the good work!

Jeff Croft 27 Jul 06

Congrats on the launch. I know it’s been a long time coming. In five minutes of playing with it, it’s definitely a very well-done calendar application.

Just one question: any plans to support iCalendar’s to-do items (VTODO)? I keep all my to-do lists in iCalendar format, and was really hoping (since you’d said Backpack support iCalendar) that it would show tasks as well as events.

Steve Erickson 27 Jul 06

This is outstanding. Thanks for the hard work and a great and useful product.

Scott J 27 Jul 06

Diggin’ the calendar. I’ve got my GCal pointed at Backpackit and my Backpackit pointed at GCal for the ultimate calendar sharing experience!

My one question: are they plans to integrate Backpackit Reminders into the Backpackit Calendar? I was able to do this via the webcal feed of Reminders, but I was curious if there were plans to make this a feature down the road.

Keep up the great work guys!

Stacy 27 Jul 06

Great job, again!

Do you forsee an API to interface with other web apps?

Michael Egan 27 Jul 06

Great touch adding the number of events in the tabs. It’s useful for people like me who pop in an out of Backpack for only a few seconds at a time.

JF 27 Jul 06

Stacy, we already have an API for Backpack. As far as having an API for the calendar we don’t comment on future possibilities, sorry. The future is too flexible to say yes or no.

Adam Welling 27 Jul 06

Been waiting for this since the initial announcements, so far everything looks just like I hoped it would. You guys do fantastic work, keep it up.

Joshua Kaufman 27 Jul 06

Another fine web product from 37signals… very well done and congratulations.

I’m loving it so far, especially the “busy” animation that replaces the interface elements (when you move between months for example) and the natural language input.

It the first web-based calendar I’m using as well and I couldn’t be more proud. Keep it up Signals!

Alex Keeny 27 Jul 06

Looks oddly familiar to some calendar app i use on my mac all the time…

Aaron 27 Jul 06

When you subscribe to a ical calendar does it automatically refresh and add newly added events or is it a one time import? Maybe I am overlooking the answer somewhere. Thank you.

iCalendars are updated every 60 minutes.

jonezy 27 Jul 06

Looks great… hopefully i haven’t started using gcal too much. I did add my google calendar and i noticed a bug (i think). It seems to be shifting all my google calendar events one day earlier. If you need more info just let me know.

just noticed, it’s only shifting recurring events back by one day on calendars imported from google calendar.

Rob Cameron 27 Jul 06

Someone has a vacation in San Diego next week! If you had your Audi here I’d recommend a drive up Palomar Mountain — 18 miles of ultra-twisty roads!

Stephen 27 Jul 06

Hooray! I was about to open an account with another web calendar, when you sent out the teasers about Backpack Calendar, so I held off. I’ve been anxiously awaiting its release ever sense.

Thanks guys for a great product made better! It looks great so far. This cements Backpack�s place in the center of organizing my life.

Josh Kaufman 27 Jul 06

Great job - I love it! Just the right amount of features.

My only suggestion is a print stylesheet. A one page summary of the day’s events and graphical overview of the next 3-6 weeks (similar to what was done on Basecamp) would be very, very handy for people who don’t have net access all day.

Print stylesheets are coming. First things first man ;)

Dean Strelau 27 Jul 06

Wow! I’ll say that ever since the teaser a few weeks ago, I’ve been waiting rather (im-)patiently for this to launch. Then, a few places leaked the news last night and backpackit.com/calendar went live - I upgraded from the free account & have been clicking ‘refresh’ all day waiting for that extra tab to show up!

I’ve used just about every web calendar I could find (gCal, 30Boxes, Planzo, Kiko … I’m probably forgetting some!) and I think I’ve finally found a keeper. Another *wonderful* product from 37S. Beautiful & Useful! Thanks, guys!

Glen C. 27 Jul 06

Two quick questions that I didn’t see answered (and haven’t tried due to a a free account):

1. Are there or will there be any sort of keyboard shortcuts, especially to bring the adding form into focus?

2. Can you or will you be able to email events to a Backpack calendar?

Thanks. Looks great. This is probably my breaking point into a payed account for me.

