The Calendaring space is very hot right now. Joel Spolsky of FogCreek comments that people seem to be building calendar companies for resale. I figure there’ll be lots more AJAX calendaring apps out there before the war is over. It’s got it’s own mini-bubble. Joel believes that part of the problem is early PR doesn’t work well with “release early and often”. As a rule I guess, it’s good to spend more on development and customer support than you do on PR and marketing.
Calendaring is something very close to my heart as it’s well known that in the Windows-centric world the combination of Outlook with Exchange is compelling. There’s nothing else, on any platform, that comes close.
Groupware is essential for modern workgroups. A recent chat I had with an Exchange expert left him reeling from the concept that most Mac and Linux users simply don’t use groupware. We stumble around with apps that don’t talk to each other. We play with web based solutions that, in the end, are not as easy to use or as fast and functional as rich desktop clients.
Rather than solving the problem, we will see increased work in the online calendar space, especially with AJAX-based interfaces. No-one seems to have considered how anyone is actually going to make any money in this process but I am heartened to see that both Vista Calendar and 30-boxes have an API. Maybe this is another positive sign of Web 2.0?
Anyway, I never thought I’d be as motivated as I am about calendars.