A good segment of Google fanboys (like me) are hotly anticipating Google' new Calendar, CL2. Apparently, it's in limited release right now, to a small group of 200 'trusted testers'.
When will it come out? Here's my prediction: April 1st, 2006.
Think about it. Gmail was launched April 1, 2004. Remember how revolutionary it was? One Gig of space. Fast, spiffy AJAX design. It really took the tech world by storm. Fast search. People (including myself) were buying invites on eBay, and there were reviews everywhere. Some politician in California heard about the contextual advertising, and wanted to pass a law to ban it.
Then, the next April 1st, 2005? Well, tons of new features, and another shot across the bow: two gigs of space. And the number of space keeps growing (and still does on the homepage.) Now it's almost close to three gigs of space.
The next revolution? A spiffy AJAX calendar that's smart and tied into your Gmail. Sure, 30 Boxes, with its AJAX design and smart interface (even a Gmail skin!) has stolen a bit of Google's thunder, but I still think CL2 has a few tricks up its sleeve. The biggest I think will be the ability to scan your email for calendar dates and have a button to add that to your calendar. Or even clicking on a day of the month, and seeing all email in your inbox that references that day. That's a function that I suggested to them about a year ago, and which I don't think anyone's doing right now. It would really add seamless integration between calendar and e-mail.
So anyway, I think as (recent) history shows, they'll most likely wait until April 1 to make that announcement. If they don't, they'll no doubt have something up their sleeves for Gmail's second birthday.