Deborah 27 Jul 06

I like the new calendar, but my 30boxes calendar is showing up in backpackit with all events being 1 hour later. I checked both accounts and the timezones are set correctly.

Any suggestions?

Woohoo! Not trying to be impatient, just putting it out there. :-)

Seriously, this is awesome work! Kudos to you guys for making a great thing even better.

Ryan Allen 27 Jul 06

Incentive to upgrade indeed! I may just have to upgrade to check it out… :)

Am I the only one who uses to-do lists?

It seems that no web calendars support to-so. gCal doesn’t. Now Backpack doesn’t.

That just seems strange to me. And yet, they all claim they “support iCalendar.” That’s a bit like when Netscape 4 said they supported CSS.

Anonymous Coward 27 Jul 06

Jeff, Backpack itself has all the to-do lists you need.

Dave 27 Jul 06

Backpack Calendar = sex

THANK YOU 37Signals!

David Nemesis 27 Jul 06

Sir, you need to get a life. :)

All kidding aside, though, the calendar’s a lovely addition. Major props.

RS 27 Jul 06

Are there or will there be any sort of keyboard shortcuts, especially to bring the adding form into focus?

The add event form has focus on load and receives focus each time you click a day.

“Jeff, Backpack itself has all the to-do lists you need.”

Is that a joke? Backpack has nice ability to make lists of various types, but they’re not very useful to me if I can’t get them in iCalendar format. iCalendar lets me sync to my phone, my computers, etc.

Saying you support the iCalendar format but not support to-dos is a lot like saying you support HTTP, when you only support GET and not POST. Or saying you support IMAP, but you don’t support folders.

The entire iCalendar spec is based upon two things: VEVENT and VTODO. Supporting only one of them does not quallify as “supporting iCalendar.”

Geoff 27 Jul 06

Jason,
Can you let us know what you use to produce the great Quicktime Videos. I have been playing around with Mousepose (very cool) and SnapZ Pro (so-so). Any recommendations?

Mark Gallagher 27 Jul 06

Love the clean design. But there is one big difference compared to Google and other calendars.

You don’t show the time of the event next to the event name in the daily box. You only use a bullet point to the left of the event name. You have to click on the day and then look at the upper right column to see the times of events.

Frequently with someone on the phone trying to schedule a meeting you would scan across several days in the grid looking for open times. But you can’t do that with this calendar, right ? You need to click on each day and then view the times one day at a time in the right column.

The time of the event is as important as the name of the event, so it should display in the box.

Just some quick feedback. It has many great features and the quicktime demos are very well done.

Deepak 27 Jul 06

Excellent!!! Long awaited. I am actually going to use this in sync with google calendar (still need to figure out how to get backpack calendars into google calendar).

Question. If one can now add reminders into the calendar, why have a separate reminder section. Why not just combine the two (once the repeat events stuff is sorted out)

Question #2. Don’t have quicktime on this computer so I might have missed this, but is there a way to link list items to calendar entries?

The entire iCalendar spec is based upon two things: VEVENT and VTODO. Supporting only one of them does not quallify as �supporting iCalendar.�

Neither would IE6 qualify as “supporting” CSS or JavaScript, nor would the Mac version of Microsoft Word quite qualify as “supporting” Word documents. Yes, sometimes things that are partially compatible pass themselves off as “compatible.” Deal with it.

David 27 Jul 06

“I like the new calendar, but my 30boxes calendar is showing up in backpackit with all events being 1 hour later. I checked both accounts and the timezones are set correctly.”

I’m getting the same issue with an iCal file hosted on a .mac account.

I have been playing around with Mousepose (very cool) and SnapZ Pro (so-so). Any recommendations?

That’s what we used. And a good dose of patience — making movies with audio takes a long time to get right.

Chad 27 Jul 06

I entered in “11” and it created a bullet on the day that I can’t seem to delete.

I love it otherwise. This will most likely be the first calendar app I actually continue to use.

If one can now add reminders into the calendar, why have a separate reminder section. Why not just combine the two (once the repeat events stuff is sorted out)

Because there are a lot of things in your life that aren’t calendar items but that you want to be reminded of. Do you want to litter your calendar with things like “Pick up the dry cleaning at 4” or “Don’t forget to mow the lawn this weekend” ? Reminders are reminders, and calendar items are calendar items. Everyone can draw the line where they want.

“Deal with it.”

I’m happy to deal with it, if that’s the way it is (I’ll deal with it by downgrading my account that I just upgraded to try it out).

I simply asked if there were plans to support VTODO. So far, it’s been ignored (while several other questions have been answered).

What my question really so offensive that the only answer it warrants is “deal with it?”

Fri�rik M�r J�nsson 27 Jul 06

You guys are frickin’ great.

Matt Widmann 27 Jul 06

Finally! I’ve been waiting for this for a while and it’s great to see it out.

Although, it’s hurting not to have repeating events. One of the teasers on the calendar page shows the functionality, but I hope you guys can roll out an updated version soon that includes it. That’s my only gripe, otherwise, it’s great.

Ben Brophy 27 Jul 06

Awesome. I upgraded yesterday for the file uploads, so this is like surprise gift.

And since everybody seems to have theat one more thing they’d like to see, mine is to see my reminders on the calendar.

Between this and the voice notes thing on the 25th it’s like Hannukah in July. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

John Wise 27 Jul 06

I’d be more than happy to pay $20 per year for five fully-functional pages (e.g. calendar, files, etc.). I can’t justify $60 per year for glorified Post-It-Notes…

ant 27 Jul 06

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

Josh Poulson 27 Jul 06

Jeff, dude, Backpack is a GIANT todo list application.

I’m curious as to why anyone would switch from Google Calendar to this? Personally, I’m not seeing the added value. Am I missing something?

Jason

Because there are a lot of things in your life that aren�t calendar items but that you want to be reminded of. Do you want to litter your calendar with things like �Pick up the dry cleaning at 4� or �Don�t forget to mow the lawn this weekend� ? Reminders are reminders, and calendar items are calendar items. Everyone can draw the line where they want.

Actually I don’t necessarily have a problem with doing that, but you do have a point. I am sure I will figure out a workflow.

Actually I don’t necessarily have a problem with doing that, but you do have a point. I am sure I will figure out a workflow. Anyway, I do have some other questions, but will move those to the forums

D 27 Jul 06

Quick hack to get repeating events: enter them as reminders and then subscribe to your reminder feed within calendar.

Great work, guys. Works great so far.

“Jeff, dude, Backpack is a GIANT todo list application.”

I realize that, but the lists and reminders in backpack are not iCalendar compatible. I asked in the second post if there were any plans to add iCalendar to-do support, and haven’t gotten any response other than people telling me to “deal with it.”

If there are no plans for iCalendar to-do support, that’s fine. I will use one of the web-based calendar system that do support it, instead. I was just curious, because this calendar is quite a bit more elegant than most of the others on the web, so I’d much prefer to use it (and frankly, there are only a few that do support to-do, and they suck. It seems like a niche waiting to be filled, to me). I just wanted to know if it was in the cards is all.

Forgive me.

robb monn 27 Jul 06

Re: ICalendar reminders. For instance, kGTD, a very popular task management system exports todo lists to icalendar by context, which is very nice. Support for the todo segment of the standard would make Backpack into a much more GTD friendly system. Also it would be nice and standards-compliant, right?

I’m still looking forward to the fix in the Writeboard CSS that will make the table borders show up in printouts. Pretty-pretty-please?

Richard 27 Jul 06

Very nice! The only fifty-three features I need now are…

…kidding!

Robb: Deal with it.

(sorry, couldn’t resist. glad to hear i’m not alone.)

Question: If I set a 30-min reminder on a day long event, when do I get the SMS/email?

I don’t especially want to be getting several SMS messages at 11:30p the day before!

If I set a 30-min reminder on a day long event, when do I get the SMS/email?

9am the morning of the all-day event.

Just so you know, the double comments seem to be a result of your server timing out but still posting the data. : \

Matt Ramos 27 Jul 06

I thought this was going to be free!! Time to upgrade.

I’ve recommended this to so many friends. None of them ever use my referrer code :(

Keep up the great work

shane 27 Jul 06

Absolutley delicious calendar app! Well done guys! Go celebrate tonight with a cold german beer in hand…

Question: I goofed and entered the following, “Aug 2 - Aug 5” but forgot to name the event. Now I can’t delete it because there’s no name attached with which to access via the “Add an Event” column. Any suggestions other than don’t do that again :)

Having used it a bit, I agree that full day events should be displayed similarly to multi-day events. I see how that would be debatable, but for me anyways it would work better.

Jeff Croft: Please do grow up. I’m not talking about whether Backpack can, will or should offer iCalendar export of to-do items. Personally I don’t foresee that being a useful feature for me, but I see that you do and I respect that. And if your way of dealing with it is not to give 37signals $5 of your hard-earned money for a feature that doesn’t do what you need it to do, then have at it, friend.

My point was that offering only partial iCalendar support is still “supporting” iCalendar for sharing events, which is how that format is most commonly used. Do you think they need to tack on a disclaimer that says “for sharing events only; Backpack does not support syndication of to-do items” in order to use the dreaded s-word?

Jaan Orvet 27 Jul 06

Re: European date preference

Fingers crossed that this includes having the week start on a Monday.

Dan Boland 27 Jul 06

Not sure if it’s been mentioned or not, but clever use of the add event text field for jumping to other days and months. I like that you resisted the temptation to clutter the screen with a dedicated field just for that purpose, even if it means less than 100% accuracy on the field label. Nice job.

Jack Shedd 27 Jul 06

Am I the only person finding this to be a little buggy?

I’ll email support with the details, but I’m getting timeouts, stalls, and generally unreliable behavior.

CP 27 Jul 06

Right on! I was thinking the other day, man I wish Backpack had a calendar feature! Great job guys.

Andy Kant 27 Jul 06

Looks like more money I’m going to be dropping on 37signals simply due to the elegance and simplicity of the UI. :-(

“Do you think they need to tack on a disclaimer that says �for sharing events only; Backpack does not support syndication of to-do items� in order to use the dreaded s-word?”

No, I don’t think 37signals needs to do anything. I think would be nice if Jason would answer my simple question from the second post about if there are plans to add event support (even if that answer is “we don’t know”), just so I’d know whether or not I should keep an eye on Backpack — but they don’t need to do anything.

I understand this isn’t a feature everyone wants. All I did was ask if there was support for it planned, and I was told to “deal with it” and now to “grow up.” Why you found it your responsibility to answer me at all is beyond me. You can’t tell me the answer to my question — so why bother responding at all?

Err, I meant task support, not event support.

J 27 Jul 06

Jeff how about demanding a little less?

“I think would be nice if Jason would answer my simple question from the second post about if there are plans to add event support…”

Your sense of entitlement to Jason’s time to answer your specific question is, frankly, juvenile. If Jason wants to answer your question I’m sure he will. He probably gets hundreds of questions every day from people. He also has work to do. So it’s out there. Quit bringing it up. Really, man, don’t demand other people’s time so much (continuing to request an answer from someone else is demanding their time).

Alan Bristow 27 Jul 06

Sad to see a simple question (Jeff Croft’s) pounced on, seems to me that a noFlame post (as Jeff’s was) deserves a noFlame reply. My guess is that part of the reason for the reduction in civility is perhaps the mounting pressure each time there is a product or feature release (especially one as key as this feature in this product). I’m sure I am wrong to comment so apologies in advance for any toes trodden on.

So far, I seem to be in the huge minority in finding myself, so far (can you see my caveat showing?) underwhelmed by the BPcalendar when compared to Gcal. I tthhiinnkk it’s mostly Gcals click on a day to add where you clicked and drag across dayS to add a multi-day thang that I find ‘wrong’. Having to re-focus from one part of the screen to far right feels less ‘right’ than the Gcal method (for me). I will (of course) continue to play with BPcal and see what second thoughts bring…

Overall this app’ is superb so I’m off to go and chastise myself for not 100% praising it out of the box…

Alan it’s not Jeff’s question, it’s his demand for an answer. It’s tiring. This is a weblog comments section, not a customer service response board. When Jason has time I’m sure he’ll answer additional questions. Jeff’s demands just rub people the wrong way which is why they pile on.

J-

You forgot to quote the part where I clearly said that I didn’t feel like Jason or 37signals “needed” to do anything. I just it “it would be nice” to get an answer. I didn’t demand anything. Stop reading into things that aren’t there.

I didn’t “demand” (your words, not mine) an answer until after David Nemesis told me to “deal with it.” In other words, the piling on happened before the demanding. Please pay attention if you’re going to make accusations.

4mir Salihefendic 27 Jul 06

I am really impressed! This calendar is in my opinion better designed than desktop calendars like iCal. Being innovative truly pays off!

Will this make it into a stand-alone application?

Further bickering will be deleted.

For everyone asking about future features or future support of standards, we don’t comment on the future. We may add this, we may not. We may support this, we may not. We just don’t know. We’ll see when we get there. That’s the honest answer.

Thanks, Jason. :)

sham 27 Jul 06

You say “glorified Post-It-Notes” like it’s a bad thing, John. What glorifies these Post-Its is that they won’t fall off your monitor.

Jay Laney 27 Jul 06

Looks really impressive!

One things that kinda bugs me as a barrier to starting to use it- it can’t import .ics files. Or at least, not that I can. Moving my data over from iCal would be really nice- I don’t have a place to publish it.

Overall though- this is fantastic. My Backpack usage is going to go up.

// Jay

mos8ball 27 Jul 06

Will this new calendar make its way into Basecamp?

Ryan Parman 27 Jul 06

I’ve included my reminders feed in my BP calendar, and things that I’ve set to noon are showing up as 10:00am. My timezone is GMT-8, and I’m wondering if that has anything to do with it?

Long Time Listener - Repeat Caller 27 Jul 06

Ya~~~~~~~~~tta!

Sam C 27 Jul 06

Bug: Invalid date input crashes the UI
Steps to repro:
1. ‘Add an event’ for any day
2. Enter ‘01/01/200’ minus quotes, with or without a note.
3. ‘Add Event’

p.s. Please add a note to the date/time formatting to clarify that you don’t support specific time periods, eg. 9am-12pm (CMIIW). Coming from Google Calender I expected that, and to add confusion /date/ periods ARE supported.

I’m guessing some of the SvN posters are unaware there is a Backpack Forum with a topic for the new calendar feature. It seems like a good place to post your “bugs” and support items.

Jack 27 Jul 06

Nice work guys
But as a cheep student I think it’s kind of a turn of for to use an app that has all these locked features. I guess its just a mind set though.

Mrad 27 Jul 06

Congrats on a very nice enhancement. I can almost hear the collective groan from the Google diehards now…

keith bohanna 27 Jul 06

I only have paid version of basecamp - will this show up there soon?

keith

But as a cheep student I think it�s kind of a turn of for to use an app that has all these locked features. I guess its just a mind set though.

How much does said cheap student spend on coffee and beer every month? 37signals is asking for $5/month. That’s like almost as free as it gets.

Kyle 27 Jul 06

Is anyone else having trouble with the Backpack widget? I now have a permanent “Login error” message, which I didn’t notice before today.

I’ve refreshed the widget, and re-copied and re-pasted the API, all to no avail.

Jack Shedd 28 Jul 06

I probably shouldn’t be allowed to drag events in the calendar view from shared calendars I can’t edit.

Alan Bristow 28 Jul 06

Played with BPCal more now. Yes there’s some stuff I am looking forward to in future adjustments, but it’s exceptionally good. Congratulations 37’s, your efforts deserve and will no doubt receive reward.

Andrew 28 Jul 06

For us cheapskates or tire-kickers on the free plan, could we lose the black band across the top of the home page that tells us that the free plans include the calendar? There are two other urges to upgrade on the page already: the Calendar tab, and the text underneath “Make a new page.”

Ian Dodson 28 Jul 06

Hi guys, love the calendar, its super! One quick question…

Any plans to be able to let people collaborate, in other words if i share a calendar with a colleague can he update it too?

thanks again
Ian

robb.monn 28 Jul 06

This works so much better than gmail (which has been crazy-fussy since day one with ical exports.)

This and the new omniplanner application really seem to work well together, too. Thanks very much 37s — this is really going to help.

Luis 28 Jul 06

You know, I was telling myself before the launch that I would not use the BP calendar. I was already well into using and populating the Google calendar and figured there would be no point as they would likely have the same functionality.
Well, after the BP launch I started playing around with it and pretty much spent a work afternoon moving all the data over to the BP calendar. It is awesome!

I use BP every day and it just makes sense to have everything I need to organize my life in one place.

Great work guys!

Stefan Seiz 28 Jul 06

Just a hint (maybe falls in the featuritis category):
You have a client dinner and it will take you an hour to get to the restaurant. What good is a SMS/Email Reminder 30 minutes prior to the event in such a case?

@ Stefan

I agree, there should be an option to change the reminder times.

NB 28 Jul 06

[quote]
You have a client dinner and it will take you an hour to get to the restaurant. What good is a SMS/Email Reminder 30 minutes prior to the event in such a case?
[/quote]

So you set another appointment with your car. “Drive to dinner” and let that remind you 30 minutes before 1 hour before your dinner.

@NB
And another one with the Keys (120 Mins prior departure) and then the Garage ;-)
That wasn’t meant serious was it?

My comment was serious because for me the most important reason to use any electronic calendar is to not forget things anymore as the electronic calendar can remind me. Second most important reason is archiving.

Des Traynor 28 Jul 06

I presume that customisable reminder times will be included soon enough. For example, I need to be reminded 3 minutes before a talk in my department, but 3 hours before I’ve to pick up a visitor from the airport.

I realise I could achieve this by saying something like…

11:27am ~You should be at Toms talk at this point~
and set a reminder for 30 minutes earlier (i.e. 10:57am)

or
if I have a researcher coming in on a 7pm flight, I could have

4:30pm ~ You should leave now for the airport trip ~
and then set a reminder for 30 minutes earlier.

But eh, who wants to do that?

JF 28 Jul 06

Whenever we release version 1 of anything we try to fix as many variables as possible. This enables us to control the environment as best we can, spot problems easier, and fix problems faster. Every setting and every option adds significant complexity to this process.

We’re less than 24 hours into the launch of the calendar. We’re monitoring things, fixing stuff, tweaking things, and making subtle adjustments. We do plan on allowing user-defined pre-event reminders, I just can’t say when at this time.

@JF
no need to justify. It is good you release early to collect feedback. The comment wasn’t meant as a complaint just - as i mentioned - as a hint.

Stefan, I totally understand that. I was just explaining the reason why it’s not an option right now for those who might be interested in the details behind it.

Matt 28 Jul 06

If we’re playing the feature request game on here, I’d like to second the request to edit other people’s calendars.

-Matt

Nicolas 28 Jul 06

Congratulations on the launch (and THANK YOU for this great upgrade to BP).

Two things, though:
- A major bonus would be the ability to use the SMS feature in more countries: none of the proposed providers operate in Belgium. My advice: focus on Belgacom Proximus (60+% market share of a very SMS-addicted broadband-everywhere-blessed little country. We also do great beer. And chocolate. Just so you know.)
- In Europe, weeks don’t start on Sunday. It’s just wrong.

Alex 28 Jul 06

Adding a private calendar doesn’t seem to work. Is there any way to subscribe to an iCalendar that requires authentication?

Devan 28 Jul 06

Very nice work. Enticed me to upgrade my account because of it. Would love to see DD/MM support though…

Pete Mauro 30 Jul 06

I have to congratulate 37signals for creating passionate users. “Great job 37s, I’ll buy it, what is it again?” :)

I would love to share in the cult of excitement around the calendar but alas I can’t:

*There is no smartphone synchronization or outlook compatibility.*

Personally I am so tired of watching all these great looking onlineclaendar apps laucnh without this functionality. “The Man” makes me use outlook exchange and I like my Treo. Leaves me up the river.

pete

Anonymous Coward 31 Jul 06

Love the backpack calendar. The one-line Event Entry is great. I’m wondering if this will be influential enough to produce copycats in other event/calendar systems. I think it would be great if users became accustomed to this type of “smart” form entry. How can we get users to feel comfortable enough to type in “9pm Haircut” or “Haircut at 9” and get the expected results? I’m thinking this would be cool: …………

Sorry, previous code example got cut.., it read:

form_for |f|

f.smart_date_input :start_date